The latest installment in this long overdue reissue campaign for eighties New York noise rockers Live Skull, this being their second full length, Cloud One, originally released in 1986, the last album before Thalia Zedek (Come, Uzi) would join and take over lead vocals, and like their debut, on Cloud One, Live Skull still sonically fit pretty perfectly alongside their NYC brethren (and sistren) in Swans, Sonic Youth (especially Sonic Youth) and the rest, but on Cloud One, the band made great leaps both sonically, and with their songwriting (and the matching more polished production), the new(ish) sound definitely hewing ever closer to the minor key melancholia infused angularity of SY, but mixing in long, droned out passages and slow dark blooze creeps, adding an element of brooding mesmer, and dark psychedelia. That darkness also represented by a sonic shift toward something gloomier and gothier, with many of the tracks here more reminiscent of the West Coast sound of the time, the Scream Club, and bands like Janes Addiction, Kommunity FK and the Abecedarians (especially on the live bonus tracks!). Hints too of outfits like the Wipers, the Gun Club, the Flesh Eaters, a sort of swaggery psych blues crossed with noisy experimental rock, there's still some junkyard percussion, a little Pussy Galore here and there, but the band definitely had their eyes on the musical prize, whether by design or not, Cloud One is a tightly wound, complex piece of noise/art rock, that even now sounds impossibly prescient of a sound that so many bands would go on to mine in their wake. It's actually a bit shocking that Live Skull's career trajectory wasn't more like Sonic Youth's, on this record for sure, but even more so on their 1988 swansong, Positraction, the band seemed poised for success, and an eventual move into the semi-mainstream, but for whatever reason, they remained firmly entrenched in the underground, and would only make it another couple years/records before calling it quits.
Fantastically curated reissued, with a whole mess of bonus tracks, unreleased, demos and live, as well as a massive booklet with tons of rare photos, old flyers, live shots, and extensive liner notes by the band, as well as extensive track by track notes on the extra songs as well!
The final two installments in the long overdue comprehensive Loop reissue campaign are finally here. World In Your Eyes, the newly expanded 12" collection, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this right here, the final proper Loop album, A Gilded Eternity.
Contemporaries of legendary drug rockers Spacemen 3, Loop took the same sonic influences but rocked a little harder, opting out of the extended soporific drifts the defined the Spacemen, (although they were perfectly capable of blissing out with the best of them) and instead creating looped, krautrock spacejams, that were downright heavy, as well as being space-y, druggy and surprisingly catchy. Guitars were fuzzed out, vocals way down in the mix, reverb and delay EVERYWHERE, riffs often processed into stuttering textures and looped rhythms, the drums alternatingly motorik and skeletal, and pounding and explosive, all wreathed in a glorious otherworldly haze.
A Gilded Eternity, their final record, originally released in 1990, might just be their heaviest and most rocking yet, definitely their tightest, album opener "Vapour" has one of those riffs TO DIE FOR, the main melody is so completely catchy, the song a woozy, repetitive chunk of gloriously propulsive dronerock, less space-y than much of what came before, but definitely more rocking and relentless. the next track "Afterglow" pushes that new heaviness even further, sounding not unlike Swervedriver, big crunchy distorted guitars, pounding tribal drumming, the arrangement a lurching start stop, that slips into cool washed out breakdowns, before exploding right back into the stuttery groove. And so it goes, the band unfurling their masterwork, in a career of masterful works, "Blood" is total abstract minimal krautrock, the guitars stripped away, leaving just a super spare drum part, wrapped all up in processed vocals and swirling effects, another jam that easily could have gone on for 10 more minutes. But then just like that, the band slip back into "Breath Into Me", whipping up another killer riff, the track a looped space garage groove that rivals record opener "Vapour". The record proper ends with the nearly 10 minute "Be Here Now", the Loop version of a slow jam, beginning with some strange processed guitar, the band ease into a languorous groove that drifts druggily through soft focus clouds of lysergic buzz, brief squalls of wild wah guitar, but remaining locked and looped, the weary vocals drifting above the warm endless buzz.
A Guilded Eternity comes with a bonus disc as well, perhaps the least critical of the bonus material, considering it contains 5 demo tracks and 3 Peel Sessions, BUT, it also includes the Loop track "Shot With A Diamond", which happens to be Jim's favorite Loop track alongside "Arc-Light." This track provides the perfect sonic segue between Loop and the sounds guitarist Robert Hampson would later explore with his post Loop solo project Main, an ominous bit of electronic sample laced dronemusic, creepy and haunting and so fucking awesome. Previously only available as a 7" single, and as a bonus track on the original cassette version. Essential!
In fact, all four of these Loop reissues are absolutely required listening for anyone with even the mildest interest in sounds space-y, druggy, metallic and psychedelic!!!
Holy shit!! Loop!!! We were floored when Robert Hampson decided to re-ignite his seminal hypno-rock project with the original lineup back in 2013. While the brief sojourn with the original Loop fizzled out, Hampson wanted to keep going with these ideas and recruited a new cadre to continue as Loop. This lead to a larger number of live dates, included one hell of a great performance here in San Francisco, and now the first in a trio of long eps. Given that many a band in this day and age will issue a 25 minute set of recordings and call it a full album, these 30 minutes of Loop seems weighty for the qualification as a paltry ep. Semantics.
The A side begins with two taut, drugged-into-monotone, psych-rock numbers each mighty with their propulsive underbelly and blown-out riff as rhythm structures. Hampson's vocals are still as weary, detached, and washed-out as always, making him one of the most unlikely of frontmen. The lazer-shot drone-on number "Coma" rounds out the A side as a slumped piece of feedback, distortion, and sculpted guitar minimalism that recalls more of Hampson's recent Editions Mego recordings under his Main moniker. More Organum-like fug-drone miasma opens the B-side with its slow-burning swirl that ignites into a magnificent Neu! / Can motorik rhythmic excursion dripping with gilded guitar distortion and the occasional wammy-bar bent solo flares out of Hampson's post-Stooges / post-13th Floor Elevator riffs.
So fucking great Loop is, was, and hopefully will continue to be!
When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c'mon, let's share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop.
For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more tranquil guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, nut also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut-infused space rock bliss.
Fade Out was record number two for Loop, and found the band making a definite move forward in terms of production and sound, and an obvious shift away fro a sound they shared with countrymen Spacemen 3. The sound on Fade Out is much heavier, and way louder, the guitars sharper and more jagged, the bass more present, the vocals way more prominent, the sound immediately less druggy and washed out and more rocking. "Black Sun" is a propulsive slab of spaced out garage-y krautrock, the guitars ringing out, the second guitar a buzzing over the top, the drums busy and powerful, the whole thing still wreathed in effects, but now the murk had been replaced with something much more effulgent, a strange burnished glow, suffusing the sound, less like laying in darkness and watching colors swirl and shimmer, and more like staring directly into the sun. "This Is Where You End" continues on in the same vein, with gruff almost growled vocals, over that distinctive looped guitar figure, with multiple guitars offering up extra melody and texture.
"Fever Knife" stands out as it slows things way down, and the guitars are muted, not quite as sharp, with plenty of squiggly fun house mirror guitar melodies intertwined with that main riff, the tempo, a head nodding soporific groove, definitely reaching back a bit to the sound of Heaven's End. But then comes "Torched" with a incendiary guitar sound so loud and in the red, it threatens to blow your speakers, dwarfing the drums and bass in the background, churning and soaring, white hot and blown out big time.
The title track is another slowed down druggy dirge, the main riff lumbering woozily along side a steady simple beat, haunting processed vocals, and chunks of extra guitar buzz, the whole thing downright doomy. The last three tracks are gorgeous squalls of druggy throb and crumbling guitar buzz, the record finishing up with a short stretch of shimmering ambient drift. SO GREAT!!
The deluxe reissue of Fade Out not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring a whole mess of extra stuff, alternate mixes of three tracks on the record, an awesome demo version of "This Is Where You End", the Peel Sessions from the Fade Out era, and most exciting of all a series of Fade Out Guitar Loops, from shimmering high end buzz, to whirring smears of low end rumble, definitely hinting at Hampson's post-Loop outfit Main.
SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!
When people think of spaced out, drone-y drug rock, Spacemen 3 seem to get all the love, which is of course fair, Spacemen 3 totally rule, their music is magical, especially for some of us who will probably only ever experience drug use by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. But c'mon, let's share the love, with another group, who existed during the same time, in basically the same place, and who were sonically quite similar, yet crafted their own distinctive and incredibly iconic body of work, one that has been criminally unavailable for years now. These two reissues are the first in what will hopefully be a comprehensive reissue campaign for London space rockers Loop.
For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe. The sound of Loop was equal parts Krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, nut also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut infused space rock bliss.
