NARROWS, THE Benjamin (Wantage USA) cd 12.98
It's been ages since we've heard from Bellingham Washington's Narrows, whose last two (and only two) records, Alligator and The Skull At Life Size, were huge AQ favorites. Our Narrows obsession was solidified by a mindblowing show at the Hemlock where the band laid waste to all post rock past and present in a matter of 30 or 40 minutes, managing to rock so hard, even with the frontman / guitar player seated the whole time. A mix of lurching loping metallic bombast and lilting whispery post rock moodiness, not like the current crop of metallic post rockers though, no the Narrows were something much more unique... all the best parts of nineties mathrock, June Of 44, Slint, Rodan, but filtered through that weird Bellingham outsider vibe (also responsible for Reeks And The Wrecks) and lovingly wrapped in some serious skull crushing riffage. And of course songs. Killer songs. Moody and mournful, personal and emotional, and catchy as all get out.
We had sort of given up on the Narrows, we knew there was a record in the works, but they sort of seemed to drop off the musical map completely, until all of our fears were assuaged by the sudden appearance of this here brand new full length, that is somehow even better than their first two discs, heavier, prettier, weirder....
Beginning with the nine minute near perfect post rock epic "The Sasquatch", a sequence of big groaning downtuned riffage, huge pounding drums all wrapped around a strange insistent loping groove, with wailed super emo vocals, like a prettier Melvins almost, or a resurrected Engine Kid, some Unwound, a little bit of Sub Pop, a little Amrep. These super dynamic nine minutes might as well go on for 90 minutes as far as we're concerned.
The second track, the even longer "Last Of The Norsemen", is all slithery slowcore, with crooned sadboy vocals, spidery guitar melodies, shuffled drums, until the crashing chorus, a gorgeous minor key stop start lurch, along the same lines as Codeine's "Cave In", with burbling underwater bass added to the mix, and a convoluted mathy arrangement, before drifting back into the moody lope of the first few minutes, peppered with strange slippery guitar chords and unexpected dynamics, somehow totally off kilter and alien sounding, but super catchy and melodic and surprisingly pretty!
"Quellish" is up next with its serpentine distorted crunch and crashing blown out drumming, letting up here and there for some muted shuffle and croon, before the bombast is brought in again, a super emotional musical seesaw, that manages to subvert the tired loud-soft-loud-soft thing and turn it into something new and exciting sounding.
As if the deal wasn't already sealed for best post-math-whatever-rock / slowcore record ever already, they finish it off with the heartwrenching "Over and Out", a sort of damaged Pinback on horse tranquilizers mathy groove, with big booming Albini-ish drums, over blooping underwater bass, and slithery minor key distorted guitar melodies, and a super subtle hook to die for. The song has a wicked, super dramatic coda with crumbling distorted riffing, and super emotional leads, yeah LEADS, what self respecting post rock band can whip out the leads and bring you to your knees without sounding the least bit cheesy? Can't think of very many (or any really)... but The Narrows pull it off effortlessly. There's an "Over and Out" part two, but it's more sort of a coda, that now burned into your ears/heart/soul melody is pulled apart, wrapped in some twangy Morricone-ish guitar, some tinkling music box like keyboards, and allowed to unfurl lazily into the distance, becoming more and more abstract and indistinct, culminating in seven minutes of silence... Needless to say one of our favorite new records, pushing all our buttons, old math rock, new post rock, metal, pop, heavy, pretty, strange... Absolutely and utterly recommended (as is seeing these guys live if you get the chance)!
MPEG Stream: "The Sasquatch"
MPEG Stream: "Last Of The Norsemen"

RACCOO-OO-OON Behold Secret Kingdom (Release The Bats) cd 14.98
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
MPEG Stream: "Black Branches"
MPEG Stream: "Mirror Blanket"
MPEG Stream: "Visage Of The Fox"

