Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
And Community Library have done a really nice job of it, the gatefold cd sleeve containing a thick 32 page cd booklet with elaborate colorful collage style liner notes by bandleader Scott "Dr. Tex Nology" Ryser, a Units manifesto of sorts, he also talks about the wild and crazy San Francisco of the '70s/early '80s era, and also there's several pages of old fliers for Units gigs at the Fab Mab and other SF punk venues... we noticed one for the Warfield too, with The Units opening for OMD and Gary Numan. Also shows with Romeo Void, Dead Boys, Soft Cell, Psychedelic Furs, Dead Kennedys, Crime, Screamers, Iggy Pop, the Police, Tuxedomoon... Definitely makes us young 'uns wish we'd been around in SF back then. (Another note about the packaging, it says copyright 2007 on the back but that that's a mistake, it's when the artwork was initially prepared, this is indeed a brand new 2009 release, with also a vinyl version upcoming as well, not sure when, though.)
This past Record Of The Week NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! There's fewer tracks than on the cd version, but at least the lp includes a download code to get mp3s of ALL of the tracks from the cd reissue. No booklet unfortunately (although it seems some of the booklet is reprinted on the cover), but there is an insert, with some liner notes, as well as an explanation for the song choice on both the cd and lp, the lack of the Units' major label material and the reasoning behind less songs on the lp. Regardless, totally essential, especially now that it's on vinyl. Here's what we said about it before:
Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
"400% Dynamite" is the fourth and undeniably the best in the series of Jamaican grooves as compiled by Soul Jazz Records. There's the dubbed out dancehall raggamuffin chants from Barrington Levy and Tenor Saw & Buju Bantu (whose cut "Ring The Alarm Quick" may inspire us to venture further into dancehall); the soulful rocksteady of Prince Buster and Toots & The Maytals; the classic early ska sounds of The Cimerons. Come to think of it, there's not a single track here which isn't fantastic. I don't even think we can say that about those universally loved Trojan compilations!
They don't make compilations like they used to; but this one from Elevator Bath is certainly an exception to that rule. A good percentage of the currently released compilations tend towards collections of impossible to find rarities (at best) or (at worst) a random assortment of tracks which never quite made it onto proper albums, so why not lump them all together on some disposable compilation with the good tracks just ending up on the iPod anyway. But there was a day when labels took the job of curating compilations very seriously with the artists rising to the task as well. One can think back to the Perspectives And Distortion comp from Cherry Red back in 1981, or the eccentric electronics on The Elephant Table Music Album, or those weird comps on United Dairies, or even 4AD's Lonely Is An Eyesore. Dare it be said that A Cleansing Ascension might be one of the few modern comps that even comes close to those seminal compilations of post-punk atmospherics and obscure experimentation.
Elevator Bath was birthed in Texas, although relocated to Seattle in 2004; and this compilation marks the 10th anniversary of the label, which has quietly and consistently released an excellent body of deep drone construction, damaged plunderphonic collage, sound ecological research, and even a few things which are down right sublime. The heavy hitters on A Cleansing Ascension are LAFMS ring-leader Tom Recchion and the globe trotting field recordist Francisco Lopez (operating here in a more musique concrete guise), with plenty of Aquarius favorites as well: Keith Berry, Adam Pacione, Matt Shoemaker, and aQ's own Jim Haynes. Shoemaker opens the album with a synthetic soaking of midrange din and drone immaculated sculpted in a blur of mottled hiss. Pacione, Keith Berry, and label boss Colin Andrew Sheffield conjure the more lush moments of Eno's Music For Airports with remarkable flare for restraint through their smoke & mirrors. Haynes does his best Organum impersonation with a cranky motor rumbling beneath a hallowed gasp of refined long-form tones. Rick Reed moves from a Delia Derbyshire squiggle into a deep reverberant belllow. The vastly under-published Dale Lloyd generates a thick rumble dappled with bristled electronics and distant Andrew Chalk-ish half melodies. James Eck Rippie turns toward a clank and clamor of found objects scraping across the patina of vinyl surface noise and Phillip Jeck stabs at turntable manipulation. Tom Recchion's maudlin lullaby reconstitutes haunted melodies of ye olde carnival into a beguiling conclusion to the compilation.
While each track is quite solid, the album also flows very well, with somber drones dominating the palette of sound although similar themes and complimentary sounds seem to return after small detours towards the heavy, the oblique, and the desolate. Highly recommended!
Chances are lots of us here at AQ are like you in that we can get a bit overly obsessed when we fall in love with something. Case in point: this mind melting electro-disco compilation from the new Troubleman Unlimited offshoot label Italians Do It Better. There are thousands of amazing records here in the store to listen to everyday yet we can't stop putting this on. Day after day and often multiple times during the day this always seems to find its way back to the cd player, making us feel like we're dancing on clouds, floating high in the sky, never to come down. Influenced by the best moments of early disco, Giorgio Moroder and the whole Italo-disco scene (of which the label name is a tip o' the hat to) this comp is a collection of tracks from 12"s, LP's and demos that have been pretty impossible to come by in these parts. Folks like Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, Professor Genius, and more have channeled their inner Moroder and captured that perfect late night dancing on air sensation after a long night of consumption and exertion, dancing your ass off, dressed to the nines and never wanting the party to end. Whether they're covering Kraftwerk or R.L. Crutchfield's Dark Day (a legendary and sadly obscure project by DNA co-founder!) or creating their own songs that fit perfectly into this after dark wonderland, all these artists have totally dialed into a sound and style that we find so irresistible. Where electro-clash was cold and calculated, these sounds channeling a heartfelt love of vintage disco have a seductive and sensual quality that's been making lots of us swoon. So highly recommended!
Along with Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records, William Bennett's Come Organisation was one of the seminal publishing entities for transgressive British art in the late '70s and early '80s, mostly for his own projects Come and Whitehouse, but also a few
For the Come album "I'm Jack," Bennett had worked with Foetus' Jim Thirwell to create two very odd pieces of primitive anti-punk. On one track Bennett took up the drums, with Thirlwell on guitar, electronics, and vocal duties; and the other track found the two switching yet performing similar pieces. Starting off with the sludgy guitar feedback that has since become the staple for bands like Earth, the Melvins, and Harvey Milk, Come sporadically drop in unstructured double kick drum beats before unleashing a belligerent feedback / synth noise.
Ilse Koch was the wife of the commandant at the Buchenwald concentration camp during Nazi era Germany, and had developed an unsavory fashion aesthetic of furnishing her lampshades with the skin from dead prisoners. Obviously the material from the Come Organisation compilation that is dedicated to her is certainly not for the squeamish. The anonymously produced tracks from Musique Concrete and Etat Brut both employ similar methods of media appropriation into bizarre collages with lots of Jim Jones references. But it is the Nurse With Wound track "Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree" that is the highlight to both "Fur Ilse Koch" and "Anthology 2" on which a little German girl pleads for her father accompanied by an ever intensifying psychoacoustically irritating high frequency drone. Very creepy. The MB tracks are also quite impressive, with his signature aesthetic of sinister electronic dirges that are continuously collapsing under the weight of an existential gloom.
Bennett indicated in the liner notes the possibility of reissuing "Fur Ilse Koch" at a later date, pretty much all that is missing from that compilation and these highlights are the shock tactic insertions of Nazi speeches, Manson gibberish, and the Japanese Imperial War anthem. The tracks featured here do well enough to frighten and horrify without such obvious references.
An impressive survey of the curatorial aesthetic from the Russian imprint Observatoire, which has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years with some great releases of cracked dronology and mangled field recordings. The concepts on Archaic Variations slant toward crude electro-acoustics, psychogeography, obsolete technologies, and improbable strategies all mapping out tactile soundfields with variable degrees of manipulation and deconstruction. The first handful of tracks (Emmanuel Mieville, Richard Garet, and Takanobu Noshino) are relatively hushed compositions of shadowy drones, distant vocalizations, and raw field recordings lending an air of clinical detachment. Chris Whitehead's elegaic piano and field recording piece addresses a rural British ceremony that dates back to the 12th Century, recalling the piano laced impressionism of Andrew Chalk and Cindytalk. The latter half of the disc tends toward claustrophobia and decay, introduced by none other than our own Jim Haynes, whose chainsaw drones and swarming radio bursts transmit through thickets of scabrous noise dialing up comparisons to Kevin Drumm's more noxious facets. The Russian artist Radioson maintains the shortwave theme with an paranoiac set of hypnotic melodies revolving around repeating beacon tones and gray masses of static. Gonna have to dig into this project more for sure. The compilation concludes on a very bleak note with a track from Francisco Meirino, the brilliant, if under-recognized electro-acoustic tactician here jettisoning razor-sharp errata of EMF interference across pierced feedback shards, and the finale from another Russian artist Dasein, compacting distorted synths and tortured vocals into a more nuanced take on the early Whitehouse / Ramleh axis. 300 copies, only.
A few years back, Minimal Wave offered some choice crate digging collections of nearly forgotten darkwave and post-punk electronics through their Lost Tapes and Found Tapes collections, highlighting the differences between the European and American models of underground new wave. Dark Entries produced this anthology in that same tradition, focusing even more tightly on the geography of the Bay Area. As Johnny Ray Huston so rightly points out in the liner notes, San Francisco in the '80s had its own unique crucible of local events that shaped the Bay Area's particular sound (e.g. the assassination of Harvey Milk, the growing AIDS epidemic and the fear surrounding the disease, etc.). While there's none of the art-damaged abstraction filtered from The Residents, Snakefinger, or Tuxedomoon in an obvious lineage to the artists featured here, BART (named after the subway that connects Oakland, Berkeley, and other parts of the East Bay to San Francisco) is a great collection of quirky minimal wave electronics, with a fair amount of unreleased material from obscurant Bay Area new wave bands.
Nomimal State opens the compilation and was from the suburban hamlet of Danville, recording this demo 1983 with a militantly uptempo drum machine and urgent synth lines. It's a track that easily fits next to the likes of The Units and Nervous Gender in terms of manic, punkish use of electronics. Speaking of The Units, they round out the compilation in contributing their sci-fi pop anthem "Mission," which is still bitchin' after all these years! Voice Farm is the other 'big name' to appear on this compilation, contributing a sinewy darkwave number from their 1982 album "The World We Live In." Batang State, Quiet Room, and Necropolis Of Love offer more Joy Division / Wire / Kraftwerk atmospheric post-punk number with considerable panache. The Wasp Women were a crossdressing trash-punk outfit, whose demo featured a wastoid lo-fi number and had appeared in the 1982 film "What Ever Happened To Susan Jane." Danny Boy & The Serious Party Gods offer a fabulously campy disco number with suitably over-the-top raunchy lyrics that ramble on and on against anthemic synths. If there's one track that you need to hear from this compilation it's this one! But the whole collection is very well done, and comes highly recommended as with everything that Dark Entries releases.