Heaven's End was Loop's debut, released in 1987, just a year after Spacemen 3's first record (and apparently Spacemen 3 were always quite annoyed by constantly being compared to Loop), and inadvertent or not, it's the Loop record that is the most Spacemen sounding. Lo-fi, raw and gritty. The opener "Soundhead" is surprisingly rocking, with lots of wah guitar, propulsive drumming, ethereal vocals, the song that would define the sound of Loop, but it's the second track where the record really gets going, slipping into a slow motion Stooges groove, a lurching looped riff, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums a simple pound, a main refrain that's catchy as fuck, the whole thing constantly repeated over and over and over and over, totally blissed out and trancelike. The following track slips even further out, the guitars super sharp and buzz drenched, the tempo a lugubrious crawl, the drums total barebones, swirling spaced out effects, the guitar billowing out into soft focus buzzscapes over which the rest of the instrumentation seems to hover weightless. The title track is a simple garage-y pound, with the cymbals and the guitars looped backwards (hinting at some Teenage Filmstars to come maybe?), the guitar stuttering creating incidental rhythms, very druggy and mesmeric. And so it goes, each song, a simple motif, locked in and set on repeat, the core remaining near static, looped into infinity, while all around that groove various guitars and effects and voices swirl and whirl and spin and stretch and shimmer divinely. Easily one of our all time favorite records for sure.
This deluxe reissue not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring alternate mixes of two of the album tracks, as well as a killer cover of Suicide's "Rocket USA", with a cool programmed drum beat, tripped out psychedelic guitars, and hushed almost crooned vocals, and the three tracks from the Peel Sessions, included a seriously stretched out version of "Straight To Your Heart". SO AWESOME!!!
SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!
Finally!! Ever since the first two Loop records got the deluxe multidisc reissue treatment, we've been anxiously awaiting the last two, their final record A Gilded Eternity, and this one right here, many folks around here's favorite, a compilation of 12"s called World In Your Eyes. Originally released in 1987, the updated World In Your Eyes, is even better, a TRIPLE disc collection of 12"s, 7"s, bonus tracks, unreleased tracks, demos, and covers.
Seemingly always (unfairly) overshadowed by their sonic brethren the Spacemen 3, Loop managed to give the drugged out drone rock thing their own distinct spin, infusing some serious krautrock mesmer and some metallic muscle into their slow burning drones and effects drenched psychrock workouts. Slipping easily from super dreamy one riff blown out hypno rock, to in-the-red space garage pound, to hushed soft focus inner space drift, Loop were masters of modern psychedelia.
Take the 10 minute drug drift of "Burning World", with its processed guitar chug, the swirling clouds of effects, the blooping bass, the motorik drums, like the perfect mix of Can and Hawkwind. Or "Brittle Head Girl", which sounded like a spacier more tripped out Galaxie 500, its lazy drawled vocals, and woozy guitar hook, and that irresistible bassline. Or "I'll Take You There", a super fuzzed out bit of garage-y space groove, the band easily out spacing the Spacemen themselves. We could probably go track by track, every one here is a gem, and the extras! Holy shit. Where to start? Besides a plethora of demos, live tracks and the like, this collection also includes some incredible covers, A spaced out version of a Pop Group track, Neil Young's "Cinammon Girl", Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" and Can's "Mother Sky (which Andee sez is better than the original, yeah we know, we know). Then there's the Arc-Lite 12" that takes up the first half of the third disc, one of our favorite Loop eps, and the track "Arc-Lite (Sonar)" is one of the best Loop jams ever, with its relentless riffing, it's strange flurries of tribal drumming, the echo drenched vox and the swooping streaks of effects, a 4 minute song that could easily have been ten times that. The song is reimagined as the "(Radar)" version, getting sort of supercharged, heavier and fleshier, less spare and skeletal and jangly than the original. There's a third version still, that gets all remixed into something less space rocky and more tripped out and dizzying. Let's not forget the ten minute "Sunburst", a sprawling bit of lysergic minimal krautdrone, woozy and druggy and slow burning. There's also the legendary live Prisma Europa Live 12", and finally, to top it all off, Loop's Godflesh cover, from their Loopflesh split 7", where each band covered the other, one of our Holy Grail 7"s, if anyone out there has one they can part with, we will be forever in your debt, and of course it's a killer, Godflesh's "Like Rats" transformed into something much spacier but no less menacing, in fact, it's most definitely the heaviest meanest slab of Loop-age ever, while still retaining plenty of that Loop-ed FX drenched shimmer. So goddamn GREAT.
These reissues have been shuffling tracks around enough to cause a little confusion, as some of the tracks on the original issue of WIYE are left off here, but are tacked on elsewhere on the other reissues, and disc 3 here seems like it could have been included on the Gilded Eternity disc as this disc highlights one of our favorite Loop tracks, the above mentioned Arc-Light, originally a 1989 single, which was lumped onto the cd edition of A Gilded Eternity which came out a year later in 1990. But who really cares, as long as it's all here, and it's ALL here, and then some. Space rock and drone rock and psychedelic rock fanatics should buy all four, one of the most supremely transcendent and kick ass bodies of work in rock. Hyperbole? We think NOT.
Killer packaging, three paper sleeves with various reproductions of the included 12"s, all housed in a slipcover, with a booklet that includes track listings credits, but sadly, not much in the way of liner notes.
Far from being one of the many Francisco Lopez albums of inaudible activity and near silence, "Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches" is an epic construction of densely layered field recordings. Originally released in an edition of 500 copies on ND back in 1997, this album has been long out of print. However, Lopez' insistence of this being his favorite composition to date perhaps prompted Alien 8 to pull this title back into circulation. Despite the obviousness to Lopez' source material (i.e. wind, rain storms, cricket choruses, and other natural phenomenon), the strategies that he uses to collage all of these materials are wholly synthetic and purposefully theatrical. So much so, that Allan thought this was an experimental track from the pummelling necro-metal outfit Anaal Nathrakh! Indeed, Lopez has amplified the horrific elements of these natural sounds, extending his definition of 'acousmatic music' as not simply disguising the source material but rendering it hallucinatory, vertiginous, and ominous. The album opens with an unrelenting wall of sound that surges forward in a startling jolt of mechanical screeches and insect choruses that are more electrical than natural. Lopez ramps the volume and bass equilization of these sounds up to a tumultuous crescendo of furious noise some five or six minutes later, only to abruptly cut to a quiet murky wash of miasmic swirling. Come to think of it, these strategies have much more in common with Illusion Of Safety or The Hafler Trio than the sensorially smooth transitions that have become so prominent in recent Lopez works (especially in the "Belle Confusion" series). Regardless of any precedents, "Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches" definitely qualifies as one of Lopez' masterpieces.
"The spookiest work I've ever done," states Francisco Lopez. His work very rarely embodies much in the way of emotional resonance, instead there's more often than not a manipulation of field recordings into stoic monuments of grey drone reflecting the physicality of sound. If there is a 'coldness' to his work, it's usually by way of his rather dry, often disembodied aesthetics which draw heavily from the conceptual models of musique concrete and acousmatic musics. So, it's quite unusual for Lopez to arrive (intentionally or otherwise) at this bleak recording on this isolationist label with this title (Amarok is the Inuit name of a monstrous wolf who destroys anyone foolish enough to hunt alone at night). The album is a single 64 minute piece, that like many a Lopez production begins in near silence for about two minutes; but slowly the first of three major movements begins through a slow acceleration of low-end rumblings that coalesce into an aerated growling that builds out of wind-whipped drones only to fade to black after a rather tense 18 minutes or so. The rest of the album is much quieter affair with the clatter of ice, metal, and distant voice hung in an evocatively black space of Lustmord / Koner shadow. A Promethean plod of slowly churning rhythmic subsonics introduces the slow finale of Amarok with distant moans and howls that could be human or lupine defaced by frigid Arctic winds. It's certainly spooky, and fortunately, Lopez is deft enough of a composer to avoid some of the ham-fisted theatrics that tend in many of the lesser dark ambient / isolationist practitioners. Recommended, for sure!