MIDNITE SNAKE Shaving The Angel (Birdman) cd 14.98
Good grief, this is the second album AQ's reviewed by Pittsburgh's Midnite Snake and I've only just NOW gotten the terrible pun implicit in their band name. Snake, snack, geddit? Ugh, wish I hadn't! Oh well, let's not hold that pun against 'em, 'cause this is a damn fine disc of raw, in-the-red, motorpsycho, amp-fried garagey geetar heaviness in the tradition of bands like High Rise and The Heads. The cool/curious thing about Midnight Snake is that it's obvious that they're totally IN control of the out-of-control, if your know what we mean. It's weird in a way, for something that's supposed to sound so SCUZZY they're actually not that sloppy.
So, what are this fright-masked trio up to this time 'round? They kick things off by kicking out the jams on the nine-minute "Cruise Control", effects swirling and burbling, bass throbbing, fuzzzzzzzzz baking yr ears to a crisp. Track two, "Sacred Mist" is an even longer jam, moodier at the beginning before building up to the requisite freakout. And then, with track three "Bigfoot '69" they REALLY go off but check out the drumming, tight! It's got all the "get down" energy of something by the late great Lubricated Goat. They follow that up with the mellow "In The Grass", it's all quiet and pretty for over four minutes... what happened??? Smoking grass instead of popping pills we guess, but it's nice. Soon enough, with track five "Shaving The Angel" they're back to the frazzed, fuzzed, frantic sort of stomp-splatter that Midnite Snake fans want to hear from Midnite Snake. Feedback squeal squalls and all. And then, holy crap, the final track number six "Supermodified" is a doozy. Nearly 26 minutes! Mantric noisy space rock mayhem.
File with yr White Hills, Residual Echoes, Comets On Fire... and Japanese stuff like Mainliner, Musica Transonic and Acid Mothers Temple (this actually even LOOKS a helluva lot like an AMT album).
MPEG Stream: "Cruise Control"
MPEG Stream: "Bigfoot '69"

AMON DUUL II Wolf City (Revisited) cd 16.98
Oh, it's great to see old favorites back in print! The ever-reliable Revisited label has bestowed upon us the awesome Wolf City from Amon Duul II. Released in 1972, this is ADII's fifth album and a return to form after two not-as-hot releases, Tanz Der Lemminge and Carnival in Babylon. Much more structured than our two other ADII faves, Yeti and Phallus Dei, Wolf City doesn't waste any time establishing itself but instead gets right down to business. Relying heavily on Renate Knaup's demonic / angelic vocal style through shifting moods from epically dynamic and prog-inflected rock to spacerock jams, and gentle instrumentals. Each track takes us on an unpredictable ride of kraut heaviness with macabre organ, 12 string guitar, screeching violin and all sorts of strange background noises of odd laughing, grunts and choir-like ahhhs. So kickass! A great place to start for the uninitiated, containing as it does several ADII classic trax, among them "Deutsch Nepal". This new reish comes in a nice digipack and includes three bonus tracks: "Kindermoderlied", "Mystic Blutsturz", and "Duulirium".
MPEG Stream: "Wolf City"
MPEG Stream: "Wie Der Wind Am Ende Einer Strasse"
MPEG Stream: "Duulirium"

BLUES CONTROL s/t (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Don't let the punny name fool ya, this surely isn't "blues rock". Nor blues. Nor rock. Not really. Nor is it of Yugoslav origin, despite the biographical misinformation posted on the Holy Mountain website that claims Blues Control to be an obscure '70s psych band from Yugoslavia. Nope, Blues Control are an instrumental Brooklyn duo on guitar and synths and drums, making a wonderfully fucked up yet pleasantly listenable psych-squabble of a sound that's not super easy to describe, actually... let's just say that if it were blues rock, it'd be druggily confused, utterly EXPERIMENTAL blues rock. The eight tracks found on this eponymous debut wander through mellow, spacey passages, interludes of seasick synth symphonics, and blown-out epic episodes full of fuzzed-up motorpsycho guitar leads, drunken and damaged sounding. Blues Control's two-man trash team are up to something strange here, counter-intuitive creativity that can make a cool track out of some pretty piano dropped into a droney wash, followed up by a broken-amp bass solo and some off-kilter beats, ferinstance. This totally fits in on the out-there Holy Mountain label alongside the likes of Residual Echoes and Aufgehoben, especially considering how fractured and distorted they can get, almost like a fuzzed-out Starfuckers on the very first track. We're digging this a lot.
MPEG Stream: "Blues Control"
MPEG Stream: "Boiled Peanuts"
MPEG Stream: "No Sweat"

