MAMMAL Lonesome Drifter (Animal Disguise) cd 12.98
We never really ever dug Mammal that much. We wanted to, but it just never hit us. A sort of sub Wolf Eyes abject electronic brutality, not noise so much as noisy, very Midwestern, filthy, homebrewed... just typing that has us thinking, well why the fuck didn't we? That's the sort of stuff we'd write about a record we love. Well, now we are, writing that, about a record we love, and it's kind of weird that it's a Mammal record, but it definitely has us reconsidering our verdict on past Mammal releases because this one is an absolute killer. Some sort of electronic flecked nihilist loner doom. Or something. This is most definitely filthy, noisy, and homebrewed, a doomed abject outsider electronic folk record, but with crushing guitars and drum machine. If you're not sold already, there must be something very wrong with you, but what the heck, let's just keep going.
The opener "Repulsion" is utter minimal metallic brilliance. A simple, super processed rhythm, relentless and repetitive, beneath a similarly monochromatic downtuned guitar riff, that occasionally is joined by another even heavier, crumblingly distorted guitar. And that's it. It just loops endlessly, the riffs cycling through some barely there melody, it's more about texture and timbre and groove, it sounds like a super slow motion robotic instrumental My Dad Is Dead, or even a little like Big Black at 16 rpm. It's totally gorgeous in its spare simplicity, and it somehow manages to convey all sorts of emotion through a single riff and a single rhythm. And as we've said about other tracks in the past, as far as we're concerned, that track could have been an hour long and been the only track on the record.
But the record's not instrumental, in fact most of the songs have vocals, a sort of mumbled deadpan drawl, the lyrics, super personal and intimate, a sort of abstract downer folk, the guitar wrapped delicately around the vocals, except for the inevitable crumbling doom guitar that comes in to drape a little filth and misery on the proceedings.
The rest of the record is a slow sick crawl, the drum machine spitting out a simple somehow stumbling beat, over slow corrosive swells of guitar, the vocals more like shadows, some of the songs are so skeletal they almost seem like sketches, which only serves to make them seem that much more fragile and intimate. The misleadingly named "Incinerator Ballad" is a 4 minute burst of white noise wrapped around a churning industrial pulse, a wall of hiss and static and blown out distortion, followed by the whispered buzz of "Lower Depths", a stretched out soundscape of tinny distorted guitar, detuned chords, whooshing ambience, and more stoned crooning. The record closes with the 15+ minute "Cremation", a gorgeous and super intense, super creepy synthscape, the synth buzzing and warbling, minor key melodies spread out into slabs of murky buzz, while way off in the distance, bits of guitar streak and soar, a psychedelic light show, barely visible against the grey sky of dusk, the synth eventually locking into a loop, and suddenly the sound is some fucked up lo-fi Tangerine Dream, but performed on thrift store keyboards and recorded on a microcassette recorder, eventually fading out, leaving just the sounds of night, crickets, other insects, wind, distant trains, mysterious voices, and single guitar, still moaning way off in the distance...
Absolutely unexpected and totally gorgeous. Features amazing and super intense black and white pencilled artwork by the Mammal himself.
So so so utterly recommended. Definite contender for record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Repulsion"
MPEG Stream: "Fatherlands"
MPEG Stream: "Cremation"

MAMMAL Lonesome Drifter (Animal Disguise) lp 23.00
We never really ever dug Mammal that much. We wanted to, but it just never hit us. A sort of sub Wolf Eyes abject electronic brutality, not noise so much as noisy, very Midwestern, filthy, homebrewed... just typing that has us thinking, well why the fuck didn't we? That's the sort of stuff we'd write about a record we love. Well, now we are, writing that, about a record we love, and it's kind of weird that it's a Mammal record, but it definitely has us reconsidering our verdict on past Mammal releases because this one is an absolute killer. Some sort of electronic flecked nihilist loner doom. Or something. This is most definitely filthy, noisy, and homebrewed, a doomed abject outsider electronic folk record, but with crushing guitars and drum machine. If you're not sold already, there must be something very wrong with you, but what the heck, let's just keep going.
The opener "Repulsion" is utter minimal metallic brilliance. A simple, super processed rhythm, relentless and repetitive, beneath a similarly monochromatic downtuned guitar riff, that occasionally is joined by another even heavier, crumblingly distorted guitar. And that's it. It just loops endlessly, the riffs cycling through some barely there melody, it's more about texture and timbre and groove, it sounds like a super slow motion robotic instrumental My Dad Is Dead, or even a little like Big Black at 16 rpm. It's totally gorgeous in its spare simplicity, and it somehow manages to convey all sorts of emotion through a single riff and a single rhythm. And as we've said about other tracks in the past, as far as we're concerned, that track could have been an hour long and been the only track on the record.
But the record's not instrumental, in fact most of the songs have vocals, a sort of mumbled deadpan drawl, the lyrics, super personal and intimate, a sort of abstract downer folk, the guitar wrapped delicately around the vocals, except for the inevitable crumbling doom guitar that comes in to drape a little filth and misery on the proceedings.
The rest of the record is a slow sick crawl, the drum machine spitting out a simple somehow stumbling beat, over slow corrosive swells of guitar, the vocals more like shadows, some of the songs are so skeletal they almost seem like sketches, which only serves to make them seem that much more fragile and intimate. The misleadingly named "Incinerator Ballad" is a 4 minute burst of white noise wrapped around a churning industrial pulse, a wall of hiss and static and blown out distortion, followed by the whispered buzz of "Lower Depths", a stretched out soundscape of tinny distorted guitar, detuned chords, whooshing ambience, and more stoned crooning. The record closes with the 15+ minute "Cremation", a gorgeous and super intense, super creepy synthscape, the synth buzzing and warbling, minor key melodies spread out into slabs of murky buzz, while way off in the distance, bits of guitar streak and soar, a psychedelic light show, barely visible against the grey sky of dusk, the synth eventually locking into a loop, and suddenly the sound is some fucked up lo-fi Tangerine Dream, but performed on thrift store keyboards and recorded on a microcassette recorder, eventually fading out, leaving just the sounds of night, crickets, other insects, wind, distant trains, mysterious voices, and single guitar, still moaning way off in the distance...
Absolutely unexpected and totally gorgeous. Features amazing and super intense black and white pencilled artwork by the Mammal himself.
So so so utterly recommended. Definite contender for record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Repulsion"
MPEG Stream: "Fatherlands"
MPEG Stream: "Cremation"

REVERIES, THE Live In Bologna (Rat-Drifting) cd 14.98
Like some dusty old 78, left in the basement for 20 or 30 years, wet and warped, gritty and scratched up, thrown onto the ol' Victrola as is, and allowed to unfurl a warped and warbly, rickety detuned slow motion blues crawl. That's exactly what this latest disc from the Reveries sounds like. Recorded live in Italy in 2004, the Reveries, fronted by Eric Chenaux (who for those of you up on your nineties indie math rock, fronted Toronto's godlike Phleg Camp), magically create this sound from another time. But there's more to it than that, the sound is strangely damaged, alien even, and for good reason. The band employ a technique as bizarre as it is brilliant. Each player, in addition to wielding guitar, harmonica, bass, saw, nose-flute and thumb-reeds (!?), holds a tiny cell phone speaker IN THEIR MOUTHS!!! WHILE THEY PLAY!! OR EVEN SING!! So each of the instruments is sent first to the speaker in the mouth of another player, who much like a Jew's harp, is able to shape and warp the sound with the shape of his mouth. So you're hearing guitar come out of the bass players mouth, the bass coming out of the guitar player's mouth, the flute through another player's mouth, and on and on...
Then there's the singing, which all three members do, and as you might imagine, it's pretty difficult to sing with a speaker in your mouth, and a speaker cable trailing out of your mouth to an amp or a bandmate's mouth. The result is a mumbled and warbly, mush mouthed drawl, fuzzy falsettos, a garbled croon, often sounding like a toothless old Nina Simone, but just as often, like some strange buzzing growl, perfectly complimenting the band's detuned twang flecked scrawl.
It's almost like the Starfuckers playing Django Reinhardt at 16 rpm, with a countrified Derek Bailey on guitar. Cracking, wheezing and skeletal, a demented yet lovely underwater slow motion Western Swing, plenty of downtuned buzz, scraping and shuffling, whispering and whistling, seasick and gorgeously woozy. There are stretches of garbled instrumental chaos here and there, but the majority of the set is spent slithering and shimmering, meandering drunkenly through some strange sonic haze, an old timey radio broadcast, from some strange musical alternate reality, bits of classic blues and jazz muted and smeared pulled apart and tangled up into haunting and perplexing shapes. So gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "You've Changed"
MPEG Stream: "Gone With The Wind"