There's an important rule of thumb to apply to Francisco Lopez records: if it's silent, then avoid it; if there's sound, it'll be well worth your time. Since there aren't any urban legends of Lopez doing his silent material in a live context, it's a pretty safe bet that any live recording is something to consider. That said, Live In San Francisco is a fantastic document of his pursuit of an 'absolute concrete music.' In previous recordings, Lopez has recontextualized the insects from rainforests, ambient din of the urban environment, human voices, the run-out grooves of vinyl, and even death metal blast beats in constructing his textural slabs of gray sound; and his live concerts rework similar themes and source material with compositional strategies that best fit the performance context. While he's performed in San Francisco numerous times, the two performances that found their way onto Live In San Francisco were the Hexaphonic show at the Lab in August 2000 and an intimate performance at 3feetofftheground in July 2001. The documentation from The Lab show opens with a noxious hiss that builds up to loud crash like a heavy steel plated door slamming shut in a cavernous warehouse. Slowly another hiss ramps out of the reverberation of his initial crescendo and becomes more and more volatile until the kill switch is cut some 25 minutes later. The second recording from 3feeofftheground resembles some of the leviathan plods from Daniel Menche as a monstrous mechanical rhythm increases in strength and ominously marches forward. As with the previous Live in 'S-Hertogenbosch document, Live in San Francisco comes with a blindfold so you too can replicate the experience of being blindfolded at a Francisco Lopez show.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
I kid you not. This is the album where Lopez goes metal. Not the recording of sheet metal resonance, not the amplified vibrations of metal molecules, not even the inactivity of two pieces of sheet metal thoughtfully sitting alone in a room with nothing to ponder but their own existential (in)audibility. The normally sedate Lopez goes metal like Emperor, Slayer, or Cradle of Filth.
If anybody has recently witnessed the cascading power of Lopez's recent live shows, then "Untitled 104" is certainly not a surprise. Of course, Lopez sets everything up with 4 minutes of his usual silence, before a tumultuous assault of sampled metal blast beats destroys any semblence of serenity. Lopez layers wave after wave of rhythmic clatter that reveals an incredible amount of textural noise. One blast beat takes the aural center stage, and you find yourself asking "Huh? Is this Cannibal Corpse? Or was that last one from Morbid Angel? I don't know." (Actually, we suspect that all the samples are from one band, but even the metal minds here at AQ haven't confidently guessed which one.) Lopez could have unwittingly devised the ultimate trivia contest for metalheads to name the sample. 35 minutes pass (35 head spinning, if not head banging minutes) and then the metal rhythms stop. Ten more minutes of silence provide the coda.
While this record is really fucking good (indeed, it's one of Jim's favorites of the year along with Reynols' "Blank Tapes"), it is also another example of the academic / art world colonization of metal. Like Matthew Barney's awe-inspiring image in "Cremaster 2" of Dave Lombardo hammering at his drum kit behind the sound of swarming bees, Lopez's "Untitled 104" effectively translates the pure masculine power of metal to an audience who may not care for the, uh, aesthetics of metal. Fortunately, it appears that Lopez and Barney do not approach metal with a snobbish irony (like Harmony Korine's reprehensible photo-enlargements of black metal album covers that sold for tens of thousands of dollars), but such appropriation nevertheless marginalizes metal as nothing more than a texture or an attitude, far from the vibrant and deviant culture that it is.
Rant aside, if this record causes one fan of Bernhard Gunter to get into Burzum, then, as far as Aquarius Records is concerned, Lopez has succeeded. Recommended.
Even through his collaborations (as seen here on Belle Confusion 00 with Amy Denio), Francisco Lopez has successfully resisted procedures, craftsmanship, and semantics. What's left behind are paradoxically both ominous and serene compositions of open ended
Francisco Lopez's Belle Confusion 0247 with fellow field recording artist Michael Northam is certainly one of the strongest recordings to come from Lopez's encyclopedia of 'absolute concrete music' which in the past, has included investigations of the
With an avant-metal / metalcore membership of superstar proportions with Stephen O'Malley (Sunn 0))), Burning Witch, Teeth Of The Lion Rule The Divine, Khanate, etc.), James Plotkin (Old, Atomsmasher / Phantomsmasher, Khanate, etc.), and Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, HydraHead Records, etc.), the Lotus Eaters locate themselves quite far away from the archetypes of metal. Actually, their sound is more of re-contextualization of remnants from the disintegration of metal into fragments of ominous spectres of atmosphere, distant orchestrations of acousmatic sound, and slivers of guitar drones. With very spartan arrangements, the Lotus Eater's first CD (after a couple of super limited vinyl only releases) invokes the archaic ritualist behavior, gnostic alchemical symbolism, and dark ambient transgressions of the post-industrial work from Troum, Cranioclast, and even Coil's "How To Destroy Angels" album. However, throughout the suitably nightmarish activities, the trio of guitarists reveal very simple two or three note melodies; and on more than one occasion, "Mind Control For Infants" loosens its iron fisted grip on a dark atmospheres, exploring some pristine, glistening bell tones, rich acoustic guitar fingerpicking, and gossamer threads of feedback. This album makes for wonderful late-night listening, and is certainly recommended!
Shoegazing - originally the derogatory term applied to bands like Ride, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine for the lackluster stage presence - had developed into an impressive aesthetic during the early '90s whereby the jangle of '60s psych-pop had been married with Brian Eno's notions of ambient music as an oceanic / prelingual return to the womb. After its gilded crescendo from a couple of records (most notably MBV's "Loveless"), shoegazing as an artform faded away, with many of the original proponents shedding the layers of distortion to concentrate upon their songwriting (most notably Neil Halstead formerly of Slowdive, now a minstrel of sunny folk-rock). Loveliescrushing - the post-shoegazing US duo of Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin-Henry - disagreed with this trajectory away from etherealism and towards songsmithery, thus centering their music around only the faintest residues of melody and ghostly reminders of what might be a song somewhere within all of their bleary-eyed guitar washes. Their first two exceptional albums ("Bloweyelashwish" and "Xuvetyn") found their way onto Projekt, the stalwart proprietors of America's darkwave / goth scene, although they didn't readily fit with Projekt's aesthetic for black lace and blood red roses. The only connection with Projekt may have been in the mutual affinity for the Cocteau Twins, whose glossalaic siren songs certainly resonate within the incomprehensible siren-like vocalizations of Arpin-Henry. Yet for all of the aforementioned references, Loveliescrushing has little use for a rhythm section, presenting that soft female voice floating way off in the distance amidst oceans of radioluminescent layers of guitar reverberation. Compared to their previous records, "Glissceule" has smoothed over some of Loveliescrushing's expressionistic bursts of static and bristling noise, striving for a more enchanting eternal drone. In all probability, this will stand as one of my (Jim's) favorite 'pop' albums of the year, even though there's nothing 'pop' about it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
I've actually been waiting for Lovely Midget's debut album for some time, after a brilliant 10" on Ecstatic Peace a couple of years back. Lovely Midget is the work of New Zealand's Rachel Shearer, whose resume includes a few releases for Siltbreeze and Xpressway as Queen Meanie Puss and Angelhead. Whereas those projects were firmly entrenched in the magical avant-pop strum shared by fellow NZ musicians like Alastair Galbraith, Lovely Midget's gritty drones barely have anything to do with the song, capturing a antiquated sound similar to Movietone or Kjetil Brandsdal's Corpus Hermeticum release. The layers of guitar feedback, slowly tumbling percussion, and sunbleached vibrations could easily have resulted in the crystalline sleepiness of My Bloody Valentine but instead have been covered with 10 years of dust and cobwebs blurring the melodies with murk and mire. Interestingly, this muddy, droning din was created digitally, although there certainly isn't any indication that any digital production was used, and Lovely Midget would never get confused with the sterile electronica found on Raster or 12K. Rather this has all the trappings of a fantastic lo-fi 4-track recording... it's beautiful, dreamy, and highly recommended.
Took us a while to get these to list, but, now we have a few, at last...
Ah, Lovesliescrushing! What a beautiful noise you make! Ghost Colored Halo finds the shoegaze duo returning to Projekt Records, where they released their first album nearly 20 years ago. Little has changed in terms of the group's sound during those two decades, as Scott Cortez stills weaves thick, amorphous clouds of blissed-out guitar noise around the siren-song vocalizations of Melissa Arpin-Duimstra. With just voice and guitar at their disposal, Lovesliescrushing elegantly deconstructs the pop-song into an oceanic wash of sound, all without the use of any rhythm section whatsoever.
Much of the work that has been released over the past decade was stitched together from old tapes of guitar drones and vocal tracks reworked many years afterwards. Both the Shiny Tiny Stars album on Handmade Birds and the Girl Echo Suns Veils boxset on Projekt were examples of Cortez reworking archival material and with Arpin-Duimstra dubbing vocals later. These albums further atomized the overblown shoegaze wash of sound into beautiful blurs of reverberation and echo, with the song all but entirely eradicated in the lush soundscaping. On Ghost Colored Halo, the two actually got together in the same room to record for the first time in well over a decade. Here, the song begins to appear once again, and the in-studio chemistry results in a more focused set of compositions as nebulous as they may be.