LANGHORNE, BRUCE The Hired Hand (OST) (Blast First (petite)) cd 13.98
This long time AQ fave has once again been re-pressed, this time with new artwork and in a digipak. Not sure why this keeps going out of print, but if you missed it before, don't blow it this time. We loved it so much we made it record of the week, and were barely able to keep it in stock. Not sure how long it will be around this time either, considering it's habit of constantly going out of print, so dig it while you can!
We weren't really sure what to expect with this one. A lost soundtrack from 1971 (a magic year for music, just ask Allan) to a movie none of us had ever heard of, directed by and starring Peter Fonda. Could go either way. But the second we threw it on, we knew this was IT! A dark and languorous abstract country psych folk gem. Seriously. Hearing this for the first time, you'd be forgiven for guessing it was Scott Tuma, Souled American, Califone, Golden Hotel, Thuja, Woven Hand or some totally obscure cd-r on some little tiny label from some mysterious band of psychedelic country folk minstrels. Slow and mournful, delicate and dreamy, acoustic guitars, farfisa organs, harmonicas and an echoplex. Spare and skeletal, mini epics of melancholic twang. Imagine if Sergio Leone had Ennio Morricone assemble a band cobbled together from members of the Jewelled Antler Collective, the No Neck Blues Band and Souled American to score one of his Westerns. Definitely recommended if you dig any of the folks mentioned above (including Morricone). And if like most of us, you've been digging all sorts of those obscure so-called "new weird America" outfits, maybe it's about time we all dug into some "OLD weird America."
And by the way, now we HAVE seen the film (it was re-released on DVD not too long ago) and it's GREAT!
MPEG Stream: "Opening"
MPEG Stream: "Leaving Del Norte"
MPEG Stream: "Riding Through The Rain"

MOTOR Unhuman (Novamute) cd 15.98
Klunk, the debut from the Sprocketsy electronic duo Motor, was the unexpected dancefloor hit last year here -- that is if AQ had a dancefloor and if you asked Allan what the hit was. Unexpected especially since Allan's not known for his love of club music. Now Motor are back with a new album, Unhuman, and it's got the same distorted techno beat buzz and bleep goin' on, from the jittering funk that is "Bleep #1" to the sinister, more song-y "Night Drive" to the power tool robotics of "Flashback" (other evocative titles include "Drug Punk", "20 Volts Of Steel", and "Sikk"). There's obvious Detroit and Kraftwerk influences, and certainly lots of folks have regurgitated sounds like these since the '80s, but Motor have a special knack for this all right. It's the rigid, relentless, crunching beats, and the synth sizzle... going and going and going... in fact it's hard to write this review as I'm trancing out as I type thisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisis....
Fresh off tour (including a stint opening for industrial icons Nitzer Ebb), these guys are proud of their live, "punk" energy. It's stressed that Motor are a real band not purely the product of a computer or a DJ spinning stuff. As a result they've perhaps incorporated more melody (and vocals, sometimes scarily processed) into the mix this time 'round, but the more machine-like, brutal aspects of the debut haven't been disposed of either, so Allan says thumbs up on this one as well. Definitely get this if you liked their debut as much as he did.
MPEG Stream: "Flashback"
MPEG Stream: "Night Drive"