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AMBARCHI, OREN Pendulum's Embrace (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Space... tones... space. A bass note now and again, and whispering hissssss. A guitar string plucked, muffled by effects, droning into silence. And repeat. Doom paced (as per much on the Southern Lord label, home to SUNNO))) after all), but not "heavy" like doom metal. Talk about slooooooooooooooow though. Soporific this is, in a nice nice dreamy way. Warm and pretty and so, so sad sounding. There's three long tracks here that do indeed wrap you in their embrace, and proceed with the reassuring steadiness of a pendulum's swing. Aussie experimentalist Oren Ambarchi (known for many collaborations, projects, and solo albums, including 2004's wonderful Grapes From The Estate to which this is perhaps offered as sequel) utilizes sounds both fragile and foreboding, from instrumentation including glass harmonica, bells, piano, percussion, and of course guitars. The opening track "Fever, A Warm Poison" sleepwalks glacially, as per the first few sentences of this review. Ambarchi orchestrates the swell of strings, or what could be an accordion's wheeze, into this album's soundworld on the second track, "Inamorata". Utterly gentle & melancholic. As is the 17 minute finale, "Trailing Moss In Mystic Glow", which while blissfully relaxed, might be the "busiest" track of the disc on account of the presence of some quiet, spectral vocals, indistinct but still a suggestion of songiness towards the end of the piece. The guitar melodies are denser here, and there's a hint of glitch. It's gorgeous at any rate. This cd should appeal to fans of Earth's Hex, and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, and even Boris's gentler moments, as if held under a microscope, volume hushed. Also this very list, we've reviewed the new release from another Ambarchi act, Sun. This could be that Sun album, left out to melt in the (actual) sun, to droop and drip, pooling into a limpid, low-key loveliness...
MPEG Stream: "Fever, A Warm Poison"
MPEG Stream: "Trailing Moss In Mystic Glow"

ANENZEPHALIA Ephemeral Dawn (Tesco) cd 17.98
It's pretty difficult to avoid being forever obsessed with a band whose debut record we described as "quite possibly one of the scariest records we have ever heard." And we weren't kidding. We were barely even engaging in hyperbole. Noehaem by Anenzephalia is literally a collection of sounds as terrifying as is physically possible. The sonic representation of utter horror and hopelessness. But beautiful and entrancing in its absolute musical negativity. And thus we haven't avoided it, not in the least. We have remained obsessed. Waiting patiently for some new transmission from whatever hellish pit this band or person called Anenzephalia calls home. And finally our patience has been rewarded.
Not a new record, but archival recordings from 1992-1995, but just as gorgeously malevolent and hatefully dark as the records proper. For those of you who have yet to bear witness to the bleak abject sonic doom of Anenzephalia's Noehaem record, or either of the other two full lengths we've reviewed here in the past, the liner notes to Ephemeral Dawn should definitely set the tone:
Here the Dream Dies!
Dominated by obsession of power and lust, led by unwritten rules from clinical birth to clinical death.
Ask the epithet of God! It still is deception.
No ideology, no progress;
NO THING.
The world smothered in absurdity.
Then how about the booklet of photos, a crucifix, Sadam Hussein, a decomposed skull, a man being set on fire, the same crucifix invertedŠ as visually dark and creepy as the music inside.
And the music inside is indeed gloriously insidious. A world of crawling pitch black drones, of smeared slabs of grinding industrial whir, of disembodied voices, clouds of hiss, bits of warble and muted chimes, weird grit and abstract distortion, dense fields of clanging clattery machinery, machinelike rhythms, thick swarms of insect like static, robotic vocals, crumbling distorted melodies, murky black pools of delay drenched sound fragments, collaged voices and melodies, all churned into an unrecognizable black mass (pun intended), viscous and caustic, slow moving and glacialŠ
Black ambience is probably the neatest descriptor for the world Anenzephalia has conjured up from the dark, but in the act of conjuring these sonic spirits it becomes so much more than ambient music. There is some internal propulsion, sometimes rendered in actual beats, other times, in a subtle yet impossible to resist forward momentum, as if some dark force was dragging you to your doom.
A gorgeously dreary, and epically miserablist world of blackened industrial drones, muted martial beats, abstract shimmer and drift, corrosive grind and soft focus low end flutter, all woven into a divine end of the world threnody for the black hearted and soulless.
MPEG Stream: "Beneath The Shroud"
MPEG Stream: "Regime"
MPEG Stream: "Kachexie"

ANGANTYR / NASHEIM split (Northern Silence) cd 14.98
Those unfamiliar with the Danish black metal band Angantyr, might be surprised to find out that the man responsible for Angantyr, is the very same man who sonically slit his wrists and bled out the brilliantly depressive Make A ChangeŠ Kill Yourself discs, as well as being the dark soul who conjures up the grim old school buzz of Holmgang.
And while our black and broken hearts may belong to Make A ChangeŠ Kill Yourself, out head banging, spike encrusted, grim kvlt souls bow before the buzzing black Lord Angantyr. Here, Angantyr forms a sinister sonic alliance with mysterious Swedish duo Nasheim, and the two offer up some seriously awesome blasting and frosty grimnessŠ
Angantyr offer up three tracks, nearly a half hour of classic Scandinavian style old school black metal, furious bursts of scalding blackness, as well as loping midtempo Burzumic dirges, massive swaths of washed out buzz, harsh howled vocals, mournful minor key melodies draped over spikey blackened crags, plenty of MACKY's miserablism finds its way into Angantyr's mysterious black world which is a very good thing. The final track is live, and super lo-fi, but ultra intense, thrashing and brutal, you can almost hear the sweat and blood, and fire and brimstone. So great.
Nasheim counter with a single 25 minute track, an epic journey through a buzzing black soundworld, beginning with simple swooning folky strum, the tranquility shattered by a black wall of sound, a thrashing buzzing burst of gnarled guitars, hyperspeed drumming, and strange strangled howls, before retreating once again to a gentle little sonic glade, which is immediately laid flat by a colossal riff and an avalanche of pounding drum crunch, which gives way to a killer extended blackpsych jam, sounding almost like Opeth, with arpeggiated acoustic guitar under a relentless buzz, a killer melodic lead, and a loping waltz-like tempo. The rest of the record veers back and forth between variations of both, lurching at one point into a strange, almost Amrep sounding part, before resuming its epic journey, all soaring majestic guitar harmonies and chaotic drumming, finishing off with a stretch of almost Viking sounding blackness. It's sort of hard to describe such a massive and sprawling slab of sound in such a small space, needless to say, the black and buzz obsessed will not be disappointed. So many parts, so many styles and various shades of black, all deftly arranged into a single symphony of depressive buzz.
MPEG Stream: ANGANTYR "Arngrims Haevn"
MPEG Stream: NASHEIM "Sovande Mjod Vill Jag Tomma"

ANGELIC PROCESS, THE Weighing Souls With Sand (Profound Lore) cd 12.98
What can we say that we haven't already said about this dynamic dronedirgedoom duo? Seriously, have a look at any of the other reviews we've written about The Angelic Process, and see us gush like crazy, what's not to love? Gorgeous swirling black ambience, massive crushing metallic pummel, soaring majestic melodies, the sound somehow heavy and brutal, but washed out and gauzy, a thick My Bloody Valentine haze draped over everything, voices drift amidst the buzz like paper angels dropped into a roaring fire. Everything glistening and sparkling, glimmering and shimmering, then roaring and grinding and washing over you like some suffocating black tide. 
All of their records are fantastic, each feels and sounds like a continuation of the one before it. As if they were all movements in some metallic black hole symphony, with each record, each movement, offering up its own subtle twist on the AP's black buzzing sound world. This latest might be the most sonically varied of the bunch. It's been out for a while now, but we had been working our way through the older titles first.
The overall sound like the others is warped and warbly, a slow crawl though an alien world, like every note and melody is being twisted and bent, tangled up into shapes that confuse and confound, the distortion so thick and viscous it seems to be able to alter the natural order, to use gravity as just another effect, ton-of-bricks downtuned guitars don't fall forward like an avalanche, they seem to drift like billowy black clouds somehow, slabs of low end fall upward, guitars slither in reverse, vocals twist inside out, a gorgeous multidimensional swirl of sound, that occasionally coalesces into a roiling propulsive thunderstorm of blissed out doom. Songs grow from whispers into roars, a black doom Godspeed, but the heavy parts aren't just heavy, they're unearthly, unreal, melodies are pulled apart into sparkling notes that spin and soar, dancing atop a churning miasma of crush and crunch. The sound is an impossible blend of light and dark, evil and good, beauty and utter and complete horror. Like Katatonia broadcast through a wall of clothes dryers, doom metal performed by a symphony of leaf blowers tuned to drop-D, pop songs composed using cement mixers filled with gold bricks, a DJ spinning My Bloody Valentine over diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter remixed by Tim Hecker, all nestled amidst dreamy drifts of hushed shimmer and soft focus ambience.
We could go on and on and on and on and on and on.... needless to say, an absolutely essential slab of blissed out dreamdronedoooooooooooooooooooooooooom...
MPEG Stream: "The Promise Of Snakes"
MPEG Stream: "Million Year Summer"
MPEG Stream: "The Resonance Of Goodbye"