Basic Channel began in 1993 and produced nine 12" singles of hyperminimal techno, with very little information on the labels, very little of what information there was being easily legible, and no real marketing campaign to speak of. If anything, the Basic Channel duo of Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald seemed to propagate the mystery of anonymity behind their project, aggravating rumors that Basic Channel productions were based out of Detroit (and possibly by Mad Mike of Underground Resistance) rather than their native Berlin. By 1993, both Berlin and Detroit had formed an unusual axis through their mutual appreciation for the other's techno sound, so such a claim wasn't impossible; but over time, Ernestus and Von Oswald had to fess up to authoring these singles. Between then and now, Basic Channel (the label) re-emerged as Chain Reaction which released works outside of the Ernestus / Von Oswald collaboration; and Basic Channel (the ensemble) transformed into Rhythm & Sound for an equally hypnotic form of hyper-minimal dub. As such, Basic Channel became something of a godhead with the techno mythology. They promoted an aesthetic that always worked on the dancefloor but never dated, and always sounded adventurous without being too weird. In other words, Basic Channel made perfect techno.
In 1995, the duo released their first cd, consisting of exclusive edits and remixes from a handful of those 12" singles, mostly highlighting their abstracted ambience highjacking the 808 rhythmic underpinnings. Some 13 years later, Basic Channel has finally unleashed a collection of complete tracks from those nine singles! Despite the full 80 minutes of music you get on this disc, there are only 6 tracks (each track well over 10 minutes); hopefully leaving the door open for future compendiums. But the chosen tracks are all corkers. Throbbing techno 4/4 beats cut through the clouds of accumulated metallic hiss, reverb, and delay which have all been processed in accordance with the percolated patterns of acid house electricity. Often times, Ernestus and Von Oswald set their electronics in cruise control, just letting a small squiggling refrain and walloping beat run before they tweak their arsenal of filter banks or slide in a high-hat in the mix. It's breathtakingly hypnotic and endlessly propulsive.
Along with the Gas 4cd box, this Basic Channel compilation is an absolutely essential techno album.
A few weeks back, we listed the CD & DVD set of Berlin Super 80 with the caveat that the set was strictly limited, with a second edition of the DVD to be made available shortly. Well, now there's a double LP set, which will be the only way to get the musical program from that aforementioned CD & DVD set. Of course vinyl goes out of print pretty quickly too... Here's what we wrote earlier:
In the late '70s and early '80s, Berlin developed a caustic community of avant-punk musicians, filmmakers, artists, and hangers-on, whose aesthetics of alienation, angst, bewildered ecstacy, terminal revulsion, etc. were certainly impacted by the wall that seperated their city. Einsturzende Neubauten is clearly the most respected export from this community; but it could be argued that Neubauten (or any of the original members from that once close-knit community, for that matter) haven't quite the compulsion to make the magnificently explosive music as they did when the Berlin Wall was still standing. While likeminded bands such as Malaria!, Die Todliche Doris, and Sprung Aus Den Wolken have been served well by recent reissues of their work from that time period, much of the accompanying visual ephemera (film, performance, painting, photography, etc.) has rarely been seen outside of its original context, barring a few exhibitions in art-spaces and festivals.
Fortunately, Berlin Super 80 offers an extraordinary glimpse into the community of existential expressionists who erupted in Berlin during the late '70s and early '80s. Neubauten, Doris, Malaria, and Sprung Aus Den Wolken offer some of their quintessentially great pieces. YThe discovery of previously unknown (although not unreleased) tracks from Mona Mur, Mono/45 UPM, Kosmonautentraum, and Flucht nach Vorn with their propulsive death-disco grooves and skeletal synthesizes make Berlin Super 80 well worth the price of admission.
Be warned, the 2LP is LIMITED to only 1000 copies!
It's crass and laughably simple; but when done well, it's damn good. This is, of course, the current 'bootleg' phenomenon of plunderphonics which drops a hip-hop / top-40 club a capella track on top of a vastly different (but instantly recognizable) instrumental track, all the while perfectly matching both tracks' rhythms and sometimes harmonies. The origin of these culture jamming pisstakes can be traced back to the Evolutionary Control Committee's infamous "Whipped Cream Mixes" in which the a capella tracks from Public Enemy merge perfectly with the swingin' horn-y grooves of Herb Albert. The success of the ECC (aka Mark Gunderson) was principally based upon the lack of hi-tech gear, just two turntables and a mixer.
This import compilation - released on the anonymous No Label - features the current onslaught from likeminded DJs and MP3 wranglers lacing the vocals of one track with the instrumentals of another. While not all of the tracks on "The Best Bootlegs In The World Ever" live up to the compilation's name, about half of them do. The tracks that work best are the ones that manage to not only have the same rhythm, but also match chord progressions. The aforementioned ECC "Whipped Cream Mix" that spots PE's "Rebel Without A Pause" with the Tijuana Brass Band is simply perfect and is prominently featured on "The Best Bootlegs." Other gems include the Christina Aguilera / Strokes mix by Freelance Hellraiser, the Dead Kennedys / Destiny's Child mix by DJ French Bloke, the Girls On Top mix of TLC and Human League, the amazing fusion between The Cure's "Lovecats" and Missy Elliott's "One Minute Man" by Kurtis Rush, and the Sigur Ros / Celine Dion mix that justifies Aquarius' belief that Sigur Ros is nothing but Muzak fodder. Aside from a few duds and a couple more "Funk Soul Brothers" than were ever needed to sampled, this record is brilliant.
These have been really hard for us to track down, due to its odd popularity and its willfully underground distribution. So, when we run out of this... please don't be mad, we'll try to get more.
Indian film music is some of the craziest, catchiest, downright smile-inducing stuff you're ever going to hear. In recent years we've stocked a number of compilations, some better than others: the not-so-great "Bombay the Hard Way", the pretty great two volumes of "Doob Doob O'Rama", and our all-time favorite "Dance Raja Dance".
And now there's this one, another instant fave a la "Dance" and "Doob". Compiled by the same label which released the acclaimed "Untouchable Outcaste Beats" East-meets-West electronica compilation, "Bollywood Funk" is an excellent collection of Bollywood tracks which received no additional production or remixes. While the similar "Dance Raja Dance" album (again: highly recommended, we always carry it) perfectly encapsulates the late '70s / early '80s film music of India, this compilation goes back to the '60s and early '70s for a more psychedelic and groovier sound. Perfectly weird, often kick ass Indian film music. Highly recommended.
By the looks of the first two compilations that Chapter Music has released documenting the Australian post-punk scene, we (and probably a lot of other folks) could use a series history lessons into the finer points of Antipodean punk. Having unearthed two incendiary Primitive Calculators collections from that same time period, Chapter again strikes gold with a stunning collection of terminally obscure bands who were much more talented and intriguing than their lack of recognition might reflect. The only two bands that have even come across our radar are Severed Heads (but here with an incredibly primitive electronic sound and a female singer) and Microfilm (the amazing, Wire-esque dour post punk band fronted by Lisa Gerrand who later went on to form Dead Can Dance); but for everybody else, it's anybody's guess as to whatever became of them. Nonetheless, this comp confirms that the Australian take on post-punk agitation, no-wave convolutions and contortions, and new wave bleakness was as vibrant as what more well know scenes (i.e. New York, Berlin, London) had managed. As on the first comp (which featured a band called the Slugfuckers), volume 2 also sports a band with an incredible name: The Goat That Went "Om." Highly recommended
Just when you thought you'd heard everything, in comes Sublime Frequencies to fill in the gaps you never thought existed. How many CDs of Iraqi pop do you have in your collection? Until now we certainly didn't have any, let alone anything remotely traditional from Iraq. For a country that's so important to our war mongering presidential administration it's perhaps a little surprising that more interest hasn't been piqued about the culture of Iraq. But then again, everyone but W seems to understand that the real reasons for plundering this nation wasn't to "liberate" anyone. In fact, W would probably rather that no one even pay attention to any of this music, which has the awkward fortune to have been produced almost entirely (with the exception of three early 70's tracks) during the reign of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime ( tracks here range from 1980 on up to 2002!). In spite of his -- well deserved -- reputation as a cruel dictator, he was also an avid supporter of both education and the arts -- such are the complexities of life W would rather not acknowledge -- and for better or worse, kept the fabricated nation state as stable as it has ever been. Hussein promoted secular arts and music, starting cultural centers for both, and even dubbed singers the "eighth division" of the armed forces (his nation had seven military divisions) -- not to paint too rosy a picture of Donald Rumsfeld's former pal and business partner, who was also a sadistic tyrant after all. Compiled by Mark Gergis (I Remember Syria, Molam, Cambodian Cassette Archives), Choubi Choubi is a collection years in the making. Gergis scoured the earth for the source material on this disc, travelling through Syria, Europe and the Iraqi neighborhoods of Detroit, Michigan. The anthology starts off with a folk rock track from '70s Socialist singer Ja'afar Hassan, a song that could easily compete with the best psych tracks on Hava Narghile or Turkish Delights for the crown of Middle Eastern psych champ. But if you're expecting another psych compilation, you're going to be disappointed as Choubi Choubi is much more than that, way more. Most of the recordings on the album have no western instruments on them, nor hardly any western influence. These tracks rock out much harder with no electric instruments, but with huge string sections, pounding drums, and monstrous oud playing. Maybe it's also the super bluesy sounding (to the western ear) melodies, it's no wonder that it sounds so fresh and familiar to us. It really is weird, when I (Byram) first listened to this record I could have sworn there were more songs with electric guitars on it, but there aren't that many. It just sounds so fucking heavy, and rocks so hard that I remembered it as being a "rock" record. Really, really, really fucking great!
First off, anyone who bought the Minimal Wave Tapes compilation, another recent aQ Record Of The Week, is most definitely gonna want this too, another killer collection of, like the title says, Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics, a perfect part two, or companion, and fear not, the only overlap is one single band, who do appear on both comps, but with different tracks, so this is essentially an all new (old) collection of vintage coldwave dark synth sonics, which, if you're anything like us, and we're beginning to think you are, you can't get enough of.