RUINS Refusal Fossil: Special Edition (Skin Graft) cd 14.98
Back in print! And a "Special Edition" to boot, meaning Skin Graft have made some slight changes to the artwork and, more importantly, tacked on five previously unheard bonus tracks! That makes for 25 tracks in total of frantic riff-packed precision prog punk on this collection of unreleased studio (4 and 8 track recordings) and live material from one of Japan's most amazing bands, the heavy & hyper drum/bass duo led by Tatsuya Yoshida. Originally released in 1997, this disc featured four songs with former bassist Ryuichi Masuda, while the rest heralded the debut of then-new six-string bass man Sasaki Hisashi (since departed, from Ruins that is). The live tracks also have guests from Boredoms/Omoide Hatoba, Tipographica (a saxophonist, for maximum jazz-Ruins dementia) and other bands, jamming on some of the Ruins' "greatest hits", including such favorites as "Hyderomastgroningem", "Burning Stone", "Dhaskrive", "Del Fanci Kant," and "Infect" (that one particularly enhanced with some intense synth keyboard action). The studio material includes some songs originally written as far back as 1988 but never before recorded, all super killer stuff to say the least! We should mention the track "Still Life", a good portion of which almost sounds like something by Italy's Sinistri, it's so abrupt and sparse. Fittingly, the disc ends with their now notorious prog-rock medley, referencing dozens of obscure riffs -- from King Crimson, Yes, Gong, Goblin, Rush, ELP, Samla Mamas Manna, PFM, Caravan, Area, Magma (of course), and many more -- in a lightning-fast fury. Recommended for all Ruins fanatics of course, probably even if you already have the old version, thanks to the bonus tracks...
MPEG Stream: "Calnac"
MPEG Stream: "Hyderomastgroningem"

LIETTERSCHPICH I Cum Blood In The Think Tank (Heart & Crossbone) cd 11.98
Another gorgeously abrasive wall of caustic crushing pounding noise from Israel's answer to Whitehouse. I Cum Blood In The Think Tank! is the first full length from these speaker brutalizing miscreants, and it's just as amazing as the 3" cd-r teaser we reviewed a while back. Like we said in that review, as much as we love Whitehouse, this is what we WISH Whitehouse sounded like. Dizzying swirls of blown out synth buzz, jagged shards of industrial crunch, massive slabs of fuzzed out low end, stumbling lurching rhythmic plod. It's almost like doom metal pulled apart until its noisy splattery insides spill out. The tempos are glacial, the drums are monstrous and sloooooow, the vocals are a glass gargling roar, the soundfield is constantly shifting, layer upon layer upon layer, distant beeps and swooshing FX, massive swells of digital glitch and low end fuzz, electronics glitch and slither, everything is doused in effects and allowed to get all tangled up with all the other sounds. The thing about Lietterschpich is that somehow they make this all SOUND GOOD. This is beautiful noise, there are hooks, melodies, actual parts, they're sort of like real songs, not just long stretches of noisiness, and even at its most abrasive and harsh, it's totally amazing and listenable. Hard to explain why, it's like Bunkur and the Dead C being remixed by Throbbing Gristle. Some tracks have gentle lilting acoustic guitars, but they're doused in white hot streaks of malfunctioning synths and sputtering electronics, others are straight face melting noise, but have hooks buried underneath all the murk and mire, others are buzzy blurry walls of warm sound, but even those tracks eventually transform into prickly icepick in the ear brutality.
It's definitely an intense and punishing listen, fierce and freaked out, druggy and seriously fucking scary, but within that body of blood and bile, lurks a heart of luminous radiance... Noise record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Stockfish!!"
MPEG Stream: "Mud And Fun!!"
MPEG Stream: "I Cum Blood In The Fish Tank!"
MPEG Stream: "Cookies Downtown!!!"