ANGER, KENNETH The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume Two (Fantoma) dvd 27.00
As varied as they can be, Kenneth Anger's films are pretty unmistakable. This Volume Two dvd set is just as stunning as its predecessor. The restorations are immaculate, the soundtrack vibrant. Details pop out that we were never able to distinguish on our old grainy vhs dubs. From the seemingly random assemblage of the Technicolor hued magickal aesthetics as seen in 1969's Invocation Of My Demon Brother (which incorporated pieces of an aborted version of his film Lucifer Rising as well as footage of a staged ritual deeply inspired by Anger's hero Aleister Crowley and featuring a cameo by Anton LaVey and a Moog synth soundtrack by Mick Jagger) to the pastel powder puffed homoerotic hotrod dream of 1965's Kustom Kar Kommandos to the bikers'n'black leather homoerotic motorcycle club dream of 1964's Scorpio Rising (shot like a documentary, it captures the period's dark visceral energies, the cultural and consciousness explosion, the social rebellion -- arguably the beginnings of protopunk); from the fiery Egyptian golden luminescence of 1981's Lucifer Rising (complete with soundtrack composed and recorded by Bobby Beausoliel in his prison cell) to the 1979 version of Rabbit Moon with its unexpectedly well-suited rock song soundtrack (an earlier version appeared on Vol.1)... Really, what's not to drool over? Through Anger's gaze objects, symbols, songs and people are fetishized to an intoxicating state. Even to those without an interest in avantgarde film, a schooling in esoteric knowledge, or an affinity with fringe communities, the images are nothing short of spellbinding, especially taking into consideration the time period in which they were made. The lone disappointment we found was in Anger's commentaries which come across as surprisingly uninspired, often vague and less than informative. Best to let the films speak for themselves -- a delicious visual feast!

APOPTOSE Blutopfer (Tesco) cd 17.98
This disc by the one man dark ambient drum ensemble Apoptose has long been a favorite around these parts, but as it was a few years old, we were never able to get enough to list. And eventually it just went out of print completely. We were thrilled recently to discover however, that it had just been reissued, and thus, now all can share in our mass musical obsession with this amazing slab of percussive overload.
In a small village in Spain called Calanda, the villages gather each year during the holy week of the Christian Easter festival. The villages, clad in purple robes, are all carrying drums, of various shapes and sizes and sounds. The villages all stand completely still, in near silence, until all at once, the whole lot erupt in a frenzy of wild drumming, which continues practically nonstop for 36 hours, the rhythms of the thousands of drums finding their way into every corner of daily life, mundane activities are suddenly performed to some hypnotic rhythm, many of the players enter some sort of fugue state, a trancelike stupor, many passing out, some oblivious to their hands being rubbed raw and beginning to bleed.
The festival is nearly 100 years old, and predates its current Christian orientation, with heathen roots in a tradition of warning of danger outside the cities walls. Sounds almost like A Hermann Nitcsh action. And it must sound like it as well.
Blutopfer is a tribute, a musical homage, an impression of what that festival might sound like. Filtered through a distinctly dark ambient lens, but still dense and complex and hyper rhythmic.
The opening track begins with a low droning hum, as if to imitate the opening hush of the actual ceremony, a dark smoky swirl, which hardly prepares you for the massive crush of a million snare drums, all tangled and intertwined, various distinct rhythms surfacing amongst the dense drum line cacophony. It's so dense in fact, that the drums almost begin to resemble radio static. But unlike the actual festival, there are all sorts of other sounds, huge throbbing bass melodies, rumbling pulses, the drums locked into a super hypnotic martial rhythm, while the buzzing bass propels it forward. So epic and heavy and majestic and dense with drums!
The sound is almost like LUSTMORD JAMMING WITH A MARCHING BAND DRUM LINE, which we shouldn't have to tell you sounds AMAZING.
While that first track is ultra heavy, and rhythmically fucking fierce, much of the rest of the record is more skeletal, more spare, with long stretched out black ambience, slowly unfurling barely there melodies, all beneath totally intense, completely mesmerizing drumming. A relentless militaristic drum corps, weaving killer complex snare rolls. At it's darkest and most intense, it sounds like some drum heavy Toroidh or Folkstorm track, a teutonic industrial throb, the snares just adding to the intensity, but most of the record, it really does sound like a drum line transported to some wasted bleak doomscape, their insistent rhythms just barely keeping the blackness at bay. SO GODDAMN GOOD.
All new packaging, a dark purple, six panel, thick card stock folded sleeve, with liner notes detailing the Spanish festival that inspired this record.
MPEG Stream: "Apotropaion"
MPEG Stream: "Blutopfer"
MPEG Stream: "Calanda"

ASH POOL World Turns On Its Hinge (Paragon) lp 16.98
Now on vinyl, the amazing debut full length from these NY based, ultra sick, primitive black metal noise merchants. Everything we've heard so far we've dug like crazy, a single and a tape, each filthy and dripping with blown out black buzz and pounding punkish riffing. This full length is more of the same, and if anything ups the ante sonically. 
Meaner, heavier, thrashier, filthier, more raw and primitive and blown out, and like the other records, still poppy and weirdly catchy. This is most definitely black metal, but a crushing primitive D-beat style BM, following a similar sonic path as fellow black hordes Bone Awl, Ancestors, Akitsa, Malveillance and the like. 
Ash Pool is one part blacknoise outfit Prurient, so you knew there was gonna be noise, but the noise here is deftly harnessed into roiling black riffs and blasting beats, woozy, dizzying seasick blasts of relentless pound, furious and fierce, the production thick and blown out, in the red, crumbling distortion and murky reverb everywhere. 
But this isn't just the same song over and over, set the instruments to blast and let the record play out. No these songs are varied and bizarre, occasionally epic and dramatic, sometimes so fast and brutal it borders on pure noise, sometimes a Brainbombs style caveman pound, sometimes a weird minor key mathrock jam, always appropriately blown out and noisy, but now and then the songs veer into strange, creepy, almost pretty territory, a slow and loping doomic lurch, with minor key melodies that manage to be mournful and funereal but still jagged and buzzy. Winding melancholic lopes that just sort of meander and chug abstractly. But it's never long before the tracks splinter into jagged shards, with the song exploding into another stretch of raw toxic pummel, the vocals doused in FX and convulsing wildly atop the relentless riffage. And every once in a while, the band lock into some crazy melodic groove, and for a brief moment you almost forget you're listening to some harsh and hateful black noise outfit. 
Hard to explain how great this stuff is, it all manages to be so visceral and intense, emotional and depressive, melodic with losing it's flesh-peeling edge, so sonically varied without losing its focus, the slow songs are perfect bridges between the speaker shredding streaks of black brutality, but even when things are chaotic and on the verge of collapse, the songs still manage to be catchy and melodic and heavy as fuck. 
The lp version includes super striking new artwork and an lp sized insert!
MPEG Stream: "Sin Of Life"
MPEG Stream: "Crucifixion Fantasy"
MPEG Stream: "Vices Triumph Over Wisdom"

ASKEW, ED Little Eyes (De Stijl) cd 13.98
In a matter of weeks, The De Stijl label has knocked us out twice in a row, with reissues of two psychedelic folk albums from the misty past that we'd otherwise never have known about. Both surprises by already-AQ-fave artists, as well! We just listed De Stijl's cd reish of the long-lost 1974 Michael Yonkers album Grimwood, and now here's a previously unreleased, long-rumoured 1970 recording entitled Little Eyes from NYC acid folk troubadour Ed Askew, whose 1969 ESP-Disk album Ask The Unicorn we'd all agree is a highlight on that multifarious and mindblowing outsider jazz/improv/folk/protest rock label. If you liked that one, you'll definitely like this!
As established on Ask The Unicorn, Ed Askew's music here is intimate and eccentric, gentle and rambling. Just one sorta high, nasally voiced guy and his guitar (and harmonica too), singing his own timeless, twisted, lonely songs of love and loss, roughly hewn and bleeding with emotion. As we've said before, he's like a weirder, rawer Bobby Z. (and a thirty years ago and then some precursor to Devy B. for sure). We're talking about Bob Dylan and Devendra Banhart there, for those of you (like Andee) not hip to those diminutives.
In addition to the ten songs ("transferred from acetate, with flaws intact") recorded for Askew's never ('til now) released follow-up to his ESP debut, De Stijl has also included six more tracks, taken from live radio performances done by Askew circa 1970-'71, which fit right in, as the Little Eyes studio sessions were done more or less live anyway, mostly single takes, no edits or overdubs, with flaws intact as well... flaws? not to our minds... In a digipak, with a couple vintage b&w pics of the bearded, bushy haired Askew, and liner notes by Byron Coley.
MPEG Stream: "Songs For Pilots"
MPEG Stream: "City Of Glass"