The opening number "Blemished Sunspot" blossoms with all of the majesty of one of Tim Hecker's constructions as radiant glistenings of soft-focused guitar noise gradually lift off and soar into the upper regions of the stratosphere. A more plaintive guitar strum along with Arpin-Duimstra's voice grounds tracks like "The Tiger Hunts Alone" and "The Wounds That Won't Heal," the latter almost sounding like it could have been a track from the early Tarentel records (an interesting reference to hear, especially since Tarentel's Jefre Cantu-Ledesma actually penned an homage to Lovesliescrushing on his solo record Love Is A Stream). And to throw a monkeywrench into everything we had thought about Lovesliescrushing, the duo toss a steady heartbeat pulse into rapturous, pop-ambient waltz "Ghost Colored." It's all gorgeous stuff, and we're head over heels to hear Lovesliescrushing once again, especially working with comparitively more structured material!
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Here's a record that we had been excited about for well over a year, back when Projekt announced that they would be releasing a 2cd set by Loveliescrushing. This is a band that should warrant a much bigger pressing than the 300 copies of this elaborate box; but, at least we have a few copies to offer.
Loveliescrushing is a shoegaze duo out of Tuscon, Arizona who made a surprise debut on the darkwave / goth label Projekt around 1993 or so, with the cassette Bloweyelashwish (which later did get a cd release). This album took the My Bloody Valentine overdrive of distortion, reverb, more distortion, and more reverb to a deconstructed end, further blurring the notion of song structure and entirely getting rid of the rhythm section. The duo has slowly been releasing work over the past two decades, gradually smoothing out the distortion and leaving an almost Tim Hecker like mass of droned texture from ethereal female vocals and once heavily distorted guitar wash.
The two discs of Girl Echo Suns Veils are split between the crunched shoegaze density of their earliest recordings and the most recent explorations of their narcotized drone-pop. Those early recordings are remastered from demo tapes dating back to 1990, when 'the noise' and 'the pretty' were coming together in equal resolve. The later material is certainly nothing to scoff at, and would make for a great addition to the next Pop Ambient compilation.
Brilliant stuff, and packaged in an oversized wooden box, hand silkscreened by Loveliescrushing's Scott Cortez, with some collaged art work, and a feather or two found within. AND CRAZY LIMITED. We have less than 10 copies, and can NOT get more, so grab one while you can...
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Back in stock, and always worth raving about. Here's the review we wrote when this came out originally: Shoegazing -- originally the derogatory term applied to bands like Ride, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine for the lackluster stage presence -- developed into an impressive aesthetic during the early '90s whereby the jangle of '60s psych-pop was married with Brian Eno's notions of ambient music as an oceanic / prelingual return to the womb. After its gilded crescendo from a couple of records (most notably MBV's Loveless), shoegazing as an artform faded away, with many of the original proponents shedding the layers of distortion to concentrate upon their songwriting (most notably Neil Halstead formerly of Slowdive, now a minstrel of sunny folk-rock). Loveliescrushing -- the post-shoegazing US duo of Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin-Henry -- disagreed with this trajectory away from etherealism and towards songsmithery, thus centering their music around only the faintest residues of melody and ghostly reminders of what might be a song somewhere within all of their bleary-eyed guitar washes. Their first two exceptional albums (Bloweyelashwish and Xuvetyn) found their way onto Projekt, the stalwart proprietors of America's darkwave / goth scene, although they didn't readily fit with Projekt's aesthetic for black lace and blood red roses. The only connection with Projekt may have been in the mutual affinity for the Cocteau Twins, whose glossalaic siren songs certainly resonate within the incomprehensible siren-like vocalizations of Arpin-Henry. Yet for all of the aforementioned references, Loveliescrushing has little use for a rhythm section, presenting that soft female voice floating way off in the distance amidst oceans of radioluminescent layers of guitar reverberation. Compared to their previous records, Glissceule has smoothed over some of Loveliescrushing's expressionistic bursts of static and bristling noise, striving for a more enchanting eternal drone. In all probability, this will stand as one of my (Jim's) favorite 'pop' albums of the year, even though there's nothing 'pop' about it.
Shiny Tiny Stars is another collection of archival, unreleased material from the deconstructed bliss-pop duo Lovesliescrushing. A couple years back, Projekt released a beautifully packaged 2cd entitled Girl Echo Suns Veils (it came housed in a silkscreened wooden box!), with half of the material culled from the demos that predated their first album and the other half being newly constructed pieces. The recordings here were created from 1991-97, obviously a very prolific period for the duo of Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin-Duimstra; which also begs the question, will we ever again see any new recordings? It probably matters not, as any Lovesliescrushing material is welcome around these parts!
The Lovesliescrushing sound blossomed from a classic shoegaze template, but stuck to a decidedly lo-fi approach, layering and overdubbing soft noise, reverb, more soft noise, more reverb, all on a 4-track instead of something more akin to Kevin Shields' meticulous productions for Loveless. With the limitations of just 4 tracks, Lovesliescrushing swept the legs out from underneath the shoegaze 'song' - removing the bass and drums entirely, leaving the vocals and guitars suspended vertiginously in mid-air. More so than anywhere else in Lovesliescrushing's back catalog, they sound a hell of lot like Grouper with the vocals creating the fundamental melody which cycle woozily through blurred motifs while the guitars dreamily drift in oceans of reflective echo and drone. Beautiful stuff, for sure; and like all Handmade Birds titles, it's painfully limited, this time to 300 copies.
Finally reissued, the first two albums from Minnesota slowcore pioneers Low, whose records were a template for a million slow bands to follow, and yet whose sound, especially on these first two records, sounds utterly unlike anyone else. Hushed and hazy and dolorously brooding, the guitars slipping from muffled murky chug to lazy washed out jangle to crystalline chime, the drums a skeletal shuffle, the bass drowsily driving in the background, sounding almost like some abstract take on those dour Joy Division basslines, the perfect backdrop for the haunting and heavenly boy / girl harmonies, all of those elements blended into into a gorgeous stately dreampop that's blurry and bleary, gauzy and psychedelic, droned out and minimal, darkly propulsive and narcotically hypnotic.
I Could Live In Hope was the group's 1994 debut produced by Shimmy Disc / Noise New Jersey head honcho Kramer, who added his own production haze, which perfectly suited the group's mesmerizingly somnambulent minimalism, the arrangements spare, displaying a delicate sonic economy, but somehow, the sum so much more than its parts, strangely epic and majestic, and even the most hushed minimal drifts imbued with impossibly catchy hooks. It's like the perfect pop record just slowed way down and stretched way out. Check out "Lazy", the record's 'hit' if hits could be dark claustrophobic doom pop dirges, or the sprawling blissed out "Lullaby", that almost even 'rocks' part way through, like an ultra minimal Godspeed, all slow build sonic drama, or the smokey, shimmery "Down". Still all these years later, I Could Live In Hope would have to rank up there as one of THEE essential releases of the nineties.
But then really so would the next year's follow up, Long Division, which once again matched the band up with Kramer, and the result was essentially an extension of I Could Live In Hope. Although, if anything, Long Division found the band, ditching some of the gauzy atmosphere of that first record, their sound suddenly super clear and crystalline, and somehow all the more haunting for it. Opening track "Violence" is still dark and minimal, but more like some minimal torch song ballad, all sun dappled and dreamy. In fact, much of the record has a sort of sun dappled vibe. If I Could Live In Hope was all overcast skies and rainswept streets, Long Division finds the clouds party, just a bit, to reveal streaks of blue sky, and letting just a few stray sunbeams through, which Low somehow transform into perfect slo-mo pop. "Below & Above" is a gorgeous lullaby, "Shame" is a twang flecked soft focus dirge, "Throw Out The Line" is all tarpit jangle and lush harmonies, and so it goes, every song here, so easy to get utterly lost in, the whole record, the perfect light to I Could Live In Hope's dark, but with both blurring the line in between.
These reissues tack on a handful of bonus tracks, B-sides and demos, which unless you already have their A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief triple cd odds and ends collection, you probably haven't heard. Long Division includes their version of the Bee Gees' "I Started A Joke", and it sounds like it was written specifically for them...
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Believe it or not, Lustmord's Heresy was the first cd I (Allan) ever bought, back in 1990 when it was first released. (Not my first tape or LP, but my first cd -- the second, if I recollect correctly, was either Nirvana's Bleach or Lights...Camera...Revolution by the Suicidal Tendencies...someday I'm gonna do a 'zine on the subject of 'first records purchased', but I digress). I think I'd read about it in some magazine, and was intrigued that it was apparently recorded deep underground in some cave or crypt. These subterranean origins are certainly believable when you listen -- it's dark and deep indeed, an ambient well of sound echoing with what sounds like the cries of buried, ghostly whales, a fog-shrouded hour of droning unease. Haunting, beautiful, something enjoyably scary to listen to alone at night. As the first-ever cd in my collection, of course it's near and dear to my heart, but it's the music that prompts me to tell you it's a great album. We're glad that it's finally now been reissued (in a spiffy digipack, still sporting the fantastic, apocalyptic cover piece "The Great Day Of His Wrath" by English Romantic painter John Martin), all tracks remastered by Brian Lustmord in 2004. Highly recommended. If you're at all into dark/ambient/drone musics, you ought to have one or two or more Lustmord discs in your collection, and I'd say Heresy should be one of them.