V/A Need For A Crossing: A New New Zealand Vol.1 (Xeric) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
New Zealand's not a big country, but it sure produces its share of amazing experimental drone and indie rock musics, don't it?! The underground scene there, as documented of late by such prolific cd-r labels as Celebrate Psi Phenomenon and PseudoArcana, has been booming for years. If you've been having trouble keeping up, or never tried but would like to delve a bit now into the murky sounds of NZ, then this compilation is pretty much essential. Not a comprehensive primer (impossible on just one disc, anyway) but one that will definitely interest the uninitiated -- as well as be needed by even those who've already got stacks of NZ cd-rs at home, as all ten tracks here, from the likes of Birchville Cat Motel and Peter Wright and other crucial names in the NZ underground, are exclusives to this disc as far as we can tell! If you're new to the "new New Zealand" then this would be an excellent starting point for exploration of the varieties of home-recorded yearning, droning, gritty and beautiful musics coming from that far off, Middle Earth a-like land... On here, you'll find everything from the heavy, almost-doom grind of Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel to the 3-guitars-at-once avant-folk of Greg Malcolm (who has two tracks here, one a stately ceremonial drone raga, the other a cover of John Coltrane's "Naima"). Presented with artist info in a nicely appointed, thick cd booklet, illustrated with old photos of empty New Zealand roads, printed in silvery and black ink on glossy white paper, this cd was put together by the Xeric sub-label of Table Of The Elements with the assistance of New Zealand natives Stefan Neville and Antony Milton, both of whom appear here of course. Really well done and recommended. We're looking forward to further volumes!
MPEG Stream: BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL "Skies Crimson Tears"
MPEG Stream: GREG MALCOLM "Unknown Rembetika"
MPEG Stream: PUMICE "Stars"

V/A Skull Disco: Soundboy Punishments (Skull Disco) 2cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Dub is all about the bass. The darker and more cavernous the better. The more you feel it, the more your fillings rattle, the better. So it makes sense that the same would hold true for dubstep, but maybe to an even greater degree, as the sound of dubstep is even more spare and skeletal than dub, leaving nearly nothing except for the rhythm and the bass.
Soundboy Punishments collects the first 5 vinyl releases from UK label Skull Disco on cd for the first time, and while ostensibly this stuff is dubstep, it almost sounds more like Muslimgauze or old On-U sound stuff or even Spectre at times, but way more stripped down, way heavier, and with the sort of massive undulating bass that washes over everything like a thick black wave.
The first 5 12"s on Skull Disco, split pretty evenly between the artists Shackleton and Appleblim (with one track from Gatekeeper) are all epic slabs of blown out bass heavy skitter, with blurry distant synth and little Eastern flourishes, as well as the occasional dubbed out vocal, smeared into blurred ripples of reverb. Super abstract and minimal, hypnotic and groovy, the beats and shuffling and subtle, not the huge pounding of 'traditional' dubstep, or the manic grind of jungle, instead, the sound is laid waaaaaaay back. A sort of more modern digi-dub, varied percussion, tablas, hand drums, all woven into simple rhythmic frameworks, always with a rumbling low end pulse lurking right beneath the surface, until part way in, the bass DROPS, and suddenly everything has changed, what was a lazy lope is transformed into a throbbing lurch, a wall of gut churning low end, fuzzy and distorted and blown out, sounding almost like the hardest jungle track ever, slooooooooowed way down. The first disc is pretty blissed out, hard to imagine these tracks filling dancefloors, although they have been, it sounds more like music to get wasted, and sort of just lounge about, head nodding, the vibrations washing over you. With all the hype about this disc and these tracks, initially we were a bit let down, but gradually, this has grown on us like crazy to the point where we pretty much don't ever want to listen to anything else.
The second disc is where it gets weirder, and a bit harder, featuring unreleased cuts as well as non-Skull Disco tracks, including the long anticipated nearly twenty minute mix of Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" by Ricardo Villalobos. Anyone who dug that last Villalobos disc, Fizheuer Zieheuer will definitely dig this. Simple shuffling and ultra minimal pulses, stretched out endlessly, so dark and hypnotic, with slow shifting synths in the background. Our only complaint are the vocals, a slowed down mysterious voice intoning apocryphal lyrics over almost the whole song, a la Spectre or the last Plastikman record, it's a little distracting, and we have to say we probably would have liked it without, but even so, it's beginning to growing on us too. The rest of the second disc is like a supercharged version of disc one, more synths, thicker bass, stranger arrangements and creepier melodies, a lot more like slowed down jungle, with heavy beats and reverb and delay everywhere, the more laid back abstract cuts definitely remind us of the Bush Chemists, a totally druggy and dreamy outerspace dub. So good. And based solely on how much this gets played in the shop, this just might be a brand new unanimous AQ fave.
Packaged in a cool, creepy black and white cardboard sleeve that looks way more metal that electronica...
WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: SHACKLETON "Blood On My Hands (R. Villalobos Apocalypso Now Mix)"
MPEG Stream: SHACKLETON "Stalker"
MPEG Stream: APPLEBLIM "Girder"