It's pretty strange how cold / dark / new / synth wave have made such a huge comeback, bands like the Cure, Depeche Mode, Human League, Front 242, Soft Cell, are now cited as huge influences on a new breed of dark synth driven combos. Also funny considering something similar happened 8 or 9 years ago, when a rash of bands were exploring similar territory: Adult., The Faint, Fischerspooner, Erase Errata, etc. But music is definitely cyclical, and as a new generation discovers the treasures of the past, they start bands mining that past, and revist that past via reissues. The most recent issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian offers a mini primer on the difference between the various waves: darkwave was early industrial and goth rock, cold wave the French version of darkwave (as we first discovered on the amazing So Young But So Cold comp), Synth wave was like cold wave but more sparse and moody, and new wave, well everyone should know what that is by now.
Lately, it seems most folks make little distinction between the various waves, instead lumping them all together as cold wave, or minimal wave or whatever, since regardless of the variations, they definitely all share a similar sound and vibe, and speaking for ourselves at least, it's a sound we dig big time. But then most of us never really stopped digging that stuff to begin with. Lots of former goths here for sure. And every time we discovered a band exploring the sounds we dug so much back in the day, we went way out of our way to gush about them big time, like one of our 2009 Records Of The Week, from Soror Dolorosa, a black metal side project that sounded like some lost Joy Division jam, or rare cold wave antiquity, and more recently records by groups like Blank Dogs, who may not have grown up listening to this music, but if they didn't then must have had a super hip older brother.
But as was demonstrated on the Minimal Wave collection, there were tons of bands outside of the obvious above mentioned references, who were just as cool, if not cooler, the underground of a scene that for a while was very mainstream, on the Minimal Waves comp, it was Crash Course In Science, Tara Cross, Das Kabinette, Ohama, Das Ding, Martin Dupont, Deux, Bene Gessert, Turquoise Days, and others, a few of the more wave-informed folks here knew many of those bands, but to the rest of us, it was a revelation. So much amazing music, so many new groups. On this Cold Waves collection, it's Absolute Body Control, Ruth, The Neon Judgement, Stereo, The Vyllies, Days Of Sorrow, Land Of Giants, End Of Data, Eleven Pond, Ausgang Verboten, Nine Circles and more more more. And like before, a few groups we're familiar with, but a whole bunch of mysterious new names, all of which contribute killer tracks, and most definitely have us hankering for more from all of them.
The obvious ones, Ruth of course, a long time aQ favorite, whose track here also appeared on the out of print So Young But So Cold, sort of Kraftwerk meets Gary Numan, Linear Movement, who also had a track on the Minimal Wave comp, whose track here is awesome, catchy and swirly, with super hypnotic synth melodies and awesome vocals, groovy bass and that clipped new wave drum machine rhythm, Absolute Body Control, who recently received the deluxe Vinyl On Demand boxset treatment, with some awesomely gothy gloom pop, in fact, this collection sounds WAY poppier than the Minimal Wave collection, so much so, that almost all of these bands sound like they should have been right up there with Depeche Mode and the Human League.
Needless to say, this is another fantastic comp, with some incredible songs, and already has us hankering for volume 2!
Nice thick gatefold sleeve, tons of liner notes, and pix, also comes with a download card. CD coming soon too... ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
If there's one unifying theme or sonic characteristic present in all the music we love, even if it's not always obvious, it would surely have to be the 'drone'. Whether it's in lugubrious campfire crackle and hum, furious blasting black metal buzz, jagged fuzz and hiss drenched noisepop, skeletal slow motion low end ambience or motorik rhythmic hypno-rock, there is always the drone. Infusing each note with its pervasive sound, its palpable feel. A force as much as a sound. To be felt as much as heard. For us, the core, the heart of all music. The sound of the stars dying, the sound of planets being born, the sound of cells splitting, the sound of our bodies growing and decaying, the sound of life and especially death. Whether heard or felt, it is there, in, of and around all sound. Otherworldly and transcendent. Soothing and relaxing. But NOT easy listening. Not easy at all. The drone can be as bleak and foreboding as it is warm and soft, as moody and malefic as it is sweet and shimmery. Subtle for sure, but with a power and energy unlike any other sound in the universe.
So it would of course make perfect sense that we would be completely obsessed with a label, created for the sole purpose of recording and releasing dronemusic. A label appropriately named Drone Records. Run by Stefan Knappe of the group Troum (and formerly of the group Maeor Tri), Drone Records is a vinyl only label focusing on, in the label's words, "atmospheric music that has a certain 'mind-challenging' character, thus supporting the sensibility of the human senses. DRONE RECORDS RELEASES MUSIC FOR THE RIGHT SIDE OF YOUR BRAIN... music for the unconscious, irrational mind, creating an emotional communication without language." We couldn't have said it better ourselves. For the last 15 plus years, Drone has been releasing ultra-limited vinyl only ep's each one hand designed and assembled by the artist, and each one a gorgeous slab of unique and individualistic drone music.
This two disc set, released by our own Andee's tUMULt label, collects some of the best tracks from many of the earliest, long out of print 7"s and makes them available on cd for the first time ever. The artists featured include Maeror Tri, Alio Die, Dual, Ultra United, Delphium, Inade, Aube, Vance Orchestra, Osso Exotico, Klood, Vir, Reynols, Spear, Dronaement, Toy Bizarre, Tarkatak, Francisco Lopez, Kallabris, Yen Pox and Die Feinen Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim. Two discs, over two hours, a completely mesmerizing collection of droning drifting bliss. From barely there minimal ambience to thick clouds of whirring fuzz, to glistening expanses of ghost like melody. Essential for all drone lovers. And of course recommended for fans of Colelcough, Chalk, Aidan Baker, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Tiermes, Noisegate, William Basinski, Philip Jeck, and the whole current crop of minimal cd-r soundmakers.
While most of the music we love is in some way drone-y, these singles give us a chance to gaze upon the drone unadorned. Feel its warmth, its mystery, its sublime beauty. Like staring into the sun. Or into the void...
One of the most potent and pervasive sounds in the world, in our lives, our bodies, in music, the industrial world and in nature. All hail the drone...
Packaged in a gorgeous mini cd gatefold, with a fold out poster, liner notes on one side, reproductions of all the 7" covers on the other.
So gorgeous!
Thank God for the nerds! The Framework Seasonal series continues with an amazing set of archival recordings from the Derby Tape Recording Club and the Leicester Tape Recording Club. Yeah, you read that right. Tape Recording Clubs! These represented two regional clubs which operated in this little known phenomenon that reached a peak in the late '60s and early '70s with commercial grade technology becoming readily available. Many of these clubs would actually record onto reel-to-reel tape, organizing outings upon which the participants would pool resources in order to collect primitive field recordings of motorcycle races, the howler monkeys from the Paignton Zoo, bowling tournaments, a guided tour from a power turbine... and yeah, there's a recorded example of trainspotting with a young man reading off the line and make of a particular train to the heart of England. Many of these recordings show their age with lots of tape hiss, compressed frequencies, clunky hard-stop edits, and a few bits of blown-out microphone distortion; but, really when is that a criticism here at aQuarius? But the charms of these recordings are not just found in the patina of crackle and flutter; the documented sounds themselves are often accompanied by narration from the various club members. One of our favorite field recordings is the bicycle ride of Leicester's John Buckler, who huffs and puffs his way through traffic noting the fish and chips shop to his left and how out of shape he is from a two minute bike ride uphill. There's a couple extracts from the Derby club's Christmas Party including a spirited round of musical chairs; and another gem is the radio advertisement from the Derby club complete with Derbyshire-ish bleepity electronics and an earnest call to join the club. Library Music enthusiasts will be rapt with joy over these antiquated sounds! What a gem of an album!
As we've noted before, the proceeds from the Framework Seasonal discs go to support the Framework Radio series of broadcasts dedicated to field recordings and their use in composition. Hence, the price.
The Honest Jons label has lately been giving Dust to Digital a real run for its money, in terms of releasing those far flung old world global sounds that we have not been able to get enough of. After devouring the Victrola Favorites and Black Mirror comps on D2D, the gorgeous I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore LP on Mississippi records and Honest Jon's last foray into dislocation, Living is Hard, we couldn't help but get excited over Honest Jon's latest release of early twentieth century recordings from Baghdad. Pulled from the same EMI archives as the Living is Hard compilation, Give Me Love: The Brokenhearted of Baghdad gives a keenly focused view of the ethnically diverse musical output of Iraq when it was still a British mandated territory. Arab folk singers backed by Jewish dance bands, solo Kurdish violin excursions, nightclub bands with female singers who doubled as prostitutes, circular zorna improvisations on par with the most out-jazz out there. So unearthly,beautiful and emotionally urgent. For obvious reasons, this release couldn't be more timely, as continued forced occupancy in the region has created such intense division and strife that it's a wonder we'll see such beauty again. Heartbreaking!
Earlier in 2014, the multimedia artist John Davis presented an amazing series of expanded cinema at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, showcasing Bay Area artists whose work operate in the liminal regions between avant-garde composition and experimental filmmaking. The most visible and vocal proponent of such work is San Francisco's Paul Clipson, whose 8mm and 16mm films of in-camera edits & overlaid imagery have long been the visual accompaniments to the likes of Barn Owl, Grouper, Tarentel, Joshua Churchill, and Brendan Murray (just to name a few). Clipson's work was just one of many artists presented during the month-long festival that Davis curated, with this weighty object - two slabs of vinyl, a hefty book, and four dvd-rs each dedicated to one of four filmmakers - documenting a handful of the pieces that were exhibited / projected / performed during the festival. So, there are filmmakers Lawrence Jordan, Craig Baldwin, and Kerry Laitala joining Clipson on the video programs; and Tashi Wada, Maggi Payne, and Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken joining John Davis as the composers. There were far more notable artists whose work did not get covered in this compendium (e.g. Keith Evans, Beige, Mary Helena Clarke, Steve Dye, Andy Puls, and aQ's own Jim Haynes), meaning that there's more than enough material to warrant a second volume.