Lustmord's nightmare aesthetic continues to map out aural manifestations of subconscious terror. "The Monstrous Soul" was originally released through World Serpant in 1990. While the earlier Lustmord records had been acoutic in nature, this time, the digital prowess of Adi Newton (Clock DVA, T.A.G.C.) was enlisted to add a digital clarity to the psychoacoustic malevolence.
"The Monstrous Soul" is a series of
dark ambient environments sounding like some Lovecraftian haunted forest ready to send its trees tumbling on top of any trespassers. Ominous tectonic plods, loops of Crowley's incantations, and samples pronouncing the intention of demonic possession are interspersed between the dark ambient passages rich in deep reverberations. A perfect bridge between the avant black-metal of Skepticism and the dadaist dirges of early Current 93.
Curious that we hadn't reviewed Lustmord's impressive 1994 album The Place Where The Black Stars Hang until now. One reason for that is that this is one of those records that has slipped in and out of print over the years; but thankfully Soleilmoon has just released this remastered version of the dark ambient classic. Brian "Lustmord" Williams began his musical career in the late '70s as a member of SPK, whose early Industrial albums set a very high standard for aggressive electronics, shock tactics, and raw aggression, definite sonic inspiration for current darlings such as Wolf Eyes and Prurient although those groups have never quite surpassed the original. While Williams and SPK's frontman Graeme Revell have remained close friends and occasional partners for Hollywood sound design projects, Williams struck out on his own in the early '90s as Lustmord, taking SPK's psychoacoustic intensity, noise, and ill-temper with him. While the early Lustmord records have the finger on the SPK template, Williams really made his first big impact with 1990's Heresy -- an overwhelmingly bleak album that literally fused the reverberations from catacombs and underground passages with a spectral ambience whose influence can be felt from the acoustically inclined realms of sound art to the infernal expressionism of black metal. While the follow up album to Heresy (The Monstrous Soul) pushed further toward the occult and horrific with incredible panache, it never received the universal acclaim that Heresy did; but The Place Where The Black Stars is the other verifiable masterpiece in his catalogue of recordings. Taking poetic license from the astrophysical studies of black holes as well as from archaic solar cults, Williams has crafted an electronic album that is as nightmarishly bleak as it is Wagnerian in scope. Long passages of irradiated dark matter stream into eternal drones reflecting the vastness of empty space; and subdued half-melodies and siren-song chantings slowly churn into ever deepening rumbles and the blackest of ambient drift. Absolutely essential.
We've been trying to get these for ages now, a super deluxe, extravagantly packaged lp+7" reissue of the soundtrack to David Lynch's Eraserhead. They came, and went, and now it's apparently been repressed, but those are going fast too, limited to 1000 copies. We managed to get just ten, and aren't sure our supplier has any more now. So, if you want one, grab one quick before they're gone.
Before we get to the actual music though, it's probably best to come clean, and admit that the person writing this review (as well as at least a couple other people at aQ) has NEVER actually seen Eraserhead! A travesty we know, not sure how we managed to make it this far without seeing it, we always meant to, and we WILL, especially now that we've gotten an earful of this amazing soundtrack. Much more abstract and noisy, droney and minimal than we expected. The first few minutes, all blurred noise, and rumbling low end, a smeary bit of ambient drift that sounds like Organum or Lustmord. Sinister and a bit harrowing, eventually all sorts of subtle sounds enter the mix, distant calliope melodies, like from a carousel way off in the distance, fog horns, all smeared into the smudged grey thrum that oozes across side one. Eventually, that low end is dialed back, leaving more of that mysterious organ music, this time wreathed in an insectoid hum, like a sky full of crickets, laced with Raster Noton like glitches and clicks, having not seen the movie, but being of course familiar with much of the iconic imagery, these sounds seem like the perfect sonic accompaniment, the score is peppered with strange dialog, and swirling hissy swooshes, sinister swells of blackened thrum, keening feedback, muted into minimal melodies, the sound noisy and industrial, and almost like some weird field recording flecked experimental drone record you might hear on Type or Blackest Rainbow, all wreathed in a sort of otherworldly hazy, which gives the whole thing a creepy, darkly psychedelic vibe.
The flipside begins with what sounds like a field recording of a couple in bed, creaking springs, rustling covers, which is soon swallowed up by a huge wheezing wall of atonal chords and layered tones, all draped over the sounds of choking, driven by a strange percussive pound. A long stretch of hiss and hum, gives way to haunting church organ, then cavernous rumbles, the whole second half of the soundtrack a wild, noisy chaotic collage of dense drones and crumbling noise, of whirling wind and fractured melodies, lots of buzz and crunch, creak and howl, it sounds less like a soundtrack and more like some lost record by Nurse With Wound, or Psychic TV or Throbbing Gristle. Super rad, and even removed from the visuals, this is a killer slab of lo-fi musique concrete, abstract free form noise and post industrial dronescaping.
The bonus 7" features "In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song)", which is some gorgeously creepy organ driven balladry, with woozy falsetto vox and lots of warble and buzz; it sounds a little bit like a dronier, doomier Daniel Johnston, and there's even a little note on the sleeve about how this specific track came to be. The B-side is a never before release bonus track called "Pete's Boogie", which is anything but a boogie, instead it sounds like it oozed right off the soundtrack, all buried organ melodies, hissing shimmer, and wheezing looped rumbles, creepy and haunting and seriously freaky. Which pretty much describes the whole soundtrack, and yeah, we know, the whole movie as well.
The packaging is totally swank, with a thick black and white gatefold sleeve, the singe to housed in a heavy sleeve, both adorned with images from the film, inside a huge booklet with still more photos, as well as several photographic prints, AND a download code.
Super awesome, and again SUPER LIMITED. This is probably your last chance to snag one of these at a somewhat reasonable price. As they say, buy now, or cry later.
We hadn't even heard of this band until a handful of customers started mentioning them, so we figured we'd best check it out, and guess what? Turned out to be pretty fucking amazing. A huge slab of fuzzy shoegazey electronica-flecked dream pop. We've been listening to this nonstop since it came in. It's not really that new, but it's so good, we figured better late than never. Imagine the post rave swirl of the Orb, mix in the muted warmth of Boards Of Canada, the lalala Neu-worship of Stereolab, the catchy new wave of New Order, then wrap the whole thing in a thick shimmery distorted haze a la My Bloody Valentine and you'll be close. Now imagine that concoction as the soundtrack to the love scene in some super bizarre Anime. You know, the part where the girl is going into space because she can't live on earth because her tentacles keep killing cute little pandas, and her boyfriend is a giant panda, but they love each other so much her tears turn into jewels that the pandas can eat to make them invincible. It's that heartbreakingly good. This will totally hit the spot for electro geeks, shoegazers, pop kids, and everyone in between.
Wolfgang Voigt's palette of techno structuralism shifts ever so slightly, but apparently enough to warrant lots of different names (including Gas, Mike Ink, Wassermann, All, Studio One, Love Inc, etc). M:I:5 bubbles with off kilter synthetic syncopations phasing against the 'monophunktrax' (that's what Voigt calls it), a sort of monochromatic shuffle of unchanging techno drum kick throbs. Despite the omnipresent beat, Voigt's minimalist aesthetic doesn't seem to be going for the dance friendly experience, unless you can imagine dancing the night away to bleak and hypnotic blackness. Recommended.
One of our all time ambient drone favorites, available on vinyl for a super limited time.