V/A Skull Disco: Soundboy Punishments (Skull Disco / Rough Trade) 2cd 14.98
Originally a pricey import, now available domestically WAY cheaper ($8 less!), one of our favorite recent collections of kick ass, bass heavy dubstep.
Dub is all about the bass. The darker and more cavernous the better. The more you feel it, the more your fillings rattle, the better. So it makes sense that the same would hold true for dubstep, but maybe to an even greater degree, as the sound of dubstep is even more spare and skeletal than dub, leaving nearly nothing except for the rhythm and the bass.
Soundboy Punishments collects the first 5 vinyl releases from UK label Skull Disco on cd for the first time, and while ostensibly this stuff is dubstep, it almost sounds more like Muslimgauze or old On-U sound stuff or even Spectre at times, but way more stripped down, way heavier, and with the sort of massive undulating bass that washes over everything like a thick black wave.
The first 5 12"s on Skull Disco, split pretty evenly between the artists Shackleton and Appleblim (with one track from Gatekeeper) are all epic slabs of blown out bass heavy skitter, with blurry distant synth and little Eastern flourishes, as well as the occasional dubbed out vocal, smeared into blurred ripples of reverb. Super abstract and minimal, hypnotic and groovy, the beats and shuffling and subtle, not the huge pounding of 'traditional' dubstep, or the manic grind of jungle, instead, the sound is laid waaaaaaay back. A sort of more modern digi-dub, varied percussion, tablas, hand drums, all woven into simple rhythmic frameworks, always with a rumbling low end pulse lurking right beneath the surface, until part way in, the bass DROPS, and suddenly everything has changed, what was a lazy lope is transformed into a throbbing lurch, a wall of gut churning low end, fuzzy and distorted and blown out, sounding almost like the hardest jungle track ever, slooooooooowed way down. The first disc is pretty blissed out, hard to imagine these tracks filling dancefloors, although they have been, it sounds more like music to get wasted, and sort of just lounge about, head nodding, the vibrations washing over you. With all the hype about this disc and these tracks, initially we were a bit let down, but gradually, this has grown on us like crazy to the point where we pretty much don't ever want to listen to anything else.
The second disc is where it gets weirder, and a bit harder, featuring unreleased cuts as well as non-Skull Disco tracks, including the long anticipated nearly twenty minute mix of Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" by Ricardo Villalobos. Anyone who dug that last Villalobos disc, Fizheuer Zieheuer will definitely dig this. Simple shuffling and ultra minimal pulses, stretched out endlessly, so dark and hypnotic, with slow shifting synths in the background. Our only complaint are the vocals, a slowed down mysterious voice intoning apocryphal lyrics over almost the whole song, a la Spectre or the last Plastikman record, it's a little distracting, and we have to say we probably would have liked it without, but even so, it's beginning to growing on us too. The rest of the second disc is like a supercharged version of disc one, more synths, thicker bass, stranger arrangements and creepier melodies, a lot more like slowed down jungle, with heavy beats and reverb and delay everywhere, the more laid back abstract cuts definitely remind us of the Bush Chemists, a totally druggy and dreamy outerspace dub. So good. And based solely on how much this gets played in the shop, this just might be a brand new unanimous AQ fave.
Packaged in a cool, creepy black and white cardboard sleeve that looks way more metal that electronica...
WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: SHACKLETON "Blood On My Hands (R. Villalobos Apocalypso Now Mix)"
MPEG Stream: SHACKLETON "Stalker"
MPEG Stream: APPLEBLIM "Girder"