BAKER, AIDAN Exoskeleton Heart (Crucial Bliss) cd-r 8.98
Another in the recent trilogy of new releases (along with Light Of Shipwreck and Luasa Raelon reviewed elsewhere on this list) from one of our favorite labels, Crucial Bliss, a dronier driftier offshoot of the Crucial Blast label. And as the names should make obvious, the stuff on Crucial Blast -blasts-, and the stuff on Crucial Bliss, is, wellŠ blissed out.
So here we have yet another release from the man who does not sleep. Ever. He couldn't possibly, he must spend every minute of every day and night doing nothing but recording gorgeous spaced out driftscapes (under his own name) and crushing slow motion pummel (as Nadja). This is release number ten in just about a year, and that's not even counting all the microreleases and limited editions that slipped by us completely. But as we've mentioned time and time again, it's all good. Really good. Great in fact. So as folks trying to review all this stuff, we definitely get overwhelmed, but for the listener, who in their right mind would complain about more amazing and mysterious soundsŠ
This new one, is all electric guitar, recorded live, and manages to merge Baker's two sonic sides. The dense and the airy, the heavy and the pretty, the delicate and the intense. Two half hour epics, the first track is a roiling swirl of deep reverberant whirring and soft buzzing, sometimes thickening into an almost SUNNO)))-y wall of sound, but just as often shimmering dreamily, peppered with some super chaotic stretches, where things get really intense, bordering on straight up noise, sounding almost like Total, massive ur-drone, speaker melting white noise, but somehow twisted into something pretty.
The second track is much grittier, the sound more raw and lo-fi, very industrial at the outset, but as the track progresses, strange melodies drift up from below, the sound gets smoother and more washed out, and then somehow, even as it gets prettier and prettier, it also gets heavier, the sound getting louder and more blown out, culminating in a gloriously blurred blast of in-the-red, white hot, blissed out buzz, the aural equivalent of staring into the sun. So nice.
As with all Crucial Bliss releases, the packaging is super swank, an oversized fold over thick cardstock sleeve, full color inside and out, the cd attached to a plastic hub affixed to the sleeve.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Interior"
MPEG Stream: "Anterior"

BIXOBAL Number 1 October 2007 zine 2.00
Basically, if you're into the more experimental, droney, improv-y, internationally adventurous, whatever side of the stuff we feature here at AQ, and you like to read which of course you do, and you've got a lousy two bucks, you should pick this up!! Edited by Eric Lanzillotta (of Anomalous records fame), this new 'zine is devoted to all sorts of interestin' music n' stuff, this debut issue featuring Robert Millis waxing nostalgic about his favorite Korean 78 rpm record, an interview with ESP-Disk experimentalist Alan Sondheim, an article about the books of number one Fug Tuli Kupferberg, an Indian travelogue from Sun City Girl Sir Richard Bishop, and a no-holds-barred interview with Dave Nuss of the No Neck Blues Band (which gets into some interesting, open-minded discussion about what might be bullshit or not about NNCK's music!!). A great read. Plus there's a plethora of reviews and other 'zine-ish goodness. 56 pages, digest-sized. Looking forward to issue 2!

BLUT AUS NORD / BLOODOLINE / REVERENCE / KARRAS Dissociated Human Junction (Panik Terror Musik) cd 16.98
It's only been a year, but it feels like forever since we've heard from beloved French black metal weirdos Blut Aus Nord, so we were super psyched to discover this 4 way split with 3 unreleased BaN tracks, and even though the tracks aren't brand new (they're from a super limited 2004 10"), they definitely hit the spot. In a big way.
But besides the BaN tracks, this comp also features a new Blut Aus Nord side project called Karras that totally destroys as well. And as if that all weren't enough the other two bands are just as amazing and fucked up if not more so.
Let's start with the Blut Aus Nord tracks, what else do you need to know, three tracks, you've never heard em, they are gorgeously twisted and blackened, the guitars slithery and spidery, everything wrapped in a warm cocoon of prickly buzz, long stretches of bleak black ambience, haunted rumblings, mysterious warbles, epic blasts of buzzing blackness, swaths of seasick synths, creepy minor key melodies, very dark and depressive, mournful and almost cinematic, definitely ranks up there with some of our favorite Blut Aus Nord stuff ever.
The Karras track, an massive 11 minute blast of confusional chaos, takes the already damaged and demented sound of Blut Aus Nord eve further, everything more twisted and convoluted, the drums a blasting splatter, guitars swirling everywhere, thick sheets of buzz, creepy processed vocals gurgling and growling, twisted squiggly melodies all over the place, the guitars buzzy, but also murky and muddy and thick like tar, this roiling black madhouse, peppered with long stretches of totally tranquil near static ambient shimmer. But that's not all, huge chunks of industrial pummel, more vocals croaking and mewling, the drums a never ending torrent of spastic beats, blasting and pounding, finally breaking into a funeral doom dirge right near the end before spinning off into a cloud of black hiss. Holy shit. We NEED to hear more Karras. A totally mindblowing and physically exhausting schizophrenic doomed and damaged black metal assault.
Like we said before, that would most definitely be enough, but there are two other bands to dig into. First, blackened Spaniards Bloodoline, whose blasting blackness is peppered with awesome moaning string bends and slippery riffage, that makes their tracks sound all funhouse mirrored and weirdly warped, especially the first track "Voyage Till Death". The beginning of their second song even sounds a bit like Chavez, with dual tangled highend guitar melodies, eventually exploding into a relentless keening crush. The third just seals the deal with another black hole slab of black mayhem, but with a strangely melancholy and poppy undercurrent.
Finally, there's another French outfit, who appropriately shared that abovementioned 2004 10" with Blut Aus Nord. Their sound is more in line with BaN's modern metallic melancholic murk. Slightly industrial tinged, mournful with lots of blurred buzz. Plenty of black metal riffing, but the sound is washed out and near ambient, huge expanses of doomic misery, bookended by gnarled black riffs, much of the two tracks spent drifting through a black haze, or plodding machinelike through some abject blackened sonic wasteland. Creepy growled and chanted vocals, thick swaths of chordal fuzzŠ
Way recommended obviously, as we think would be anything else that can be tracked down by all four of these bands (and fear not, you know we're already working on itŠ)
MPEG Stream: BLOODOLINE "Voyage Till Death"
MPEG Stream: BLUT AUS NORD "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: KARRAS "Xenoglossy"

CANTU-LEDESMA, JEFRE Phantom Harp (Root Strata) 3" cd-r 5.98
A brand new, brief and lovely missive from Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, frontman of Tarentel, member of The Alps, The Holy See, Two Suns, head honcho of the Root Strata label and a pretty handy drone alchemist on his own, this little 3" is no different.
Utilizing a borrowed autoharp and a handful of electronics, Phantom Harp is all glistening glimmering solar flares, shimmering sunlight filtered through green fields sparkling with dewdrops, a gorgeous soft focus glacial drift, an otherworldly, slowed down Appalachia, the chords slowly drifting apart, notes carried skyward like leaves on a summer breeze, sleep, bleary eyed dreaminess, which all gives way to a washed out, lugubrious lowercase smear of fluttering drones, and creeping moonlit fog, hushed and dreamy, an oceanic seascape of twinkling muted melody and near static shimmer. All arranged into a single twenty minute track, multiple movements woven into an epic organic constantly evolving sonic dreamscape. Gorgeous.
Packaged in a beautiful black on black fold over thick paper sleeve, inside a 3" cd in a tiny plastic jacket, and a printed insert.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "The Phantom Harp (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "The Phantom Harp (excerpt 2)"

CANTU-LEDESMA, JEFRE Shining Skull Breath (Students Of Decay) cd-r 7.98
Another super limited sonic transmission from right here in the Bay Area, from AQ fave Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the man behind Tarentel, and the Root Strata label. Those familiar with Cantu-Ledesma's music, knows that he usually speakers in hushed whispers, breathy and breathless, soft sonic shimmers allowed to drift like billowy clouds into your ears. But here, CL is no longer whispering, instead he's breathing fire, his guitar a newly minted incendiary device. A sonic flame thrower, each track a layered assemblage of thick peals of sound, glowing tongues of distorted flame. A sonic assault more similar to Total or Sunroof! Than CL's usual output. Makes sense that the first song is dedicated to Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans (who also mastered it).
But all of this talk of fire and flame shouldn't scare you off, there is still plenty of delicate beauty to be had, it's just wrapped in thick sheets of sonic napalm, the guitar effulgent and glowing white hot, the chords washed out and the distortion crumbling. Melodies are jagged and dripping with hissy buzz, each track a glacial guitarscape turning your speakers to ash.
There are a few tracks, almost half of the 8 here, that drift in a soporific haze, and hew closer to CL's usual aesthetic, but here, they sound less like individual pieces, and more like interludes, brief moments of tranquility, a chance to catch your breath, let your ears heal, allow time for your speakers to re-solidify, before launching the next buzzing crumbling divinely distorted salvo of gorgeous blown out guitar bliss.
Fans of stuff like Nadja, the Yellow Swans, Tim Hecker, the Angelic Process, Fear Falls Burning, will be quite pleased with Cantu-Ledesma's visit to the sonic dark side.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in full color cardboard sleeves, with printed inserts.
MPEG Stream: "Distant Star (For Pete Swanson)"
MPEG Stream: "Shining Skull Breath"