We love noise. Not the face melting super nova amp destroying ear shredding noise of Merzbow and Wolf Eyes, although we do dig that too. No, we're in love with -noises-, the sounds of sound, from the warm whisper of nature,�the whoosh of the wind, the roar of the surf, the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs, to the clattery clang of industry, the roar of cars, the grind of machinery, the whir of air conditioning and and the thrum of vacuum cleaners, to the subtle sonic byproducts of sound reproduction and music making, the hiss of old cassette tapes, the warm warble of old 78's, the pops and crackle of lps, the digital glitch and fuzz of more modern musical malfunctions. On their own sure, we could listen to a symphony of frogs or the gentle hum of an air conditioner for hours, but preferably wrapped around some haunting otherworldly music, creating a glorious hybrid of subtle murky mystery.�
We've sung the praises of Philip Jeck and his creaking antique turntablescapes, the murky looped loveliness of William Basinski, the strange warm fuzzy pixelated guitarscapes of Fennesz, the dreamy electronic droneworlds of Tim Hecker, and most recently, the gorgeous post-rock dreampop haze of Swedish bedroom soundscaper Jasper TX. It's no coincidence that this record, the latest from Dutch sonic explorer (and former doom metal guitarist) Machinefabriek is on the same label as the Jasper TX. Both share a similar approach, burying gorgeous melancholy sounds beneath all manner of sonic disturbances and musical interference. After discovering the Jasper TX record, we looked a little deeper at the Lampse label and decided that we just may have found ourselves a new favorite label. Murky and pretty and fuzzy and so so so pretty. Everything we've heard so far. Instead of looking at Lampse as just the label, one can almost picture Lampse as the actual artist, and each release an epic track from some massive hours long murky muted masterpiece Each of those tracks dense with subtly varied parts and movements, each its own entity for sure, but at the same time one piece of a larger and indescribable puzzle.�
Where Jasper TX was deeply rooted in soft indie rock jangle and sleepy bedroom pop (albeit swathed in a thick cloak of blur and grit), Machinefabriek approaches the same sound from a slightly different direction, each piece a lengthy slowburn epic, brooding gradually building ambience, grandiose washes of sound, the cinematic dynamicism of Mogwai or Earth, filtered through the looped hypnosis of Basinski, pianos and guitars rendered as abstract sounds, smeared and swirled into buried minor key melodies and and slow shifting chunks of sonic mood music. Marijn is Machinefabriek's sonic travelogue of a journey through the abyss, a soundworld cloaked in fog and draped in constant darkness.��
Our first glimpse of the other side is a�gorgeous echoey world of record crackle and pop, of thick reverb and crunching creaking ambience.�
Like a beat up old record player stuck in the run out groove of an old 78, recorded at the bottom of an enormous cavern, eventually soft warm swells surface beneath the rainlike crackle, a mournful melody of delicate piano and whirring drone, the notes of the piano blown out so they distort and waver a bit like bad radio reception or some strange atmospheric interference. Some antique piano recital recorded on a wax cylinder and then broadcast from tiny blown out speakers in a huge empty warehouse, then broadcast over shortwave radio and finally heard through a battered pair of old headphones.�
The rest of the record, while not as obviously damaged (in terms of crackle and distortion and fuzz) is rife with sounds equally obscured and obfuscated, lilting lonely pianos and haunting music box melodies drift beneath some strange sonic murk, occasionally interrupted by strange crumbled digital interference and all manner of stuttery hiccuping glitch and skitter, as if some other piece of music is trying desperately to claw its way through. Eventually,�the distortion and audio damage recedes just enough to allow a simple piano motif to drift softly and subtly across a soundscape of barely there drone and hushed melody. From far off in the distance,�warm warbles and shimmering sheets of sparkling muted sound appear, glimmering softly, like the reflection of light in some undersea cavern, lit only by the glow of indirect sunlight, waves and ripples and strange patterns shiver and shimmy subtly. Then, a piano begins unfurling a funereal crawl, mournful and melancholy, before being�slowly enveloped by a digital swarm, a swirling dizzying drone, until it's almost like a blinding white wave of fuzz and hiss, but beneath it all, a sad melody still lurks, just an echo, a shadow, a warm rich whisper behind a blinding roar. The�final passage is a near 20 minute piano meditation, soft and smooth, notes drift and shimmer, simple but stately and sweetly sorrowful, nestled in a tangled bed of digital hiss, slowly swelling chordal hum and whispery keening� drones, all beneath a distant whir like some alien orchestra tuning up, the�soft cacophony building slowly into the thick wash of static and distortion slowly swallows the melody whole, until all that remains is a ghostly afterimage, a shimmery outline, a fuzzy faded memory...
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Angus MacLise was the original percussionist for the Velvet Underground (before quitting the band upon learning that they would be paid for a gig) and a member of the legendary trance / minimalist ensemble The Dream Syndicate with LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad, and John Cale. Recently his archival recordings have resurfaced as the Silbreeze collection "Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda," this vinyl only collection from Counter Culture Chronicles, and the indefinitely postponed Dream Syndicate release (courtesy of Table of the Elements). Distrubing trance music that drifts endlessly with gritty hurdy-gurdy (?) drones and the constant pitter-patter of tablas and small hand drums. This eponymous collection features the long out of print "Trance" single from Fierce, "The Joyouse Lake" flexi disc which featured an excerpt from 1965's "Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda," and the soundtrack to Ron Rice's 1964 film "Chumlum."
Originally released in 1997 on the now defunct Iris Light imprint out of England, Emotion Engramm was the final album from Maeror Tri - the haunting, post-industrial drone trio that was the precursor to the equally haunting, post-industrial drone DUO Troum. This record - more so than any of the other Maeror Tri albums - engaged the complex structures that Troum would later push through their interlocking, shadowy melodies and slow-motion, effects-heavy drone. At the same time, the concepts that went into Emotional Engramm are more closely related to the clinical psychological themes of the Maeror Tri albums Multiple Personality Disorder or Language Of Flames & Sound, as referenced by the titular engram (purposefully misspelled in the title), a Scientology term for a mental image embedded into the brain by any type of trauma - physical, emotional, psychic, or otherwise. Far from prescribing the teachings of Scientology, Maeror Tri uses that concept as a jumping off point in conjuring "resonance of control, impact, fortuity, the randomly instigated yet inedibly etched emotional memory: Kodak ghosts." It's easy to read particular passages within the frozen din of washed-out guitar noise, spectral melodies, tectonic bass rumblings, and metallic slashes of grim electronics as the seizures within the psyche that might get caught in an infinite loop for the inner-mind. Some of those images provide an emotional resonance that's deeply sad and full of despair, while others are enraged with a blackened hostility. As we mentioned, many of the ideas and strategies that went into this album continued to develop through Troum; but even so, this stands as one of the best albums that either Maeror Tri or Troum had produced.
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Almost entirely overlooked by 'post-rock' journalists for their fascination with industrial culture, Maeror Tri (now disbanded though Stefan and Martin have continued as Troum) have nevertheless constructed some of the most beautiful and simultaneously terrifying drone rock, complete with delicate melancholic melodies sublimated beneath glacial guitar washes. These tracks were culled from the backing tapes Maeror Tri performed with on their last European tour. Opens up a can of whup-ass on Windy & Carl and Labradford. A pretty limited piece of vinyl from Soleilmoon.
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The two Meditamentum collections stood as the 'best of' Maeror Tri's offerings culled from their numerous cassettes released from 1989-1996 at the tail end of the first wave of cassette culture as we know it; and these collections had in fact gone through a couple of different reissue iterations themselves eventually getting released through the seminal dark ambient label Manifold, some fifteen years ago. Of course, those are long out of print; now the Polish label Zoharum has brought all of the material from those anthologies into this double-disc set, with much nicer packaging and artwork than any of the previous versions. But the strength is still in the sounds produced by Maeror Tri, whose Stefan Knappe and Martin Glitsch continued as Troum after Maeror Tri disbanded in 1996. Melody and rhythm soon became parts of Troum's droned-out vocabulary, but these musical aspects were far more fleeting in the work Maeror Tri, which hinged on an abstraction of grim noises that have more in common with the formation of cold planets out of comet dust, iron ore and ice than the instrumentation of guitars, bass, synths, flutes, accordions, etc. Here, it is the thrumming reverb of inhospitable galactic forms colliding in deep space, rippling through time and the cosmos as an existential shot of raw nihilism. As such, the recordings of Maeror Tri have much more of an industrially tinged, thousand-yard stare, which is fully on display on Meditamentum. The cassettes from which this collection was drawn include Peak Experience, Somnia Et Expergisci, Ambient Dreams, Sensuum Mendacia, Sublimal Forces, Allianz, Hypnobasia, Venenum, Beauty Of Sadness, Archaid States, Ultimate Time, and a handful of tape comps. Yes, a few of these cassettes have enjoyed reissues themselves; but this collection makes for one of the best bodies of work that Maeror Tri has ever produced.
Maeror Tri was a legendary German post-industrial band that forged a mighty sound of corrosive, post-Industrial dronescaping throughout the '90s before moving onto the equally impressive drone-based project Troum. Myein was one of the first CDs for Maeror Tri, originally released by ND Records and housed in an unusual, oversized triangular sleeve. Now that this has been reissued through Waystyx, Myein enjoys a slightly less cumbersome, but no less appealing matte black, die-cut sleeve with a gold envelope housing the disc. Myein opens with a black cauldron of swarming guitar drones that steadily increases the atmospheric pressures over the course of the opening track before cracking in a burst of seething noise. Maeror Tri follows this with one of their more melodic interluded, extending a melancholic descending chord progression into a haunted mantra. The final entry on Myein finds Maeror Tri at their most sprawling, amorphous, and shadowy with an undulating ocean of dark dark drones littered with flanging sounds. We can only hope that Myein is the first of many reissues from Maeror Tri's hard to find back catalogue. Excellent!