The two slabs of vinyl contain long-form tracks from each of the aforementioned composers, whose work corresponds to the soundtrack of the video programs, but these sounds are also designed to be listened to independent of the image, harboring an indeterminacy to the marriage of sound and image as well as its severance. Bellouin & Bracken are stalwart performers here in the Bay Area, who sadly have not released any of their work up until now. Overtones and harmonics from bowed metal rods, handcrafted glass harmonica, and subtly reinforced electronics offer an amazingly rich composition of melodic sound pools progressing at the pace of a late period Morton Feldman composition. Davis has released his own work through Root Strata and Students Of Decay over the years, with world-weary delicacies of sonic filigree suspended upon field recordings and cracked electronics. Here, he takes on the contemplative sequences of analog synth / library musics with fragments alluding to Susanne Ciani that darken over time through scratchy loops and radiant black drones. The iconic Bay Area minimalist Maggi Payne slips through her quiet hush by way of downpitched white noise into thrumming masses, Shepard tone glissandos, and ice-sharp textures. Tashi Wada's downtuning compositions for two violins resonating acoustically in near lockstep with each other is a perfect recapitulation of Tony Conrad's ideas behind Slapping Pythagoras. Brilliantly done by all of the composers!
We'll leave the video components alone for the time being; as Gravity Spells is strictly limited to 100 copies, many of which were sold at the festival itself. There's only a handful of these left. A true labor of love from John Davis, and it shows!
Wow. The London based Soul Jazz label does it again. They've already documented the global history of funk and soul in several astonishingly well-executed collections including the universally loved "100-500% Dynamite" series of Jamaican soul, rocksteady, and reggae; the Philadelphia Roots collection; the Nu Yorica albums; that ESG reissue, and even an Art Ensemble of Chicago album. Yet none of these albums has been as highly anticipated or so spot-on timely as this new one from Soul Jazz, "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm."
This compilation succeeds in encapsulating that heady time between the years 1978 and 1982, when the "second wave" of British punk bands found inspiration in both the musical and political power of reggae. As the situationist propaganda of Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols spawned a global theater of anarchist shock tactics, even such right-wing idiots as the skinhead, white power, and neo-Nazi parties dared to embrace punk's celebration of chaos. Thus, those (mostly white) musicians within the punk movement who were *opposed* to such unsavory politics stood in solidarity both politically and aesthetically with their black brothers in Jamaica. Incited by the offbeat attack of The Clash and the huge dub bass production from Public Image Limited, the late '70s punk movement began a vast exploration into possibilities of bridging dance music with the revolutionary anthems of punk.
While neither The Clash nor PIL are included in this compilation, "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm" does collect some of the best tracks from the huge vaults of post-punk, many of which might have gone forgotten had it not been for this album! Even 20 years after their initial releases, the bands here -- including Gang of Four, Cabaret Voltaire, 23 Skidoo, The Pop Group, A Certain Ratio, The Slits, This Heat, Human League and Throbbing Gristle -- still sound fresh, often melding choppy rhythms with angular slash-and-burn guitar, spit out vocals, rubbery bass, and nascent forms of electronica.
We'll say it again -- the music here is simply perfect -- the punk holds back dance music's tendency to get too mechanical 'n boring, while the dance elements impart melody and groove to the punk. Highlighting the compilation are A Certain Ratio's urgent amphetamine funk on "Shack Up" and "Knife Slits Water", melding the unlikely combination of Joy Division's grim urgency with a George Clinton funk arrrangement. Gang Of Four's "To Hell With Poverty" marks their transition from the agitated punk grooves found on their classic (but impossible to find) debut "Entertainment" into a smooth dancefloor-friendly attack punctuated by Marxist rhetoric. The Human League -- who are unfortunately best known for their chart topping new wave singles -- had incredibly adventurous beginnings on the often forgotten punk label Fast (also early home for The Mekons and Gang of Four). Their early offering "Being Boiled" is a primitive piece of spartan electronics loaded with theatrical tension and dark arpeggiations more expected from people like Coil and Throbbing Gristle (who contribute their perverse fascination with ABBA in the subversive aesthetics of "20 Jazz Funk Greats").
But, why is this compilation so short? Judging from how few people today remember or even have heard Section 25, Tunnelvision, DAF, or Fad Gadget, there's plenty more work for Soul Jazz to do in compiling more compilations of this sort! Not just recommended, this is *required* listening. Strongly recommended to any and all!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Strangely antique, yet highly appealing, the Laton Compilation is a collection of hypnotechno from Vienna's unusual often irony laden school of electronica. With contributions Pomassl, Alois Huber, M. Soellner, Auralbino, Proof, A. Burger, and Fon, the compilation is surprisingly consistant in its sound, paralleling the monophunktraction of the Voigt brothers / Cologne sound but with more new wave sounds than deep house elements for something resembling early 90s Sheffield bleep techno (Tricky Disco, TGT, LFO, Altern 8).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! This is a brilliant compilation of a lot of electronica outfits which are pretty obscure... Only V/VM and D'Archangelo are the really familiar artists here. Nonetheless, the tracks (which are mostly Italian in origin) share a similarity to Skam's or Rephlex's output of nu-skool electro and warped electronica. As a result we've been tracking down singles from A Credible Eye Witness, Phoenecia, and Vendor Refill.
In 2000, the Icelandic arts collective Kitchen Motors began organizing a series of monthly events which featured commissioned collaborations between artists from differing backgrounds. The first production is dominated by the presence of two of Iceland's most prolific experimental / electronic outfits Stilluppsteypa (who originate from Iceland but now live in the Netherlands) and
Altogether a conceptually rich compilation that has been executed to near perfection. Hopefully the first of many interesting things to come!
Several months back, a copy or two of this compilation of early '80s Germany new wave / post-punk / proto-electronica came in the shop with little or no fanfare. Yet each time I attempted to play this disc, somebody would immediately come up to the counter to ask two questions: "What is this?" followed by "Can I buy it?" Needless to say, the album must have done very well all across the globe, as it has only been recently that we've been able to get a hold of enough of these to list. With the notable exception of DAF, Der Plan, and Pyrolator, we've never come across any of these bands, much less heard of them. For the most part, this catalogue of terminally obscure groups have produced some exceptional tracks of synth-based, noir pop. Occasionally playful, but often seriously sterile, these songs often revolve around the Kraftwerk / Cluster axis of a futuristic synthesis of state of the art technology (well for 1980 with primitive sequencers and drum machines) and sci-fi leaning metaphors. Along with those aforementioned groups, New Deutsch features Weltklang, Neon, Grauzone, Gleitzeit, No More, Stratis, Christof Glowalla, Eiskalte Engel, Za Za, Keine Ahnung, Die Gesunden, Fehlfarfen, Blingaenger, and Die Hornissen.
Certainly for fans of Adult., I Am Spoonbender, Gary Numan, etc.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Oacis" -- an acronym for "Optics Acoustics Calculated In Seconds" -- documents the progress of the German collective Raster / Noton, which has been busily constructing works of utopian minimalism over the past five years. Raster / Noton rigorously applies the motto "less is more" to not only their post-techno productions, but also their intrinsically simple design aesthetic. This was exemplified by 1999's "20 to 2000 series," in which simple magnets connected a series of 12 clam shell cd cases to form what could be a model for a nanotechnist coil of energy distribution. This spindly construction perfectly housed the series's electronic minimalism, constructed out of the all mighty trio of digital synthesis -- the click, the ping, and the boom.
"Oacis" is a 100 page book with lots of articles expounding on the label's digital purity (including a rather poetic piece by The Wire's Rob Young), lots of live 'action' shots of Carsten Nicolai and Frank Bretschneider staring intently at their laptops, and of course an ultra-clean design. And in addition to all this lovely stuff to look at and to read, the accompanying cd is one of the best things to yet emerge from Raster.
This 3cd boxset is a fantastical document of parapsychological research throughout the 20th Century, with recordings of purported demonic possession, glossolalia, precognition, poltergeists, and the already well documented Electric Voice Phenomenon. The latter had been the subject of research by noted parapsychologists Raymond Cass and Freidrich Jurgensen, whose work was collected on several cds released on the Touch label, one of which was the AQ perennial favorite The Ghost Orchid. The first disc of this set focuses on voices spoken through a person, who may not be conscious of the spirits controlling their words. There are several examples of demon possessed children, and a particularly creepy recording of a spirit medium who has contacted those who died in a plane crash and weeping through the medium to "move on." The second disc concentrates on Xenoglossy (the articulation of a language not known to the speaker) and Glossolalia (also known as 'speaking in tongues'), with examples of an English girl who speaks in an arcane form of Egyptian. There's also a few examples of Aleister Crowley famously channeling the Enochian language which the 16th Century mystic John Dee had also been known to conjure up. The third disc documents the sounds left behind by the spirits themselves, including paranormal music (that which has been transcribed from a deceased composer into the hands of a receptive living musician), the rappings of poltergeists within the walls, and the aforementioned EVP. A good deal of these recordings suffer from poor recording qualities that exacerbate the mystery of these spirit communications. From a strictly aesthetic point of view, we have long extolled the virtues of scratchy 78s, tape hiss, and surface noise as a patina of remarkable beauty and sublime power. This rusted sound makes things seems haunted to begin with, and then add the recordings of demons, ghosts, and other spirits, and we've got one thoroughly creepy and amazing document.
Includes extensive liner notes in both German and English.
FINALLY!!! Hard to believe this thing is actually done considering how long and how seemingly cursed this project has been. Started almost 5 years ago to be released on AQ staffer Jim's now defunct Petrol label, then bequeathed 3 years ago to AQ staffer Andee to release on his tUMULt label where the lineup and concept went through many changes (possibly because what was begun as an homage to a song Jim really liked, had become a deconstruction of a song Andee really hates) and then an endless procession of waits, mastering, pressing, re-recording, battles with other labels over 'rights', as well as 4 different cover concepts that all had to be scrapped because they were seemingly too difficult for any printers to confidently take on. -sigh-
So here we are. Was it worth the wait? Obviously we think so. Look at the lineup, a veritable who's who of AQ favorites: Acid Mothers Temple, Circle, Hrvatski, James Plotkin, Kit Clayton, Loren Chasse, Troum, the Tape-beatles, Mieskuoro Huutajaat, Fennesz, and Stilluppsteypa. And that's just the cream. Lots of tracks were left off, according to Andee in order to avoid the spotty/uneven flow of most compilation/tribute/cover records. He even opted to leave off the Melt Banana track, which was a tough, but important choice, since the spazzy grind of their track disrupted the droning meditative, hypnotic flow of what is now less just a compilation of random tracks, more an epic and gorgeous hour of dreamy droney creepy blackness.