CIRCLE Sunrise (No Quarter) cd 15.98
YAY! The No Quarter label, fresh from releasing Circle's latest album Katapult, have now done a domestic reissue of another Circle cd, the long-time-fave, and long-out-of-print, Ektro release Sunrise. If you saw 'em play on their recent US tour, chances are you rocked out to a tune or two from this record.
Here's our review from when we first freaked out about this back on list 143, which still applies (the new version is the same but for slightly altered, snazzed up graphics), except that we'd no longer say it's such a departure for them:
Brilliant, shockingly brilliant! Herewith we present to you what we can only say is the headbangingest record yet from our Finnish friends Circle (containing also, paradoxically, a couple of their most gentle numbers). The Circle concept is one of repetition, and while ALL their records are in fact great, one can find some of them to be a lot like another. So it's nice that this new Circle really goes out on a limb, with so much success, while totally managing to remain Circle to the core. How do they do it?
The album opens with "Nopeuskuningas", seemingly Circle's answer to Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law"! Down and dirty hard rock riffing (cyclic and repetitive in the trademark Circle way, of course) with keyboardist/vocalist Mika Ratto -- a relatively recent, and significant, addition to Circle's lineup on their past three or four discs -- simultaneously channeling screechy metal gods Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Klaus Meine (Scorpions), and Brian Johnson (AC/DC), but in an indecipherable, or Finnish at least, babble. It stretches to nearly eight minutes after the space-rock effects and swirly keys kick in. But then, when you think this is going to be The Heavy Metal Circle album, track two gets all mellow and pretty and folked-out, even MORE unlike any previous Circle we've ever heard. Acoustic guitar, and lots of la la la's from Mika. Unbelievable -- and lovely. But then the next song triggers the dormant motorik Circle drum pulse, overlaid with heavy guitars and vocal histrionics akin to the opening track. Plus new wavey/Axel F keyboards. Hit material here! Following that, track four, "Vaanen Valtiatar", heads back to the forest glade where Circle do that hippy jamming again a la track two, but more plugged-in, turning into a spacey jam session. And then, as you might now expect, it's back to the mosh pit for the monstrous rifferama of the next song, "Kylan Suurin Miekka". Evil stuff. This is True Circular Metal indeed. From then on the album maintains the heaviness, getting spacier and spacier though, culminating in the droning fifteen-minute "Lokki".
Wow. An amazing album, making effective use of Mika's unusual/unique vocals -- he's developed some sort of exotic (Middle Eastern? American Indian?) meets metal style, delivered in a manner as over-the-top as the most insane Italian prog of the '70s. Throw in some violin and Moog and of course all the heavy metal moves, and you've got a bizarre blend of, uh, Yoko Ono, Hawkwind, Judas Priest, and of course Circle's krautrock forerunners Neu! and Can.
While Sunrise is in many ways a departure for Circle, it can also be seen as an album harking back to their hard-rockin' roots (they've nodded that way on the guitar-heavy Prospekt and Jussi's Kyuss-ish Pharaoh Overlord side project, but you've got to also remember that the very first Circle album, Meronia, drew quite a few comparisons to Helmet at the time). Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Nopeuskuningas"
MPEG Stream: "Vaanen Valtiatar"
MPEG Stream: "Kylan Suurin Miekka"

COPE, JULIAN Japrocksampler (Bloomsbury) book 30.00
One of the best album covers ever, for the Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 debut LP Anywhere, a photo of that band as naked Japanese hippy freak outlaw bikers ridin' free, adorns the cover of this book. Good choice! If that doesn't look cool to you, you don't need this volume. If it does, then queue up! The subtitle: "How The Post-War Japanese Blew Their Minds On Rock 'N' Roll" is perfectly illustrated by that cover picture.
Let's back up, though. British author Julian Cope, originally best-known as something of a rock star (with The Teardrop Explodes in the '80s and his subsequent solo career) has also long been entertaining and informing us all as a writer, an expert on the heavy and the ancient: both the stone circles of Megalithic Europe, and the stoned rock n' roll of the psychedelic/progressive variety, yesterday and today. His happenin' website, Head Heritage (www.headheritage.co.uk) should be bookmarked by everyone who looks at OUR site. Way back when, over a decade ago, Julian Cope published a slim little paperback volume called the Krautrocksampler, one fan's obsessive, opinionated look back at the wondrous krautrock scene of the '70s. If you've got one, you're lucky, they're out of print and hard to come by these days, going for $$$ on eBay (er, anyone with a spare copy, please contact Allan at the store, he foolishly never bought it when we used to sell 'em and has regretted it ever since, maybe we can work out a deal...). Another reason to pick up this new Japrocksampler while you can!
It's about the same approximate dimensions as the Krautrocksampler, but thicker (over 300 pages!) and hardcover, with color plates depicting various rare album covers in the center of the book, and black and white graphics throughout. Nicely done, the paper stock and binding bringing back memories of a particular type of book we used to have in school.
And, as you have probably figured out, it's the Japanese '70s rock companion to Cope's krautrock treatise. But because the Japanese underground music scene of the same era is comparatively a lot more obscure over here in the West, Cope had to do a lot more in-depth research to give us all a real history lesson, starting off all the way back in the aftermath of WWII. Moving forward, he devotes much attention to the experimental composers of the sixties, like Toshi Ichiyanagi, and (for a time) his wife, Yoko Ono. All sorts of radical "actions" and conceptual sound art get their due. Other early chapters include include investigations of the homegrown "Eleki" scene (Japanese surf music, sort of) and the "Group Sounds" phenomenon (Japan's reaction to the British Invasion). Then Heavy Rock hits, with freaks and festivals, and Cope digs with utmost detail into the behind-the-music stories of such artists as cover stars Flower Travellin Band, Speed, Glue & Shinki, and, perhaps most crucially ('cause they're so mysterious and influential), Les Rallizes Denudes. In all cases, he reveals lots of stuff we didn't know. Regarding Les Rallizes, ferinstance, apparently their original bass player was involved in a JAL jetliner highjacking back in 1970, which lead to innocent Rallizes leader Takeshi Mizutani being trailed by CIA agents, which may help explain his legendary reclusiveness!
The Japrocksampler also provides plenty of info about important intersection between the avant-garde theater scene and rock n' roll in the early '70s, with a chapter on the brilliant J.A. Caesar. There's also pages and pages on the Taj Mahal Travellers, Far East Family Band, the Tokyo Kid Brothers, and much much more. It's exhaustive, impressively connecting all kinds of dots. Probably equally obsessed fanboys will have facts to check and nits to pick (we're thinking of our pal JW in particular) but really, where else are you gonna find all this info in English?? And so entertainingly written? Nowhere. Anyone who's read the Krautrocksampler, or visited Head Heritage, knows that Cope's got a knack for writing that's both enthused and erudite, a bit like Lester Bangs with footnotes. You don't even really have to know (or have heard) what he's talking about to fall under his spell, which is helpful 'cause the one big drawback to reading the Japrocksampler is the frustration most folks are gonna have trying to track down and listen to a lot of the music being discussed. We do our best to stock a good selection of '70s Japanese psych/prog/experimental reissues, whatever we can get by bands like the Taj Mahal Travellers and Flower Travellin' Band, but even we had to cry when looking over the section of the book devoted to lengthy reviews of Cope's top 50 favorite Japrock albums. Some we've got, others... someday we hope! Maybe this book will spur some more reissue action.
Can't come up with too many criticisms, other than that he slams some records we like (Foodbrain!), seemingly omits Flied Egg, and we guess we're not sure exactly how politically correct the term "Japrock" is, though it's not any worse than saying "krautrock" when you think about it...
Basically, this is a fascinating read for anyone curious about the effects of rock n' roll on the artsy underbelly of an "alien" culture. A must have if you're already into this stuff, of course, but also totally recommended if you're just a little bit curious about this "secret history" 'cause of being exposed to all the wild, freaky sounds currently being made in Japan by bands like the Boredoms, Boris, and Acid Mothers Temple.