During the past couple of weeks, there has been a deluge of reissued material from the German ensemble Maeror Tri, whose exceptional, post-Industrial dronemusik straddles the current obsession with the doom-laden atmospherics of Corrupted, SUNN O))), Earth, etc. and the sublime impressionism of Jonathan Coleclough and Mirror. The Beauty Of Sadness was one of the last cassettes that Maeror Tri released before calling it quits in 1996; and as one might be able to discern from the title, this record finds Maeror Tri shifting their drones away from their heavy, menacing bleakness and toward a transcendent etherealism. Out of the churning wash of sound from their dynamic use of reverb, delay, and flange effects boxes, Maeror Tri push through honest to goodness songs of hypnotically repetitive guitar chords, melodies, and harmonies, making The Beauty Of Sadness come across like a rough-hewn but equally effective version of My Bloody Valentine's bleary eyed monotone found on Loveless. For those familiar with the recent work of Troum (whose members were two-thirds of Maeror Tri), The Beauty Of Sadness is an obvious precursor to thier marvellous first chapter in the Tjukurrpa trilogy.
Limited to 200 copies each wrapped in a slipcover that fits (almost too) snugly over the jewel case. There's a good chance we won't be able to get more and if you happen to concern yourself with the collectability / condition of your cd's, we would urge to take care when removing the jewel case from the slip cover.
Since their early beginnings, the German guitar-drone ensemble Maeror Tri had a love affair with the 7" single that extended into their formation of the now seminal Drone Records series of 7" only releases. From 1993 to 1998, the trio released five singles on a handful of labels, condensing their ground zero ambience, post-industrial shadows, and subharmonic detonations into eight minute chunks. Cleverly packaged in a seven inch cover, this compilation from EE Tapes features four of those five singles, including the Physis 7" for Fool's Paradise, the Mystagogus 7" for Noise Museum, and their two releases on Ant-Zen, Exorbitant and Pleroma. Saltatrix, which was the first single that Maeror Tri produced for Drone Records, is the one missing single from the compilation; and that's only because Drone is planning on re-pressing that single sometime in the future.
The Physis single opens the album with a post-Neubauten bashing of tribal rhythms upon heaps of scrap metal which gets an accompaniment of looping feedback, static, hiss, and ominous throbbings. While better known for their bleak ambience, both Maeror Tri and their later incarnation Troum explored primitive rhythms within the guitar excursions from time to time. Mystagogus and Exorbitant delve into subterranean murk with deep, all-consuming heavy drones steeped in a gravel throated menace, often heard in recent days from naysayers SUNNO))) and Corrupted. The album ends with some of the best pieces that Maeror Tri or Troum have ever done from the Pleroma 10" which happened to be released after MT had already disbanded in 1996. It's a cauldron of low-end misery that brims forth with an ominous riff whose melody sheers through the isolationist pall of secrecy. Absolutely stunning! Considering that only 524 of these things exist, they (like the rest of the Maeror Tri catalogue) won't last long.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Some of the earliest work from this amazingly prolific German drone band, "Venenum" was originally released back in 1991 as a cassette on AudioTapes and now sees a super limited digital release. At this early stage in Maeror Tri's existence, the overstaturation of guitar, keyboard, and occasional Teutonic vocalising held much more of a post-industrial ambience than the trancedent darkness of their later work. Lumbering melodies and bleak passages of raw sound filter through tons of icy effects. Really great stuff.
Finally a long overdue, and totally necessary reissue of the first album from quintessential art-punk outfit Magazine. Howard Devoto founded the band in 1977, after parting ways with the Buzzcocks. Less than a year after the Sex Pistols exploded onto the world stage, Devoto recognized the problematic cliches of punk and sought to remedy the trad-rock banalities and the limitations of just being able to play a couple of chords. Real Life applies the energy of the punk rock that's full of piss and vinegar to the glammy dynamics of early Roxy Music and David Bowie. Surrounding Devoto were bassist Barry Adamson (later one of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds and accomplished solo artist in his own right) and John McGeoch (one of the longer serving guitarists for Siouxsie & The Banshees). The opening track "Definitive Gaze" defines what it means to be angular, with its catchy if choppy basslines, spryly jittery snare fills, and sci-fi synth leads punctuated by sneered vocals from Devoto. This track along with the two singles off the album - "Shot By Both Sides" and "The Light Pours Out Of Me" - mark three of the high water marks of what could be defined as post-punk. The album as a whole jerks itself between restless arm-flailing mania, tempestuous emotional outbursts, and melodic croons whose ghosts would eventually haunt the likes of Radiohead, Kaiser Chiefs, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs many many years later...
Perhaps the following situation may be a bit foreign to those of you who don't work in the music industry but we'd bet that some version of this happens to everybody now and again. Every once in a while, I (Jim) will meet somebody whose best friend is in a band or I'll re-acquaint with an old high-school or college pal who has recently discovered GarageBand; and inevitably the conversation sways to "Oh, you work at a record store? You should really check this record out! You'll love it." It's then that the misanthropist in me wishes I was wearing Andee's tUMULt t-shirt which elegantly proclaims, "I hate your band," as the music proffered inevitably falls between the twin pillars of musical mediocrity: Dave Matthews and Hootie & The Blowfish. Instead, there's usually a smile, a nod, and the non-critique, "oh, that sounds nice!" hoping the conversation will turn to other matters.
So when Ashis Mahapatra contacted me a while ago about his newfound love with digital synthesis, I was a bit nervous. Here's a genuinely great person who I hadn't been in touch with since college; fortunately, his record is FUCKING AWESOME, so I really didn't have to worry about dancing around the subject of a crappy record. Enough of that for a protracted introduction. Onto the meat of the record... Orange Of is an album that fans of Fennesz, Tim Hecker, and Keith Fullerton Whitman will drool over, densely packed with guitars blurred, fizzled, and refracted through the polygon abstractions of Max/MSP techniques. A beautiful shimmer of tapped guitar tones hovers above a thick pool of drone harmonics at the album's beginning, slipping and sliding through micro-glissandos before erupting in a dense Kevin Shield's explosion of narcotic distortion and tone-bending half-melodies. Mahapatra doesn't allow the computer to do too much of the talking for him, as he's certainly keen on grounding this album on the fundamentals of songwriting as swaying instrumental waltzes and elegant melodic phrases nestled in Mahapatra's vast oceans of post-shoegazing digitality. A highly recommended release from one code-slinging guitarist whose bound for great things.
It's been a very long time since Robert Hampson has released a Main album and an even longer time since he's produced a *great* Main album. Ablation changes that, although those who would be expecting the deconstructed hypno-rock of Motion Pool or Hydra-Calm will be disappointed; but those who had followed Hampson's trajectory starting with the last few Main records about a decade ago into spatialized electro-acoustics only to rediscover his infatuation with the drone which finally brought him back to the guitar as a principle instrument will certainly understand where this record is coming from. Hampson is still working at the storied GRM studios in Paris, and there is an infusion of the classic aesthetic of what came out of GRM within Ablation (notably Parmegiani and Ferrari), but at the same time he does link it back, if in a subtle way, to the mesmerism which girded the Main productions in the '90s. That said, any connections to his former group, Loop would be quite a stretch indeed.
On Ablation, Hampson has recruited Stefan Mathieu - a brilliant drone technician in his own right whom we've not heard from in ages - and the pairing works seamlessly, even as it clearly slants towards Hampson's vision of a cold disconnection dispensed in overlapping hissing layers and hypnotic patterns of abstracted sound. The percussive klank of a prepared piano on "I" is a bit of a red herring for what's found throughout Ablation especially on "II" and "III", is a series of slow ellipses of churning guitar drones and golden tonal coronas drifting with all of the uneasy beauty of an android's dream. The closing track "IV" bends along a radiophonic arc with ether crackle and metallic rasping and slow motion pixelations from a sharply rendered synth that forms the coda to the album. Organic. Liquid. Electric. Motorized. Bleak. Holy. All of those adjectives apply to this fantastic album. Welcome back, Main!
It always seemed a little odd that during the past couple of years, a series of unlikely remixes of Malaria! had been popping up from Sun Electric, Dr. Motte, Westbam, Chain Reaction's Moritz Von Oswald, and the reprehensible Chicks on Speed (all of this due
Malaria! is clearly dated from the early '80s and sometimes shows their age. But I'll take Malaria! over Le Tigre any day.