So what does it sound like? Well, while it does flow, and could perhaps pass itself off as a record by a single (quite eclectic) group, each track offers something unique, while still culling the sinister spirit and nihilistic 'rock' from the original (the inspiration for this comp). Finnish shouting choir Mieskuoro Huutajaat start things off with a brief, and shouted, acapaella version, in Finnish, and delivered with gusto! James Plotkin's Joy Of Disease turns it into a burbling, stuttering, electronic soundscape with hiccupping beats and backwards vocals. Somewhere between Boards Of Canada and Coil. Stilluppsteyppa took back their original track, a wash of glitchy yet melodic, musique concrete, and re-recorded/re-mixed it, removing most of the melody and adding even more space, resulting in a dark abyss of gorgeously perplexing minimalism. The Kit Clayton track is an ultra catchy, beat heavy SF glitch core workout, that obliterates the original melody but manages to keep the minor key tension and dark ambience. Ultra prolific Japanese space rockers Acid Mothers Temple turn the original into a wild pagan ritual, starting out with several minutes of Tsuyama's throaty chants, skipping nervously around that oh-so-familiar melody before the band stumbles in to join him for the remaining 10 minutes, with splattery percussion, freaked out reverb/retard guitar and squealing feedback. Hrvatski (aka Keith Whitman) claims that this Painted Black contribution is his favorite track that he's ever recorded and it's easy to see why: he actually sings, plays guitar, and weaves a thick wash of warm, langorous tones before it all crumbles beneath a speaker shredding cascade of sputtering drill and bass. Iowa's masters of plunderphonia, the Tape-Beatles use found sounds and actual lawsuit-baiting chunks of the original to create a tense and unnerving, noirish dreamscape, with disebodied screams, curious snippets of overheard conversations, and the sliced and diced original which all end up adding to the creepy vibe. German drone-sters Troum incorporate 'that' melody into a totally overpowering and molasses-thick drone, assembled from multiple tracks of guitar and accordion. The Fennesz track was previously released on an ep via Jim O'Rourke's Moikai label, and to us seems like Fennesz at his very best. Melodies and textures are spit out, stuttering and hiccupping from the cold, digital craw of the laptop, but somehow come out all warm and thick and coil around you like stuffed snakes and deliciously fragrant pipesmoke. Amazing. AQ faves Circle, do what they do best, taking the skeletal remains of the original, holding on to the barebones melody, and constructing a motorik, unwavering rhythm, that sounds like Tony Conrad and Faust's Outside The Dream Syndicate with just a little more melody and umph. And the record is finished off perfectly, spiralling slowly into 'black'ness, by AQ pal Loren Chasse (who as you probably already know is a pillar of the Jewelled Antler Collective, as well as a member of Thuja, the Blithe Suns, etc). He uses snippets of the original, slowed down hundreds of times until it is a lugubrious almost-melody, and contact mic-ed strobe lights to create a static-y, humming, nighttime dronescape, like a otherworldy forest, complete with clattery insect buzz and moaning winds in the ancient trees. An almost perfect compilation and an amazing gathering of some of our favorite artists doing some of their best work. Essential.
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Here's to persistence! Eric Blevins of Suitcase Records began curating Paper & Plastic, a compilation from the global experimental-noise-collage-drone-n-destroy underground back in 1991, and thought that he was coming to a conclusion by 1998 when he had organized an installation / happening / performance thing in Atlanta with Achim Wollscheid, Yeast Culture, TAC, and Blevins' own a4 project that was to coincide with the release of this 2cd set. Unfortunately, the mastering was done at the wrong speed (remember DATs?) and the project was shelved for well over a decade. Whatever the reason Blevins had for the long delay, it remains unstated. Surely the artwork that Abo of Yeast Culture provided must have caused some of that delay, which is pretty ridiculous / stupid / awesome with its numerous hand-painted, silkscreened, and hand-stamped inserts and envelopes stuffed in the oversized DVD clamshell (which is also screened and painted); but would it be realistic to say this would take a whole decade? Is this why Abo started up the Incubator press once again (remember those Yeast Culture and Small Cruel Party cassette reissues from early in 2010)? Who knows? Ultimately, this is just another long-winded introduction to inform you that the contents within are fucking great.
So, there's Small Cruel Party, Yeast Culture, Sudden Infant, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Emil Beaulieau, Native X (supposedly featuring the Hafler Trio's Andrew McKenzie), Inzekt, TAC, a4, Kapotte Muziek, Chop Shop, Agog, Ios Smolders, and what noise compilation wouldn't be complete without Merzbow.
The material is split between the relatively droned-out, more spatialized Paper disc and the volatile, jump-cut frenzy of the Plastic disc. Los Angeles home-taper Agog offers a NWW-styled collage of cut-ups from found object manipulation that slides nicely into the damp field recording of subterranean drips from Ios Smolders. Blevins' a4 track is a minor-masterpiece with a sustained drone of hazardous environmental rumbling girding a patient scrabbling of various objects. Very simple, but very compelling. Such a strategy had been perfected by Small Cruel Party, who turns in a recording of crunched textures that sounds like a macro-recording of and army of ants crawling over a pile of safety glass, while deep echoing booms within some huge concrete structure resonate underneath. The Yeast Culture meditation on industrial wastelands settles upon crusty flutes occasionally popping above a mechanical grind and accreting dinscapes. Chop Shop's corroded drones of noxious low-end bursting into ferric noise completes the first disc in exemplary fashion.
On the Plastic disc, Achim Wollscheid offers 10 miniature "brakes" most being just a couple seconds long. These shortened bursts of rasping noises, serve to further slice and decentralize the listening experience of the already abraded, punctured, infernal noises that come by way of numerous tape-cut ups, turntable abuse, Dada sound poetry, vocal screaming, electrical ruptures, shortwave static, distortion pedals, and generalized noise-junk from Emil Beaulieu, Merzbow, the Schimpfluch members, Kapotte Muziek, and the like. Blevins should be commended for curating such a fine noise album out of so many different artists, as it's virtually impossible to discern when the tracks begin and end. Seamlessly cut-up noise is definitely a contradiction, but definitely a compliment!
Contour Editions is a new label curated by New York based sound artist Richard Garet, whose tense grey drones had marked his very impressive Four Malleable 2cd set on And/OAR as well as an exceptional collaboration with Brendan Murray released back in 2009. The same technical rigor that Garet employs in his own compositions extends to this compilation of various artists working around the globe, including i8u (Canada), Christopher DeLaurenti (Seattle), Gil Sanson (Venezuela), and Brian Mackern & Gabriel Galli (Uruguay). Aside from DeLaurenti, whose phonography collection of orchestral intermissions has long been a favorite of ours, this compilation is an introduction to all of the artists present. Not a bad thing at all, considering how strong each contribution is.
Garet had charged these sound artists to consider the "evocation of the in-between immaterial spaces" - not quite the existential pursuit into nothingness, silence, or the void; but rather, the faintest of sounds brought close to the event horizon, the ghosts that tickle at the edge of perception, etc. Fortunately, none of the artists employ the clicks and cuts techniques which emerged from the Max/MSP crowd from the nascent days of the millennium. Sure, things are quiet and undoubtedly processed and/or produced by digital means.
i8u is the work of Canadian composer France Jobim, who's actually been around quite a while, producing all sorts of electronica-laced computer-driven compositions. Her track eschews all of the mid-range frequencies, instead splitting her attention between a deep rumbling low-end of a slightest pierced tones at the high-end. Despite the extremes of tonality, there's something rather lulling and enveloping about this piece almost achieving the same generative stasis that Thomas Koner produces. Christopher DeLaurenti presents two tracks of stone-faced slabs of grey noises looped and snapped into a darkened ambience. Gil Sanson's eight vignettes are open ended by design, with the composer encouraging the listener to hit shuffle on the cd player. These buzzes, drones, and smeared field recordings connect through a muted aesthetic of dreamy discomfort. The Mackern & Galli piece bristles with electrical static cracked upon a shortwave radio with Morse code blips streaming into the foreground and peculiar gestures of feedback sneaking throughout. Bits of radio transmission break through these disembodied elements, giving the piece the detached aesthetic which was endemic to The Conet Project and The Ghost Orchid, despite the very-hands on approach to this piece. All together, the album seamlessly flows from one track to the other, almost making it difficult to discern where one composition begins and another ends.
Hopefully, one of many good things to come from Mr. Garet's label. Oh yes, it's limited to 150 copies, too!
Now all Sublime Frequencies needs to release is an Iranian disc and we'll have big W's "axis of evil" covered. But seriously, of all the countries on the globe -- axis or no -- the biggest cultural blackout has to be North Korea. Assembled by Christiaan Virant from a variety of source material: shortwave radio intercepts, field recordings (recorded in stealth mode in North Korea) and CDs produced by the North Korean government. Virant recorded and or collected most of the tracks between 1995 and 1998, though some of the shortwave tracks were recorded in 2005. Listening to Radio Pyongyang it's hard not to imagine North Korea as being a big version of the Small World exibit at Disneyland. The my-way-or-the-highway solipsist cultural imagineering is something uncle Walt could certainly appreciate. As such, this album is stuffed with Soviet style choruses singing victorious sounding patriotic hymns supported by pounding polka-meets-house beats, and cheery children's choruses doing much the same. That shouldn't be much of a surprise, but there will be sudden breaks in the songs with eighties pop-rock power chords, think the Miami Vice theme, and then suddenly take a wide left into pastoral schmalzy pseudo-classical refrains (often with voice-overs extolling the greatness of the North Korean government and Kim Jong Il). We actually really really enjoyed this, but at the same time are glad we don't have to listen to this sort of stuff 24-7 like those poor folks in North Korea!
Compilations can be dodgy affairs, often half-baked ideas from compilers who can only garner throw away tracks from previous recordings. Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft of Touch Records have consistenty been the exception in their collections. The Touch Sampler series have long been outstanding compilations, and this new collection of work inspired by or directly influenced by church organs continues in this tradition. Harding lucidly explains in the liner notes that "the organ represents the marriage between acoustic complexity and ritualised space. It is impossible not to be drawn upward, towards the spire of the church or cathedral, or to the huge daunting forest of pipes themselves." On this compilation, the artists typically emphasize the transcendent expansiveness of sustained organ chords, in many ways emulating the polyphonic minimalism of Arvo Part's organ works. The track that best typifies the ideas behind Spire is that of BJ Nilsen, better known as Hazard. Having captured various recordings of Charles Matthews performing the psalms of Marcus Davidson on the organ at St. Mary's Church in Warwick, England, Nilsen processed these sounds with only multi-tracking, EQ, and volume at his disposal; thus, his track holds onto the rich tonalities of those church organs as he builds up to a majestic crescendo of overwhelming sound. Spire also features the first fruits of the collaboration between Sparklehorse and Fennesz (!), with Sparklehorse's drummer Scott Minor offering a smattering of mellotron and Wurlitzer samples for Fennesz to run through digital aesolization of bleary eyed distortion and fanciful detailing. Other contributors to Spire include Z'ev, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, Philip Jeck, Leif Elggren, Zephyr, Marcus Davidson, Finnbogi Petursson, Biosphere, Toshiya Tsunoda, Tom Recchion, Lary Seven / Jeff Peterson, Scott Taylor, Jacob Kirkegaard, Oren Ambarchi, and the ever amazing Chris Watson! Very highly recommended.