DALTON, KAREN Cotton Eyed-Joe: The Loop Tapes Live in Boulder 1962 (Megaphone) 2cd + dvd 27.00
We have been waiting with baited breath for this since we first heard rumor of its impending release. 2 cds of newly discovered and previously unreleased live recordings by enigmatic folk legend Karen Dalton! Recorded in 1962 by Joe Loop, a musician who owned and managed an influential night spot in Boulder, Colorado called "The Attic", these intimate recordings capture the raw talent of Dalton's smoky delivery and sparse 12-string guitar and banjo arrangements. While not as solid a set as her debut recording released 7 years later, these sessions offer us a feel of what it was like for traveling folk musicians during the heyday of the folk revival, who literally had to sing for their supper. Working out unique arrangements of tunes by Fred Neil ("Blues On The Ceiling" and "Red Are The Flowers"), Ray Charles ("It's Alright", "Blackjack") and traditional folk blues such as "In The Evening" and "Pallet On Your Floor", this is a shining example of an artist in her element, lost in the delicate emotive possibilities of performing songs so close to her heart. Includes a DVD of early film footage of Dalton performing, some of which was on the last import reissue of It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best, but in a friendlier format than before. It also includes home movie footage from when she lived in Summerville Colorado most likely around the same time these sessions were recorded. So Beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Red Are The Flowers"
MPEG Stream: "Pallett On Your Floor"
MPEG Stream: "Katie Cruel"

DORMANT Beneath The Mighty Oak (God Is Myth) cd 10.98
From the man who runs the amazing God Is Myth label, responsible for recent AQ faves like Godheadscope, Caina and Procer Veneficus, and who used to record as Uvall, comes the new 'group' Dormant, which takes the more traditional black metal sound of Uvall and abandons it almost entirely, focusing more on mood and melancholia, texture and timbre, songs as much as sonics, a sort of orchestral dark doom pop sound, run through with streaks of buzzing blackness, and plenty of dark dark ambience.
With some help from folks like Caina and Celestiial, Dormant weaves an unlikely blackened sonic brew, gloomy and dark, but strangely pretty and poppy, epic and almost orchestral at points, there are brief moments of grim buzz and blasting black fury, but they are relatively few and far between, instead most of the record drifts delicately, mournful strummed steel string guitars, moaning drones off in the distance, deep baritone, near spoken vocals. Sounding very much like Swans or Angels of Light. Even the heavier songs spend much of their time moping mournfully, shimmery clean guitar twang, reverbed soft focus riffage, sometimes eventually transforming into midtempo black metal, but still suffused with that distinctly pop element, occasionally even turning pitchblack and offering up some buzzing riffs and harsh vocals, but only briefly, usually slipping back into a lilting dreamy dark folk, or a strange loping industrial dirge, or a haunting expanse of barely there drone.
Definitely for the super adventurous blackmetalheads out there, or for darkfolk freaks who don't mind bits of buzz and blast peppering their spacey jangle, moody gothic miserablism and abstract late night drift.
The first 200 copies of this cd come housed in a hand screened digipak with an insert and a sticker. We have about a dozen of those. Once we run out, we'll have copies from the rest of the pressing, a version that comes in a DVD case instead.
MPEG Stream: "Black Ashes"
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Wind On The Horizon"
MPEG Stream: "Sighs"

FORGOTTEN WOODS Forgotten Woods / Through The Woods (No Colours) picture disc lp 18.98
This recent essential black metal reissue is now available on vinyl for a limited time! And not just vinyl, a super swank picture disc!!
For a band we had thought at one point to be dead and buried, Norway's legendary black metal weirdos Forgotten Woods have been pretty high profile lately, with an unexpected (and unexpectedly amazing) new album, a bunch of reissues, the ever popular 3cd box set Baklengs Mot Stupet, and now this, the first time on cd for both FW's 1993 demos, the self titled Forgotten Woods and the follow up Through The Woods, both primo slabs of ultra grim and kvlt lo fidelity buzz. 
It's easy to see, even in the early stages of the band, that they were one seriously cracked bunch, the sound not just lo-fi, but damaged and bizarre, the riffing is simple and old school, but super low in the mix, with the crashing thrashing pounding drums way more prominent, but not nearly as much as the croaked blackened growls, the strange Gollum-like growls, some seriously harsh and alien vocals, perfectly suited to the crumbling blackness in the background. Going from stumbling chaotic buzz, to lurching doomy pound, Forgotten Woods conjure up some seriously fucked up and freaked out black atmospheres...
The self titled demo is the more brittle of the two, all high end hiss and soul shearing buzz, whereas Through The Woods ups the production values just a bit, and the sound is definitely heavier, but also murkier and muddier, which again suits their skewed vision. Also things seem to get way weirder (if that were even possible), hinting once again at the bizarre blackened beast they were soon to become, with angular atonal melodies, damaged off kilter leads and even weirder vocals, from shrieks to shouts, all tangled up into dense black squalls of sound.
MPEG Stream: "Winterly Battle Over Northland"
MPEG Stream: "Inside The Witches Cave"

GALLHAMMER Ill Innocence (Peaceville) cd 16.98
Ok, hopefully all of you into dooooooooooooooooom have heeded our recommendations in the past ("best band EVER" we may have said, in a moment of infatuation) and are already well acquainted with this cult Japanese band who exude a magnificently miserable mixture of slow, atmospheric doominess and crusty black metal thrashing, inspired by the likes of Celtic Frost/Hellhammer (natch), Amebix, and Corrupted. This is their 2nd full-length studio album, following 2004's Gloomy Lights debut and last year's The Dawn Of Gallhammer demos n' live cd+dvd collection. That's the one where we busted out the Simpsons Comic Book Guy impersonation in our review, but it's this album that really seals the deal, when it comes to Gallhammer's position in the pantheon of most depressive doom bands ever, anyway. They're up there, no doubt about it, as is proved by this collection of ten tracks, each one of 'em often (but not always) a slow-motion trudge through the depths of emotional bleakness in the form of monotonously massive low-end guitar riffage, wretched cookie monster screams, and simple, gloomy melodies. Several of the song titles are quite indicative of their sound: "Long Scary Dream", "SLOG", "Ripper In The Gloom"... Many of these varied tracks feature a dynamic combination of knock-you-over-with-a-feather soft n' sad prettiness setting you up for some smash-you-with-a-hammer heaviness, or even manage both at the same time. It's the former element, this band's almost post-rock instrumental mesmeric moodiness, for which we think Gallhammer should be best noted. Not that it has any of post-rock's usual complexity, this is raw and primal and ritualistic, perfectly encapsulated by the way the stark, repetitive slowcore acoustic guitar part at the start of "Ripper In The Gloom" suddenly, shockingly gives way to a full-on punk rock assault.
It also seems possible that Gallhammer, along with their interest in underground '80s doom-crust, also shares some of the Velvet Underground fixation displayed by their contemporaries from the Japanese psych-rock scene, like LSD-march and Doodles. Heck, track one, the nearly eight minute "At The Onset Of The Age Of Despair" seems to have echoes of VU's "Venus In Furs"... If one of Gallhammer's songs wound up on a PSF Tokyo Flashback comp someday we'd be surprised, yes, but only a little. Though it sure wouldn't be a track like "Killed By The Queen" or "Blind My Eyes", two of the punked out, filthy metal blitzes on here, the latter of which throws in some uncharacteristic Melt-Banana style yelping, dogwhistle vocals along with the usual guttural grunting and growling.
Hey, we made it all the way to the end of this review without mentioning Gallhammer's major non-musical selling point... we said they're a "cult" band above, but were tempted to say "cute", as this trio just happen to all be attractive young Japanese ladies, their looks further enhanced by the tasteful application of gothy corpsepaint makeup. No this fact doesn't make Gallhammer's music sound any better (or worse) but it's, um, interesting. Happily, though, Peaceville isn't using Gallhammer's sex appeal to sell this album, there's not even any pictures of the band at all included in the classy-lookin' white-and-silver digipack. Recommended nonetheless!
MPEG Stream: "SLOG"
MPEG Stream: "Killed By The Queen"
MPEG Stream: "Ripper In The Gloom"

GLOMP #9 (Boing Being) book 35.00
We're so immersed in Finnish underground music all the time, that we sometimes forget there's probably a whole lot of other amazing underground stuff going on over there as well. Like say, ART ferinstance. Well last year we got a crash course in Finnish underground art with a hefty eye popping tome called Glomp. And it happened to be the eighth Glomp, but the first one we had ever set eyes on and we were smitten, BIG TIME. So were all of you as we couldn't keep it in stock, and it ended up going out of print pretty dang fast.
Thankfully, it's time for another hair raising, eye popping, head spinning, other-body-part-doing-something-else-that-body-part-doesn't-normally-do installment of crazy, gorgeous, funny, sad, poignant, confusing, fantastical and fucked up Finnish underground art in the form of Glomp #9! And just like the first one it's amazing. And even though much of the text is in Finnish, it doesn't detract from the loveliness or far-out-ness or just plain old simple beauty of this amazing artwork. And for all you Finnish music freaks (like us), tons of the artwork here is by folks who do time in bands like Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and loads more. Just like #8, the stuff inside is all over the map, from gorgeous and bizarre photographs, to gorgeous super detailed Renee French like pencil drawings, to super abstract paintings, to garish sculptures, confusing collages, tons of comic strips, most you don't even have to understand Finnish to get (although most of the text is subtitled with English footnotes!). Our favorite is probably the recurring strip by Tommi Musturi, the trials and tribulations of a strange doughy white pill shaped being with pink lips and a tubular nose, who wanders Frank-like through strange and dangerous worlds. But all of it is just so amazing. Finnish freaks will definitely want this, but anyone into cool weird hard to find art books will definitely go crazy for this too. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES WORLDWIDE. Of that thousand we have a super limited amount, and if people go as crazy for this one as they did for the last one, they won't be around for long...