Is it right to call The Mallard's final album a swan song? Wouldn't a duck call be a better metaphor? Even for the charmingly weirdo, garage-pop label empire Castle Face, The Mallard were an odd bird in a flock that includes Thee Oh Sees, Warm Soda, and Blasted Canyons. Finding Meaning In Deference is only the band's second album and its release is a posthumous one, after the band's somewhat public demise in the spring of 2013. The minor-chord jangliness that The Mallard churns out is a weird amalgamation of a whole lot of Flying Nun bands, all of whom are wholly misremembered in a drunken / drugged-out / art-damaged haze. One can pick out bits of The 3Ds, The Pin Group, and Straightjacket Fits, but it's always deranged into a woozy, yet totally groovy swarm of psychedelically tainted gloom pop, or gloom filled psyche-pop if you wanna approach from the other direction. Frontwoman Greer McGettrick finds herself half-asleep and half-awake in monotone melodies she croons between the swaths of spring reverb and analogue delay, while the band behind her jangles and lurches through the slithery, narcotic reinventions of garage-pop tropes. On "Out The Door," McGettrick wakes up enough to climb up and down a sublimely simple lo-fi vibrato that grates against the creepily skeletal guitar chords and zombie-stutter rhythms. The playfully elliptical basslines of "The Communist" with its fucked-up, lo-fi low-pass filter sweeping makes for a particularly woozy number. It's almost fitting that they end the album with the extended drone-rock epic "Iceberg" where The Mallard cruises in a holding pattern of Parson Sound hypno-rhythms, only to plummet back from the sky in an extended tumble of gasping vocal mantras, thrumming basslines, and Velvety minimalist jangle. A perfectly aQuarius record of imperfect pop perfection.
Simply put, this is a beautiful album. Yes, it's a stark one, but its beauty is unquestionable. Mamiffer follows their 2015 collaboration with Daniel Menche with this grand statement of blizzard-drone distortion cast through hypnotic madrigals for voice and piano. Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner have been perfecting Mamiffer for some time now, with The World Unseen being their best album to date in part due to the cinematic scope of their production. These huge swaths of slow-burning drone, snowdrift stillness, and aggregated density are the stuff of an art-rock dream-date of Godspeed You Black Emperor covering Ride's "Vapour Trail" as a mesmer of icy minimalism and not of telescoped maximalism. Just check out the ear-candy chorale of "Mara" delivered by Coloccia, joined by a maudlin stream of strings amidst the guitar-drone heroics. The album's concluding trilogy "The Domestication Of The Ewe" tracks much darker territories of blackened ambience, ruptured distortion, and isolationist field recordings, breaking the harmonic spell of the songs from the front end of the album with harrowing results.
A big turn for Mr. Jacob Mandell, whose previous releases have been sort of stomping. "Underling" is filled with enigmatic slashes of electronic sound and digitally simulated tectonic rumbles make for album one would expect from Stilluppsteypa or John Duncan. This is the second in a 12 part series from Kodama. Very little information is given either about the record or for the series, but if this is an indication of what the future holds, things look quite interesting.
Beautiful calligraphic tones -- the result of a piano triggering six magnetic tapes, whose signals are displaced out-of-phase, reverberating quietly and slowly over empty space in this stunning piece by Marchetti -- dark and ominous. Along with some excessive liner notes (if you thought we could be long winded), there's an awsome photo of Walt on the back cover enjoying a martini at some dark hotel bar.
Woah. Here's another amazing set of archival recordings from the seminal No Wave quartet Mars! Back in 2012, the boutique Spanish label Anomia released a triple cassette box from the band's archives; and now we're getting a portion of the first cassette issued on vinyl care of Feeding Tube, with a whole bunch of extra material.
Mars is a band that really shouldn't need any introduction, as they were one of the four seminal No Wave outfits along with Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, James Chance & The Contortions, and DNA, featured on the No New York compilation from 1978. At the time of that compilation, the band had only issued one single, but they recorded furiously with enough material to warrant the 78 album released by Lydia Lunch in the late '80s and a couple of live recordings some 20+ years after the fact.
The band's origins date back to late 1978 when Connie Burg (aka Lucy Hamilton) and Cunningham met Sumner Crane and Nancy Arlen. Aside from Crane's ability to play the piano and Cunningham's school days with a trumpet, Mars was an entirely self-taught proposition, trying to learn the basics of rock'n'roll through their collective infatuation with the Velvet Underground. At that time, the band christened themselves China (a moniker later adopted by Burg). The switch from acoustic to electric (and from China to Mars) is described in Dylan-esque terms, along with the name change to Mars as well as introductions to Lydia Lunch and James Chance being instrumental in the development into a tour-de-force project of rhythmic dislocation and atonal distortion.
For the Mars completist, we should note that there a handful of tracks on the cassette boxset that are not found here, and vice versa. Nonetheless, this is an incredible historical document!
Here's the second release from Andrew Chalk's Marsfield project, even though these recordings date back to 2002 well before the 2010 release of The Towering Sky. At that time, Chalk was still engaged with the sublime Mirror collaboration with Christoph Heemann, producing a vast collection of impressionist drones that certainly set a gold standard for anyone looking to dive into the dronemuzik category. Enter Brendan Walls, an Australian ambient practitioner who also moonlights in the slugfuck-noise outfit the Menstruation Sisters (although there's nothing of the Sisters' scattered noise that enters any of the Marsfield recordings). Walls had released a few albums through Heemann's labels of vaporized hum and oceanic tonefloat, including a 2004 collaboration with Mr. Chalk on Three Poplars. Whatever the relationship of the collaboration between Chalk and Walls might have been, Three Sunsets Over Marsfield has the fingerprints of Andrew Chalk all over it: smeared texture into elongated drone and shimmering resonant tones coalescing into thrumming hypnosis. What is unique to Three Sunsets in relation to the Chalk catalogue, is that there is a peculiar backstory about a retired British soldier who had been able to receive and amplify radio transmissions through a metal plate in his skull. It's easy to imagine that Chalk and Walls set out to create a sublime piece of music, best suited for playback within the skull of an old soldier, sick of listening into whatever the BBC might be broadcasting. Chalk and Walls compact and compress numerous layers of psychedelically-bent guitar drones into a gorgeous, mid-frequency stream of flutter, shimmer, and mirage, not unlike what Chalk would later reprise on Shadows From The Album Skies. To say that this album is mesmerizing is undoubtedly an understatement!
Andrew Chalk vinyl is a rare commodity indeed, and Three Sunsets Over Marsfield is no exception, being printed in an edition of 300 copies in an extraordinary package of embossed metallic paper with an obi sporting the title in Japanese.
Marsfield is a project featuring the premier UK drone artist Andrew Chalk along side Vikki Jackman, Robin Barnes, and Brendan Walls. This collective recorded The Towering Sky back in 2005, only to see if released some five years later. Given the gap in recording to release, we have to wonder what else Mr. Chalk has buried in the vaults of his Faraway Press that one day might see the light of day.
The recordings reflect the strategies of David Jackman, who had employed the talents of a much younger Andrew Chalk many many moons ago in his Organum ensemble. The Marsfield participants have all gathered various pieces of resonant metal (maybe a large piece of sheet metal, maybe a long stringed instrument, probably a gong or two, and definitely a singing bowl or four) and extracted sustained textures, prolonged scrapes, deep bellowings, and elegantly warbled tones in a large reverberant room. With all of the room noise with its spectral echoing, damp reflections, and incidental ambience, the Marsfield sessions sound as if they could have been recorded in some abandoned factory somewhere in the Northeast of England. The first Isolde record that Chalk and Barnes had constructed a few years back is not all that dissimilar to The Towering Sky, with the first half of this record appearing as shape-shiting ghosts of corroded, droning haze, and shifting into the latter half of the record pocked with distant plucks and small hand bells that dissolve into field recordings of English rain showers. As with all of the Faraway Press titles, this is beautifully packaged; and as with all Andrew Chalk releases, this is very highly recommended.
Masstishaddhu's only album was released on United Daries back in 1988 and finally sees its long overdue cd reissue on Psychedelic Pig. Fronted by the hermetic Richard Rupenus (who also masterminded the noise scrape of The New Blockaders, the baffling Dada collages of The Mixed Band Philanthrophist, and the industrial rituals of Metgumbnerbone), Masstishaddhu is an entirely new vocabulary for Rupenus as he employs a healthy dose of Indian drones, deep transcendental chants, and bowed metal clatter. While references to the grizled malevolence of Organum or even some Nurse With Wound stuff may be appropriate, Masstishaddhu's dark, heavily opiated improvisations sit much closer to the American improv-damage of the Sun City Girls and No Neck Blues Band at their nost subtle. Jim has actually been looking for this album for several years now, and happily announces its return!
Just as Christian Fennesz transformed the canonical rock icons The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys into sublime electronica-glitch perfection, Stephan Mathieu has pillaged the 'public domain' archives of the 20th century to create his own