Another Finders Keepers / B-Music treat here, folks! A collection of kooky, creepy, very cool music from the films (many of them about vampires, and many of THOSE about sexy lesbian vampires!) by French underground auteur Jean Rollin, circa 1968-1979. The late Rollin has been proclaimed the "father of European Horrortica". On the freaky fringes of free jazz and psych rock, the tracks found here are the perfect accompaniment to the director's sexy, surreal cinematic phantasmagorias. And unless we're much mistaken, we recognize one of the tracks here, Acanthus' theme to "Le Frisson Des Vampires", as having been surreptitiously covered in heavier fashion by drugged-out doomlords (and horrotica fans) Electric Wizard on their Witchcult Today album!
Another one of note is Pierre Raph's aptly-titled "Gilda & Gunshots", a track of consisting of excited percussion, jazzy bass and pretty trumpet, overlaid with whipcrack-like gun shots, girlish whimpers and cries. It could almost be some noir-jazz experiment by the Boredoms. What the heck was happening in the film scene this scored, we don't know...
We could go on describing this track by track, but there are 31 cuts in all on this disc! With great titles like "Abstract Procession", "Bizarre Cult 2", "Crotch Batterie", "Crimson Gates", and "Violent Library", these vary widely and weirdly, encompassing spooky theremin-like tones, chamber music drones, somber choirs, flute-laced grooves, melodic reveries, arrhythmic interludes, all sorts of stuff. It's a real cornucopia of suspenseful strangeness and freeform avant-rockin'. Composers/performers responsible include the aforementioned Acanthus and Pierre Raph, along with many more by Phillipe D'Aram, Yvon Gerault, Francois Tusques and others. Much of this is previously unreleased. And of course Finders Keepers provides plentiful, fully illustrated liner notes in the cd booklet.
By the way, we also have a couple copies each of the soundtracks to Rollin's films Requiem Por Un Vampire (1972, composed by Pierre Raph) and Fascination (1979, Phillipe D'Aram) on import 10" vinyl, reissued by Finders Keepers as well (key tracks from which appear on this cd collection, naturally).
Lost Tapes, then Found Tapes, and now Hidden Tapes. As good as many of the reissues that Minimal Wave has released, it's their compilations that really shine. Here, those obscurant new wave / post punk obsessives offer a great collection of urgent synth blorp from all over the world and all dating from the early '80s. Very few of these tracks had much in the way of distribution or fanfare whatsoever, and that makes the discovery all the better. There's only a couple of the acts that we had any familiarity with, and we're probably not alone in that assessment. The opening number by SS-Say is one of the tracks we had heard, being featured on the cd reissue of the Pesteg Dreg album, as both bands were led by the Danish synth-mastermind Martin Hall. "Care" is a megawatt anthem of oversaturated synth lines and Euro-pop danceability that lusts after the New Order production of Blue Monday with more cocaine and dark theatricality tossed in for good measure. Every thing else on the compilation is considerably more understated in terms of production quality (and following the branding of 'minimal wave' all the more), with high caliber tracks offered on the Normal / Human League anxious bleep from the Yugoslavian project Oskarova Fobija and the insistent synth-chanting of Danton's Voice. The British duo Robert Lawrence and Mark Phillips take up a friendlier version of early SPK / Nocturnal Emissions monophunk sequencing with transistor radio vocals and speed-simulating circuitry. Things turn toward the ultra-minimal side with the bittersweet melodicism of The Fast Set and Reserve's proto-Italo disco number, sporting an icy vocal detachment that would make Johnny Jewel jealous. The cd features two bonus tracks not on the vinyl including Gary Allen's weird science sequencing and goofy lyricism that looks to Devo and Oingo Boingo. Another tip of the hat goes to Minimal Wave for this one!
A few months back we raved about the Primitive Calculators anthology which came out on Chapter Music. Thanks to that review, we were contacted by Denise Hilton who had been one of the electronic wizards in that seminal Australian synth punk and had some rare singles that she was willing to part with. I'm not sure why this is called "The Little Band" EP, as it doesn't say that anywhere on this super-rare 7," but supposedly that's the title. Anyway each of the four bands -- Too Fat To Fit Through The Door, Morpions, The Take, and Ronnie & The Rhythm Boys -- are side projects of the Primitive Calculators. whose synth-punk / no-wave axis of Suicide meets DNA is present in some, way, shape or form on all of the tracks. This is especially true on the Ronnie and The Rhythm Boys electrically shrill version of "Hey Joe," but The Take offers something a bit closer to Young Marble Giants with their delicately constructed number of perfect punk-pop. This is actually an original pressing from back in 1979 (with reconstructed covers since the originals succumbed to mold), and it's unlikely that we'll get any more copies.
Yay, also at last we have a bunch (well, maybe not for long) of this recent Record Of The Week on vinyl!!
Ooooh, so awesome! If you're familiar with Minimal Wave already, or if you're not, this is the thing to get.
The Minimal Wave label and website have been tremendous resources for discovering the hidden gems of synth punk, cold wave, Neue Deutsche Welle, and any of the darker strains of new wave that all blossomed throughout the early to mid '80s. While the label has released full album reissues (vinyl-only) from a number of forgotten men and women of the trade, the two comps that Minimal Wave has issued over the years - the Lost Tapes (documenting European artists) and the Found Tapes (culling from North America) - were absolutely stunning, without a dud amongst the many collected tracks. Unfortunately, those two comps were quite expensive and quite hard to come by. So when Minimal Wave and Stones Throw came together to release this comp, our initial reaction (and that of a few others walking in the shop) was that this compilation fused those Lost & Found Tapes together. Well, we were wrong as this highlights not only some of the best tracks from those compilations, but also the best tracks from the Minimal Wave reissue library, plus a few rare gems not readily available anywhere else.
The Belgian outfit Linear Movement (which later morphed into A Split Second) opens the compilation with a very cold dance number of disaffectedly cold Italo-disco rhythms and female vocals that would fit in with any given Johnny Jewel production for Italians Do It Better (e.g. Chromatics, Glass Candy, Desire, etc.). Crash Course In Science's "Flying Turns" re-emerged first on the Found Tapes and then on the totally awesome Vinyl On Demand anthology; and is an immediately catchy if darkly unique number of dot-dot-dash electro and spiky rhythms closer in spirit to the Units or Nervous Gender. Oppenheimer Analysis reprises a very Gary Numanoid track from their eponymous record which Minimal Wave reissued a while back. The Mark Lane track "Who's Really Listening" is another insistent proto-techno number of synthetic micro-blips driving handclap drum rhythms and Lane's Ultravox-ish vocals. Tara Cross was one of the few women tinkering around with electronics, and produced some beguiling arrhythmic structures with staccato synth punches and her drawn out vocal ambience. Turquoise Days may have been the only New Wave export of the Channel Islands, pulling out some jangling dissonance from their guitars to match the Modern English synth melodies. Minimal Wave reprises the Lost Tapes with a great track from Bene Gesserit, a project of bleakly alienated progressive electronics from Alain Neff who ran the Insane Music label. The Esplendor Geometrico track is curiously playful for a project that centered so much on dangerously mechanoid industrial grinding. Das Ding's "Reassurance Ritual" was designed for the dancefloor with a constant revolution of drum machine programming around tightly wound synth melody repetitions. Cryptic theatrics from the Martin Dupont ensemble appear on "Just Because" sounding a lot like a Fad Gadget B-side. And if the Deux track "Game & Performance" sounds familiar, it's because you've heard it on the BIPPP compilation which Ed Banger re-released a while back. The compilation is fleshed out with the best death disco groove that Das Kabinette ever mustered on their single "The Cabinet" which did come out on a Minimal Wave lp a while back.
Fantastic!!!!!
In the "found" sound "field" recording vein of Kathy McGinty, Daddy's Curses, or Petros Drecojecai's Mistaken Receptions comes Today's Voices. We weren't given much information about the collection other than that it is a super limited edition (ie: a buy now or cry later sort of thing) and that the contained herein recordings are all of cellular phone conversations that were picked up via scanner between 1997 and 2000 (apparently the advent of digital cellular phone technology has made such scanning of cellular phones impossible). Clocking in at just over 70 minutes, there's enough strange, absurd and disturbing material within to satisfy even the most thirsty voyeur. And probably more unnerving is that most of the tracks for some reason only contain one half of the conversant parties, which makes 'you' the listener feel more like a participant than a casual observer. This odd lack of a second party to the conversation brought several of us here to the conclusion that it was the silent participant recording their own conversations. But listening to the variety of calls perhaps calls that conclusion into question. Either way, we have not been given any further info. It may not come as a surprise that a goodly fifty percent of the tracks are sex related; be they the belligerent rantings of young men trying to impress(?) the ladies on a party-line by calling them minotaurs and threatening to call CYS on them, the tentative musings of a straight man exploring his sexuality, or a phone sex chat line first date (complete with climax). While some of the phone sex tracks may put to test even the most iron willed, there are respites of interesting slices of life that are both intriguing and beguiling. There's the two old black guys complaining about the youth of today being nothing but "Charlie's children", a coked up soccer mom rambling from gift baskets to reject fortune cookies in under two minutes, bizarre nuage philosophy & advice, incomprehensible noises and more! Comes packaged with silk-screened artwork that's made to look like it could be a Folkways record. Great! Upsetting! Or just greatly upsetting!
Compilations are not usually things that warrant strong recommendations. The constant colon-blow of "United States of Trance, Ambient, Jungle, Techno, Techhouse, House, Deep House, Speed Garage, Divas, and / or Gabba" compilations from the electronica marketing majors make anybody with a critical ear a little uncertain when picking up that next item from the compilation section.
However, Touch Records has now released 4 "Touch Samplers," all of them defying the usual ineptitude found on market glut of compilations.