GNAW THEIR TONGUES Reeking Pained And Shuddering (Paradigms) cd 12.98
If for some reason you missed out on the last Gnaw Their Tongues release, a super limited cd-r now unfortunately out of print, and aren't yet as ridiculously obsessed with these guys as we are, we can get you up to speed pretty easily. Beyond the evocative name, there's the record title: Reeking Pained and Shuddering, and how about the song titles: "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Destroying Is Creating" or "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning". And if you still don't have even a rough idea of what you're in for, there's always the music itself, a roiling sonic cesspool of unfettered abject brutality and buzzing murky malevolence. A sort of black metal doom noise hybrid, like Abruptum jamming with Wolf Eyes but slowed way dooooooown, dipped in tar, rolled in dirt and shoved staggering and bloody out of your speakers.
But this isn't just noisy, or heavy or brutal, each song is strangely nuanced, and manages to veer wildly all over the sonic map without losing cohesiveness, each track is like a mini epic, with movements, moods, a convoluted song structure that is tangled and serpentine but that has some alien logic.
Take the 8+ minute opening track "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", which begins with a lurching industrial plod, all lo-fi Godflesh pound and pummel, in a swirling cloud of grey fog FX, but then, the riffs take on some horror movie like cinematic ambience, somehow sounding orchestral and majestic, before falling apart into some strange shuffling skittering krautdoom, peppered with what sounds like horns, snippets of dialogue, and huge booming downtuned crashes, until everything peels back, just leaving a weird smear of rumbling drones and smeared carnival music, beneath a super creepy monologue from some film, appropriately gruesome, the music in the background looping and more and more ominous, eventually building to a near static symphony of vacuum cleaner whir, above a skeletal framework of skittery percussion, and moaning creaking collapsing-building downtuned riffage. And that's just one song.
"Utter Futility Of Creation" begins with super sinister soundtracky strings, before the hammer falls and the record resumes its monstrous lurch, but the strings never go away, they trill and soar and scrape in the background, adding super dramatic tension and furthering the idea that this record might be the soundtrack to the scariest movie ever made. Here and there the band bow out, leaving the strings to weave an ominous swirl of sonic terror and panic, the band pulsing in the background, as if waiting to pounce, again what sound like horns join the fray. It's like what Goblin might have sounded like had they grown up on a steady diet of grindcore and black metal. "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning" begins as another chunk of lost cinematic black ambience with female operatic vocals over a dark black whirl of thrum and throb, before a grinding looped riff surfaces and the band launch into a blasting slab of black metal, but all tangled up with those haunting vocals, and bathed in a fuzz so thick it sounds like it was recorded by Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz, but so much more harsh and harrowing. Much of the rest of the record leans toward the ambient, with the buzzing guitars washed out into dense drones, more fucked up field recordings and samples, processed vocals, whirring alien loops, howled moaned voices, but still with the occasional stretch of pounding percussion, or wall of impossibly detuned guitar, everything crumbling and filthy, frightening and seriously fucked up. Definitely one of our new favorite bands.
Some of this stuff is previously released, mostly on outrageously limited cd-r's and cassette releases, so while some of you collector fiends might have one or two of these tracks, as far as the rest of us are concerned, this fresh musical meat!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Housed in a white dvd case, with full color artwork and printed heavy paper insert.
MPEG Stream: "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch"
MPEG Stream: "Utter Futility Of Creation"
MPEG Stream: "Nihilism; Tied Up And Burning"

HARNETTY, BRIAN American Winter (Atavistic) cd 14.98
Darkly resonant and fascinating. The seventeen tracks of Brian Harnetty's American Winter album are like the slowly disintegrating pages of a stranger's scrapbook. Harnetty artfully and respectfully pieced together segments of dialogue, field recordings and radio transmissions among other things which he drew from the vast audio archives of Berea College where he is a member of the Appalachian Music Fellowship Program. Highlights such as "I'll Have To Go Off And Be Gone Tonight" feature fragments of oral histories from Appalachian folks accompanied by the gentle wheeze of what sounds like an accordion and the tinkling of a toy piano. The audio collages slowly drift in and out of focus, and the results are both engaging in the documentary sense and hauntingly spectral. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "I'll Have To Go Off And Be Gone Tonight"
MPEG Stream: "I Was Interested In The Story You Just Told Me About The Funeral"

HARVEY, PJ White Chalk (Universal Island) cd 14.98
The mighty chameleon PJ Harvey returns! In a characteristically bold and predictably unpredictable move, her eighth studio album reveals a new, very different persona. When we heard that White Chalk was going to be composed of primarily just her voice accompanied mostly by (her new instrument!) piano, we were anticipating (some admittedly with trepidation) a sort of Tori Amos transformation. Our fears were allayed as soon as we hit 'play', but y'know what? We might even predict that there'll be a few converts in the Amos fan club. These stark, delicate arrangements are achingly beautiful, immensely moving and unlike anything she's done before. Harvey's newfound voice flitters in a startling higher register, and the effect is precariously brittle and on the brink. Yet, longtime Harvey fans will still recognize the persisting raw nerves and distressed undercurrents of her music. As always, she's a bundle of seeming contradictions -- fragile and strong, pure and tarnished, simple and complex, vulnerable and bold. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Grow Grow Grow"
MPEG Stream: "When Under Ether"
MPEG Stream: "The Piano"

HAZLEWOOD, LEE The Very Special World Of Lee Hazlewood (Water) cd 15.98
You know it's been a cold and lonely world since Lee Hazlewood left it, not that he wasn't constantly reminding us what a cold and lonely world we live in while he was still alive. But somehow listening to his preternaturally world-weary songs - sung in his trademark wooly baritone; sheathed in their unique, and at times kitschy, baroque country-pop splendor; resigned to epic restlessness, heartbreak, loss, and death; and yet resolutely and often humorously self-defiant ‹ feels even sadder, now that he's gone. His back catalog is huge and for the uninitiated can be difficult to navigate but thankfully Water has reissued his first three MGM recordings from the mid-sixties for the first time separately (the 2002 2cd Big Beat reissue, These Boots Are Made for Walkin': The Complete MGM Recordings compiled all three albums together). Beautifully arranged by Billy Strange and newly remastered, they are the perfect entry point into Lee's left-field western cinematic sound. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the third will be on the next list!
The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood from 1966 is one of his best albums ever. Opening with "For a Moment", a ballad of hurt marked by a wall of phase-shifted strings and a chorus of female back-up singers, we're taken through a set of gloriously arranged ballads and loungey pop numbers including the original versions of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and "Sand" (a duet with Suzy Jane Hokum, that he later recorded with Nancy Sinatra). But it's the centerpiece meditation on dying, "My Autumn's Done Come" that's worth the price of admission. It's hard to say if Scott Walker heard this record before embarking on his own string of baroque balladry the following year, but there are surely definite parallels. R.I.P. Lee!
MPEG Stream: "Sand"
MPEG Stream: "My Autumn's Done Come"
MPEG Stream: "I Move around"

HAZLEWOOD, LEE Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure (Water) cd 15.98
You know it's been a cold and lonely world since Lee Hazlewood left it, not that he wasn't constantly reminding us what a cold and lonely world we live in while he was still alive. But somehow listening to his preternaturally world-weary songs -- sung in his trademark wooly baritone; sheathed in their unique, and at times kitschy, baroque country-pop splendor; resigned to epic restlessness, heartbreak, loss, and death; and yet resolutely and often humorously self-defiant -- feels even sadder, now that he's gone. His back catalog is huge and for the uninitiated can be difficult to navigate but thankfully Water has reissued his first three MGM recordings from the mid-sixties for the first time separately (the 2002 2cd Big Beat reissue, These Boots Are Made for Walkin': The Complete MGM Recordings compiled all three albums together). Beautifully arranged by Billy Strange and newly remastered, they are the perfect entry point into Lee's left-field western cinematic sound. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the third will be on the next list!
Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure from 1967 continues in the same vein as its predecessor (The Very Special World of...) but includes more of his half-spoken / half-sung epic narratives such as "Jose" about a young boy's quest to be a matador, and "The Nights", about the harsh life of a white woman who decides to join a clan of Native Americans. Peppered with more upbeat numbers than ballads, the best of which are "In Our Time" with its Byrds-like 12 string guitar, "The Girls In Paris" and "Dark In My Heart". As with most Hazlewood records, listeners have to deal with some cheese, here most represented by the vaudevillian "Suzy Jane Is Back In Town", but that is grist for the mill when dealing with someone whose sound world maneuvers fearlessly into many of the strangest niches of American popular music. It's best to brave these minor moments than ignore one of the best examples of pop production put to tape. R.I.P. Lee!
MPEG Stream: "The Girls In Paris"
MPEG Stream: "The Nights"
MPEG Stream: "In Our Time"