"Touch 00" - the fourth in this series from Touch - is a curatorial masterpiece that was fashioned entirely from exclusive tracks. If you're not familiar with but curious to learn about the mimialist electronica subgenres included here, this comp is a wonderfully accessible place to start. Bookended with the subatomic particle warbles from Ryoji Ikeda and Mika Vainio, the undisclosed narrative of the compilation hits a number of crucial signposts with Thomas Brinkmann's downer monophunk grooves, Locust's halcyon electronica, Hazard's dronological investigations into the Swedish forests, Philip Jeck's beautiful collages of vinyl antiquity, and the whimsy of People Like Us / The Jet Black Hair People / Wobbly. Field recordings of scanned celphone calls, air traffic control announcements, and passages from Chris Watson's worldly adventures break up the musical proceedings, but forge emotive connections throughout the whole album.
We are all quite excited about the cd release of Turkish Delights comp (though Byram's a bit irked 'cause he bought the original vinyl and now is faced with a cd version that adds 11 extra tracks!). In total, there's 26 tracks here, dating from 1965 to 1971,
Along with the new cd version, we now have more copies of the "Turkish Delights" LP (which was so hard to get when it first came out that we only ever had a handful and were never able to list it). 15 tracks on this baby instead of the 26 on the cd, but what you lose in bonus cuts you gain in, uh, vinyl. And the art looks better, we think.
We're beginning to think, in addition to our biweekly Record(s) of the Week, we might just have to institute a Box Set of the Week. There's so many amazing reissues, so many collections of lost gems, we'd probably just make them Records of the Week proper if they weren't so expensive... this item is would be a good example. But you know what, screw it, for what you get, $45 bucks is not that much, a massive gorgeous book and two cds. So much amazing music, and fascinating graphics. Let's just do it. Record of the Week!!!
Alright. Feel better already. And it makes sense. If you're anything like us, and you sort of must be since you're reading the AQ list, this kind of HAD to be record of the week, everything we love, strange sounds from all over the world, dusty record crackle, tape hiss and vinyl warble, a beautiful music related object� A total slam dunk. And there's the fact that EVERYONE who works here has one or wants one. Dust-To-Digital are like the new Smithsonian Folkways, constantly unearthing sonic treasures and then assembling them into beautifully curated collections. And we just can't get enough.
There was the Goodbye, Babylon box, collecting classic gospel music, housed in a huge wooden box with raw cotton and a huge book, the Fonotone Records box, 5 cds and a huge book in a cigar box with a bottle opener, The Art Of Field Recording set, that WAS just like a continuation of the Smithsonian Folkways series, and assorted other single disc reissues, all meticulously researched, fantastically laid out, and packed with some of the most amazing sounds you'll ever hear.
But this new one, Victrola Favorites: Artifacts From Bygone Days, just might be our favorite yet. Not only is it an amazing and head spinningly varied collection of musics, from African folk to country yodeling to Cantonese Opera, big band jazz to Hawaiian guitar to rhythm and blues, music from all over, Burma, Japan, Greece, Thailand, Portugal, China, Egypt, but the design is fantastic, a cloth bound hard cover book, with almost NO text, what text here is thoughtfully sequestered at the very end of the book. Where most boxes are packed with notes and recording info, the bulk of this handsome book is made up of gorgeous archival images, 78 labels, old record tins, posters, pamphlets, old greyed photographs, mailing labels, instruction booklets, all sort of Victrola ephemera. It would be well worth it just as an art book. Makes you dread the oncoming MP3 takeover, what will future generations discover of our music, old busted hard drives? None of these cool old sleeves, decaying from years of moisture and insects, gorgeous little visual artifacts offering clues as to the music contained inside.
But of course it's NOT just a book, included are two cds, a collection of various recordings drawn from the ongoing Victrola Favorites project, masterminded by AQ faves the Climax Golden Twins. Where old 78s are played on a vintage Victrola, and recorded with a microphone placed in front of the Victrola, none of that digitizing and cleaning up the sound, removing pops and clicks, this is all about the experience of listening to old 78's, sitting in a darkened parlor, in a big overstuffed chair, the air alive with dust motes, gorgeously crackly and timeworn sounds washing over you. And listening to these tracks, it does in fact feel just like that, or alternately, it's like hopping on a sonic time machine and traveling all over the world, different places, different times, a modern day Folkways, hopping in and out of times to capture brief snippets of sound and then moving on. So fantastic. If you love the Sublime Frequencies releases, and the Secret Museum Of Mankind series, this is essential listening. And the amazing thing is that even with all of these disparate sounds and styles, as a whole the collection flows if not seamlessly, in a way that is oh so pleasing to the ears.
Korean bamboo flute solos, amazing and amazingly insane yodeling, a bit of Arabian country dance music, super dramatic Greek folk music, super festive jug band music, Japanese kabuki, dark droning Indian ragas, recordings of Big Ben and traffic sounds in the UK and so much more. It's almost overwhelming. But not enough to keep us from wishing that there were ten more discs of this stuff!
So absolutely recommended.
And the packaging. WOW. Like we mentioned before, a clothbound hardcover book. In either red or white, with a Japanese style obi, packed with the above mentioned images, the liner notes and essay left for the final few pages, the cds, are uniquely held inside the front and back cover, in circular cut outs, beneath which lurk drawings of silverfish, the bane of all 78 collectors, as they eat up the sleeves!!
V/VM was the first project that forced sonic hermit Leyland Kirby into the public eye, when he emerged as a giddy figurehead for the amphetamine-amped drill'n'bass that blossomed around the likes of Hrvatski, Aphex Twin, and Atari Teenage Riot in the late '90s. For all of the hype that surrounded him, Kirby's 'sound' was essentially, a purposefully aggravating, immature brand of cheap musical humor by turns, brutal, noisy, dumb and occasionally sort of genius, although it mostly tended toward the goofy - which included shameful plunderings of '80s dreck ballads, by running a Chris Deburgh or a Lionel Richie song through a ring modulator. Yeah, much of the V/VM material was ridiculous, puerile, and lots of times borderline unlistenable. But that sort of seemed like the point...
Not surprisingly, we avoided much of the early V/VM stuff, circa '90s and '00s; but those glimpses of genius, would later blossom into the sublime transcendent beauty of Kirby's Caretaker persona, and we were not alone in finding Kirby's work as The Caretaker thoroughly sublime, a stunning haunted ballroom approach to ambient composition through massive amounts of cathedral reverb and ample chorales of surface noise from antiquated '78s.
That said, The Death Of Rave project is perhaps the one body of work from V/VM that should most certainly be heard. And which maybe not surprisingly ran concurrent with some of the earlier explorations as The Caretaker, first being released online as a massive archive of over 200 dancefloor anthems being time-stretched and reworked into rave's anti-apotheosis. No rhythm, no release, no exhilaration, this was all grey sculpted noise and decommissioned electricity. This 'partial flashback' represents the best material from that unwieldy catalog which now seems to have vanished from the internet. (Long live the physical medium!) The Death Of Rave cultivates a slow, almost industrially-minded tension of granular electronic noise, with a sense of fictional memories similar to those created in Kirby's dilated 78 recontextualations as The Caretaker. Here, those would be the fabricated memories sought by Roy Batty and his fellow replicants in Blade Runner, flickering repetitions of pixels into dense networks of cold data that in another context would be a jacked-up acid track or a sensual deep-house groove. But here, it's poetically and poignantly vacant - a residual memory recoded as the empty warehouse itself, where a party once happened, with the floor covered in crushed plastic cups, two-day old vomit-n-beer, broken high-heels, and cigarette butts. And in the maudlin mind of Kirby, that's something quite beautiful.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It would be nice to think that after a long day of hammering shards of technotic minimalism from the handbuilt electronics of Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio sleeps next to these machines, operating them in his dreams, their toggles triggered in cybernetic response to the colorful pools of abtract imagery in his subconscious, while at the same time capturing the soothing comfort of a room being slept in at 4 in the morning. While such technology may be entirely out of reach (even for the talented circuit builders of Pan Sonic), Vainio's "Kajo" is a beautiful placid album of serial electrical events that could have been the result of such a sleep-composition. Very nice.
Kilo finds our man Mika Vainio returning to the rhythm and noise once again, and very few people have ever done that combination as successfully as this Finnish electronic artist. Vainio's career, as you probably know, began in the early '90s through the project Panasonic (which later had to be rechristened as Pan Sonic for obvious reasons), with slippery grids of pure-tone bleeps and clinical atmospheres haunted a swaggering techno that aligned in equal parts with Plastikman, Suicide, and Throbbing Gristle. The monumental 4cd set Kesto by Pan Sonic from 2004 marked one of the most exhaustive statements of experimental electronica EVER produced; and the resulting world tour led to the collapse of the Pan Sonic. Vainio remained steadfast in his solo productions since the demise of Pan Sonic, alternating his major albums between the rhythmic workouts and sleepless landscapes of drone-splattered electro-acoustics. Even on an off day, Vainio's rhythmic explorations are at the top of the heap... And on Kilo, Mika Vainio is in top form. His post-techno, breakbeat rhythms have always enjoyed a bad-ass swagger, and those grooves persist on Kilo through an industrial barrage of jackhammered sequencing, Martin Rev-esque pulsations, and cyclotron velocities spun from his analogue noiseboxes. Another very impressive album from Mr. Vainio!
Best known as half of the minimalist techno duo Pan Sonic with Ilpo Vaisainen, Mika Vainio has crafted a variety of electro-acoustic techniques that bare little resemblance to his contemporaries in glitched electronica. Marked as much by his use of space as by the quality of his abstraction of sound, Vainio's recordings under his given name even stand apart from his solo projects such as �, Tekonivel, and Philus. As Vainio, he has shed all of the intertwining rhythmic assualts found elsewhere, but continues to pursue a crystalline frigidity in his investigations of sound. "Sokeiden Maassa Yksisilmainen On Kuningas" (which translated from the Finnish as "In the Land of the Blind One-Eyed Is King") opens with a harsh blast of digitized noise that settles down into a ominous soundscape punctuated by a flanging bass pulse and distant isolationist drones. Smatterings of prolonged silence take up a considerable amount of time within Vainio's album, and provide parallels to the French attitudes of musique concrete (i.e. Lionel Marchetti, Luc Ferrari, etc.) But it's drones that give Vainio's work such dynamism and expressivity, at times standing in as sustained chords from a grimy organ and others as creepy swells of "Forbidden Planet" style electronics.
Recording as Locust back in the late '90s, Mark Van Hoen produced a signature post-IDM electronica that was sublime in mood but was fraught with overly complicated rhythms and portentous song cycles that weighed far too heavily on what might have developed into something on par with Biosphere or Bowery Electric. As a result, much of his output is immediately attractive but has failed to rise above the overwrought production he endlessly piled on to his sounds.
Fortunately, recently Van Hoen came upon an experimental tape piece he made at the precocious age of 13, when he was remastering some of his earlier tracks from the '90s. That archival track centered on a mashed-up banal pop song with garbled vocals and backwards recordings of church organs, creating something quite spooky and arresting. Van Hoen took the simplicity of that process to heart (but not the track itself, drat!), recording much of The Revenant Diary on a 4-track, which is pretty much unheard of in this day and age of Ableton. The results find Van Hoen at his absolute best, shorn of those implausible complexities which troubled his earlier recordings, rendering an album that should warrant plenty of comparisons to Demdike Stare as a very well executed piece of hauntological electronica.
The warbly, decaying drones from those 4-track levitate in an uneasy fashion at the beginning of the album, suffocating what was once a vigorous drill-n-bass workout into fizzling skitter amidst the shadow, grain, and hiss of "Garabndl X", leading into the hypnotic "Don't Look Back", whose looping female vocals intoning the track's title, orbit a strutting, dubbed-out, mid-tempo rhythm that wouldn't seem out of place on Tricky's Maxinquaye. "No Distance" glides two streams of reverberant ambience along a computer-mad sequencing as a meeting between Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II and Oneohtrix Point Never's Returnal. While all of this may be simple from Van Hoen's perspective, The Revenant Diary is a richly textured album that dynamically jumps from vertiginous ambient passages into throbbing, post-dubstep explorations of rhythm. Let's hope that Van Hoen keeps it this 'simple' for the next record!
San Francisco's The Vanishing proves that a Goth band with a female lead vocalist doesn't have to sound like Siouxsie & The Banshees (but it's not necessarily a bad thing if they do since several other AQ goth novices think this does indeed sound quite a bit like Siouxsie!). Not that I don't find Siouxsie's records quite good (especially "Juju" and "Kaleidoscope"), but the small Gothic resurgence that's paralleling the New Wave revival has mostly been mimicking the aloof theatrics of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Sisters Of Mercy, or Siouxsie, without really saying anything beyond their heroes. Fortunately, the trio of Jessie Trashed (formerly of the Subtonix), Brian Hock, and AQ's own Sadie Shaw (also of The Lies, The Husbands and the co-director of the 8mm indie-gore film "Charm") have developed a pretty unique (or referentially obscure) signature sound. The Vanishing builds an intense, dissonant gloom through monotonous, distorted basslines and Carnival of Souls' organs twisted into sinister melodies, all without any guitars. Jessie's haunted vocals have been treated with an eerie tremolo warble as a well-executed complement to The Vanishing's throbbing music. As Sadie has admitted to having never heard X-Mal Deutschland before, I can safely say that The Vanishing has unintentionally arrived at a Goth sound previously carved out by that oft-forgotten 4AD band. And that's fine by me!
Born from the grim, death disco of the Subtonix and the oppressive gloom rock of The Lies, The Vanishing are no strangers to the Goth aesthetic and manage to pull off the typically stilted genre with a considerable amount of panache. "Songs For Psychotic Children" is the debut album for The Vanishing, who at the time of this recording included the SF's reigning Goth queen Jesse Trashed, Brian Hock, and Aquarius' dearly departed (not dead, just moved on to a new job) sweetie-pie Sadie Shaw who recently left the band to pursue her garage band The Husbands. Rather than turn to portentous swan songs and plodding atmospherics like the kind often produced for Projekt or Cleopatra records, The Vanishing finds success almost entirely through the theatrical wailings and panicky screams of vocalist / bassist Jesse Trashed, who has developed a vocal style that's clearly in keeping with the traditions of Goth culture, but separate from icons like Siouxsie Sioux, Nina Hagen, and Danielle Dax. Driven by her expressive, intense voice and sinewy basslines, The Vanishing furthers their black clad references with Sadie's haunted carnvival organs which would not be out of place on the seminal "Carnival Of Souls" soundtrack and with Brian exhuming the propulsive rhythm sections of the forgotten Batcave bands: Sex Gang Children, Specimen, and The March Violets. "Songs For Psychotic Children" comes together flawlessly, and marks a very good start for this local band.
From the electro-schtick of Soft Pink Truth's rewiring of punk to the DFA's revisitation of the 99 Records catalogue with a artful sense of irony, we are living in an age that has glorified certain stylistic conceits of the '80s. In looking at these revisionist histories, you could get the impression that the '80s were in fact very cool and had none of the banal dreck of disposable major label pop that persists today. Where most of the '80s retro fascination has its tongue firmly planted in cheek, The Vanishing exhumes the whole bloated corpse of the '80s Goth community. There's not just a bunch of black clothes, clove cigarettes, and blood-red wine to go with The Vanishing's Goth revivalism; there's also Nik Fiend's pasty white make-up, smeared black eyeliner, and ripped fishnet stockings and Daniel Ash's insistence on throwing sax solos into Bauhaus songs. Yeah, the Vanishing do a great job of reclaiming this particular Goth sound from the '80s; but that's also their undoing, as the Vanishing aren't really interested in attempting to update this sound. If they are attempting to do on Still Lifes Are Failing, well then they haven't done a very good job. But if it's The Cure's Pornography and Xmal Deutschland's Fetisch that their going for, well that's another story. The Vanishing's spry death disco grooves and primitive synth lines builds a seering claustrophobia which in most instance is the evil little sister of the DFA cocaine beats. So The Vanishing can only really be recommended if you've got that streak of Goth that tickles you from time to time. But if Adult. and The Rapture aren't dark enough for you, then boy do we have a record for you!
Death & Unity With God was originally one of those tiny edition tape boxsets that Hospital Productions released at some point in 2014. Yes, those six cassettes sprawled across 20 tracks, of which only 12 were pressed onto the double vinyl edition that came and went earlier in 2015. But now, as promised, Modern Love delivers a complete package in the form of this triple cd set!
Vatican Shadow is, of course, Dominick Fernow - the man also behind Prurient and the Hospital Productions empire. Over the past three or four years, Fernow has shifted his focus almost entirely to toward Vatican Shadow, using a loose critique of religious indoctrination as the conceptual framework for his spare rhythmic exercises in crunchy Middle Eastern electro dervishes. The precursor of this work is obviously Muslimgauze; and the work on Death & Unity With God continues along this same trajectory, linking the distinctly American cult of personality catastrophes (Jim Jones, David Koresh, Timothy McVeigh) with the ideological endgames of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The political rhetoric of this work quickly wanes in the seductive power of Fernow's rhythms, and that may be the point. But more likely this disconnect recalls a common critique of Fernow's work as being thoroughly surface oriented with a armor-plated facades of masculinity, intellectualism, etc. covering up something that's hollow, missing, or lacking. This however is all thrown out the window when it comes to how good a producer Fernow can be, with Death & Unity With God being one of his most subtly dramatic pieces of modern day electronica. Bleak electrical chorales and dread-inducing rumblings haunt these 20 tracks that are girded upon slowly unfurling spare rhythms whose breakbeats slink with an desert-dry Arabic groove alternating with nocturnally muted techno, laced with arid dub echo, gothy whipcrack snares, and motorik noise hypnosis. The near 26-minute "Al Qaeda (Branch Davidian)" is one such track that never made its way onto wax and is a creeping exploration of slug-paced techno torpor which sounds like an exhumed Muslimgauze track intended for 45rpm played a 33. The depressive-electronics of "McVeigh Figures" pocked with gunshot echo and better-than-witch-house shadowiness make for some of most evocative and downright haunting that Fernow has ever created.
So fucking good, this one is!
Oh, how we waited for this album! The British quartet's eponymous album from 2011 had become a staple here at aQuarius, hitting all the right sweet spots of jangly, retro indie rock with super catchy girl/boy harmonies that fit perfectly next to old favorites like Unrest, Heavenly, Beat Happening, and whatever your particular favorite C86 band might have been. There was probably a stretch of time when it would be an anomaly if that album *wasn't* being played in the middle of a Saturday afternoon at aQ.
So, Waiting For Something To Happen is an album that undoubtedly has really big shoes to fill; and admittedly, the first couple of listens found us wondering what happened to the tension between the sourpuss punk and the giggly twee, which left us with such a warm and fuzzy feeling on that the first album. Instead, the band has settled into a melancholy jangle that pushes towards those brilliant arrangements John Squire penned on the first Stone Roses record (sans the Madchester grooviness, Veronica Falls still champion the VU minimal-motorik-mono beat) or maybe those tunes Vini Reily wrote for Morrissey's first solo record, proving to be a deft replacement for Johnny Marr. Veronica Falls may have pulled the tempo down a bit, but they are filling in the gaps with a few more baroque flourishes (like something close to a guitar solo, which was entirely absent on the first album); but seriously, do yourself a favor if you loved the first record, pick this up and give it a few spins to let the songs sink into your skull. You'll be rewarded mightily!
Pig fuck. Now there's a poetic way to describe the sound that a band makes. It's sort of a shame that the description had already been applied to the grit and snot of '80s NYC bands like Pussy Galore, Live Skull and even Lydia Lunch at times, as it's a perfect encapsulation of what San Francisco's Veronica Lipgloss & The Evil Eyes are doing in this day and age. That said, about half of the debut album from Veronica Lipgloss does sound an awful lot like the mid '80s Lydia Lunch album In Limbo co-written by a thoroughly drugged-out Thurston Moore doing his best Birthday Party impersonation (quite well in fact!). The other half of the album picks up the tempo considerably and addresses their death-disco fix on par with what fellow San Franciscan goth-revivalists The Vanishing did so well: spry post-punk rhythms laced with taut basslines, tortured female punk vocals (e.g. early Siouxsie, X-Mal Deutschland, The Slits, etc.), blood splattered saxophone leads (which lends to James Chance & The Contortions comparisons), and arpeggiated synths that Fisherspooner would be proud of. Imagine a dishevelled porn queen with thoroughly smeared mascara, torn fishnets, a rumbled cheap-ass platinum blonde wig, and a needle dangling pathetically from her arm, and that's Veronica Lipgloss. There's nothing pretty about her, but all of the egotistic turmoil, self-appointed abjection, and escapist transgressions can make for a compelling listen.