HEAVY WINGED Feel Inside (aRCHIVE) cd 13.98
We talk about records being heavy, and blown out, and in the red, and super distorted, and being the sort of weird music freaks we are, we're constantly on the hunt for that one record that trumps all others and out heavies and out distorts them all. THE most distorted and THE most blown out and THE HEAVIEST. And every once in a while, a new record does come along, and climbs atop the pile of bloodied and bruised bodies that made up the previous heaviest most distorted bands, and stand tall, prepared to defend the crown with axes held high and an avalanche of drums ready to drop like a ton of bricks on all comers. We'd be hard pressed to find another band that more deserves to sit atop that pile, at least for a while, than bicoastal masters of the psychmetal blowout, Heavy Winged. Now based both in Portland and Brooklyn, these guys just keep getting heavier and heavier, more and more intense and fucked up sounding. We went nuts for their recent Blacc Lust record, but if anything Feel Inside is even better. They are not metal, so comparisons to groups like SUNNO))) and the like would mean nothing. Heavy Winged are basically a psychedelic rock band, who for whatever reason, decided being loud just wasn't enough, and being distorted wasn't enough, and writing songs wasn't enough, so the band gradually transformed into some insane psychedelic noise rock behemoth, creating 10, 20, even 30 minutes soundscapes of repetitive pummel, drums pounding relentlessly, the guitars spewing white hot psych, a gorgeously hypnotic heavy heavy heavy crush. If you can imagine Les Rallizes Denudes and White Heaven crossed with Circle and Can, but mixed by Wolf Eyes and Merzbow, you wouldn't even be close.
The three tracks here begin white hot and only get hotter, sometimes locking into a groove, but more often then not, burying the groove under blistering squalls of feedback and crumbling distortion, the drums played with baseball bats instead of sticks, the whole band shoved down a mile long flight of stairs, deftly turning their chaotic tumble into some sort of psychedelic rock, but the sort of psychrock that has about as much in common with psych than it does with rock. This is freaked out, spaced out, ultra damaged, utterly gorgeous, ear drum destroying, face melting free psych heaviness.
The final track is the standout here, letting lots of space in, the drums doing some complicated dance in an epic expanse of sizzling feedback, and white hot streaks of guitar skree, damaged effects squiggle wildly, chunks of riffs fly off in all directions only to be swallowed by clouds of buzz and rrrooooaaar, there's even the occasional gorgeous warm chordal swells and creepy melodies, but it's the drums driving instead of the guitar, the whole thing surprisingly pretty and melancholy, although you have to brave a mile of prickly fuzz and explosive amp punishment to get there, but then the journey is always the best part...
Another gorgeously and extravagantly packaged release from aRCHIVE, this one comes in a six panel gatefold, decorated with angular designs in shades of black and brown and white, but that six panel gatefold is housed in another 6 panel gatefold, that one printed on vellum, so the various designs mesh into something completely new, the cd affixed to a nub on the middle panel of the inside gatefold.
LIMITED TO 600 COPIES. We probably will NOT be able to get more once these are gone...
MPEG Stream: "The Frozen Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "The Tangled White"

HOTOTOGISU Robed In Verdigris (Nashazphone) lp 27.00
Another vinyl only missive from the dynamic duo that is Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Total, etc.) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Zaimph, GHQ, etc.) and this one's a loud one. Well, they're all loud ones really, but this one is especially intense and aggressive, a serious slab of guitarnoise as only these two seem to do it.
It begins with thick washes of processed strum and grind, looped and layered, guitars and guitars and guitars, thick and viscous, swirling and whirling and eventually building to a Total like fervor, a keening coruscating high end raga, white hot and blown out, a seriously divine chunk of noisy psychedelia for sure. The rest of the record is just as dense and heavy and thick with guitars, but the high end explorations are scaled back, and the duo instead crawl through a swamp of murky muddy thrum and throb, a caustic morass of crumbling distortion and washed out sonics, with the occasional riff surfacing here and there, but never for long, just long enough to establish that it's an actual riff and not just another layer of droning guitar, before it slips away and once again -is- another layer of droning guitar. There are brief solar flares of high end effulgence, but they too flash briefly before being subsumed by the chaotic distorted black sea below.
Skullflower / Total / Bower / Bassett freaks need this bad. Thick vinyl, beautiful full color sleeves. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Supposedly already sold out at the label, so you know what that means...

INQUISITION Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer (No Colours) lp 18.98
Our favorite release from maybe our favorite weird weird black metal band, now on vinyl!! Gatefold sleeve, with lyrics inside, and of course some band photos that are just completely over the top.
Can the No Colours label do no wrong? Inquisition's Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer is definitely Allan's favorite black metal release of the YEAR (2005 is when it came out, but it would be a shoe in for black metal record of the year EVERY year). So grim, so eerie, so very metal, and weird in a weird way. That is, there's nothing else out there quite like this band. They do that thing that the best black metal bands do: they're both totally of their genre (a formulaic genre, to be extra-redundant) yet manage to be utterly their own thing too. Fans of the elite likes of Burzum, Graveland, Mutiilation, Xasthur, and Immortal ought to immediately bow to Inquisition whilst also recognizing just how different a band they are. And it's also the sort of black metal I might spring on an extremity-friendly music fan even if they were unaware of the above mentioned artists.
Although this was the first I'd heard of Inquisiton, it's actually the third album from this American (Seattle-based, but with Colombian connections?) Satanic black metal band. Redundant again? Sure, all black metal by definition is supposed to be Satanic. But these guys are so SERIOUS about it (well, I don't know for sure... the Inquisition duo of Dagon and Incubus do look kinda silly in the cd booklet photos...but I don't think that's intentional). That they go so over-the-top in their Satan worship is part of what moves them beyond mere stylistic formula and into a realm of obsessive uniqueness.
This record works so well 'cause it's simultaneously weird as fuck (hypnotically croaking vocals, the aforementioned Satanically overloaded lyrix, and strange, keening high-end guitar parts that make this the EERIEST black metal I've heard in aeons) while being fully metal with a rock n' roll backbone: slow-to-mid tempos, memorable riffs, and killer old-school fuzz guitar tone. Indeed, were it not for the love of Lucifer they express with every breath, Inquisition could just has easily have opted to call this album The Glorious Magnificence of Fuzz (though a strain of fuzz quite different from the '60s garage fuzz as heralded elsewhere on this week's list in our review of the Plastic Cloud reissue)! Sonically, that's a big part of what satisfies here, a crucial factor in of Inquisition's equation of extremity. It's truly a heavy, buzzing, trance-like blurr.
It's got to mean something when I (Allan) play something over and over and over again, considering how much (too much) music I'm getting every week. But this was -- is -- in heavy rotation in my home and even though I put it on my iPod I still took the cd itself along with me on vacation as a talisman/token/icon/fetish object just to look at... good thing I don't actually believe in Satan! I even had to go and track down their harder-to-find first two albums, also both excellent, though I do think this is their best... and if you want someone to back me up, note that Leviathan's Wrest himself is a big Inquistion fan, partial to their second album but also of the opinion that this one is brilliant too. So, an AQ black metal rave, make no mistake! Mesmerizing, crushing, gloomy, fucked up, beautiful, genius.
Be warned, the sleeves are a little wonky, as if they were glued strangely, and the paper just wasn't thick enough. When they're closed they seem fine, but the weirdness becomes evident when the sleeve is opened. But beyond that little quibble, how can you possibly resist 'touching the magic hoof, ON VINYL!?!?
MPEG Stream: "Under The Black Inverted Pentagram"
MPEG Stream: "Of Blood And Darkness We Are Born"

LAGAN TAPES, THE s/t (Heart & Crossbone) cd-r 10.98
More amazing sonic weirdness from Israel, from the always amazing Heart & Crossbone label, who in the past have given us releases from Barbara, Lietterschpich, Cadaver Eyes, Grave In The Sky and Mildew. Lagan Tapes is the work of a duo who between the two of them are members of most of the above mentioned bands as well as Panda Porn whose disc is reviewed elsewhere on this list. One half of the duo bangs on on stuff, the other half captures it on tape, and the result is really fantastic. Not as noisy and clattery as you might expect, instead, it's rhythmic and hypnotic, a sort of junkyard Gamelan, recorded in Belfast Ireland, while walking across the Lagan River... metallic clank and rapid fire skitter, thumping on fences and garbage cans and anything else within reach, bare hands on metal, a constantly shifting set of rhythms, all captured on a broken cassette recorder, wrapping the rhythms in all sorts of lo-fi hiss and distorted buzz. Some tracks are hissy and high end, a relentless blast of clank and clatter, others are much more subdued, mellow and meandering, some tracks sound like straight up field recordings, chiming bells, the crash of met