V/A Nordic Metal: A Tribute To Euronymous (Karmageddon Media) cd 16.98
There are a handful of compilations, so well thought out, so well put together, with just the perfect artists and the best songs, that function like an impossibly perfect record. If you could somehow imagine that said compilation was in fact, a record by some band it would be absolutely the greatest record ever. Never has that been more true than in the case of a couple of black metal comps from back in the nineties. One is the amazing Darkthrone tribute, Darkthrone Holy Darkthrone, an absolutely stellar comp featuring Satyricon, Enslaved, Marduk, Thorns, Emperor, Dodheimsgard, Gorgoroth. So it should come as no surprise that another 'perfect record' comp is this one right here, Nordic Metal: A Tribute To Euronymous. While we're still waiting for that Darkthrone comp to be reissued, it's no small consolation that this one has been resurrected, to demonstrate once again, that no matter how amazing bands are now and how far black metal has come, it really was never better than in 1995.
A tribute to Euronymous, the fallen leader of Mayhem, who was murdered by Count Grishnack aka Burzum, beginning the non-musical 'Lords Of Chaos' saga of Norwegian black metal that would become tabloid fodder for the next decade, this compilation was actually already in the works as a showcase for the Scandinavian bands of the time, but Euronymous ended up dying before he could release it on his own label Deathlike Silence. So it was completed by his allies at Necropolis Records (RIP) as a tribute to their fallen 'leader'.
Like that Darkthrone comp, a look at the bands should be enough to tell you that this is something special: Abruptum, Mayhem, Dissection, Emperor, Mysticum, Marduk, Thorns, Opthalamia, Enslaved, Mortiis and Arcturus. Basically every band that mattered, the bands that defined Nordic black metal. Plus these aren't just any tracks, these are almost all some of these bands' best tracks.
Abruptum's "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet" is still a tweaked and damaged BM classic, completely unhinged, with angelic female vocals, warbly pitch shifts, blackened blasts, and those vocals... the perfect way to start things off. Next up "The Freezing Moon" by Euronymous and Mayhem, frosty and grim, but melodic and catchy and an all time classic. The reverb drenched blasts sandwiched between gorgeously melancholy melodies. And then Disssection's "Where Dead Angels Lie", maybe one of the greatest black metal songs of all time, with a killer fucking hook and some of the most amazing guitar playing EVER. And it just goes on from there, most serious black metal fans will most likely have all of these tracks, but it's like the ultimate BM primer. If they taught a class in black metal, this would absolutely be essential listening. (And it was indeed studied intently by those of us who were working here at Aquarius back during our big black metal discovery phase in the mid-nineties, we have fond memories of this album!).
Other highlights include Thorns' "Aerie Descends", a lurching slow motion blackened trudge, with creepy circusy keyboards and weird whispered vocals, a very cabaret vibe mixed in with seriously grim blackness. Then there's a killer rehearsal version of Emperor's "Moon Over Kata-Shehr" which proves it wasn't the production or the recordings that made them so good, it's the songs. Epic and complex and fucking fantastic. There's some classic Enslaved, and even back then at their grimmest and most buzzy, they still demonstrated all sorts of prog tendencies.
Pretty much every track on here is essential. Even if you have most of these, it's like the ultimate classic black metal mixtape, and like we mentioned before, if you've been hesitant to explore black metal, this is probably the best possible place to start!
MPEG Stream: ABRUPTUM "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet"
MPEG Stream: THORNS "Aeire Descends"
MPEG Stream: ENSLAVED "Loke"
MPEG Stream: EMPEROR "The Ancient Queen"

KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT Untitled (Fonal) cd 17.98
Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (and Avarus, and Anaksimandros, and Uton, and Lau Nau, and Doktor Kettu, etc.) are often referred to as "forest-folk", implying some sort of quiet, gentle rustling mystery amidst the trees, and sometimes that's quite the case. But the first few tracks here, on Kemialliset's latest, would certainly scare off any friendly small animals -and- wake up the sleeping forest trolls. It's woozy woodsy cacophony unleashed. This be outsider "folk" at its most abstract and noisy and "free". But, by track four or five things have calmed down a bit, the sounds have gotten more organized. Some charismatic, long-haired, bearded guru has obviously taken charge of the previously wild music-makers, their pagan energy now channelled down paths previously trod unshod by the likes of Parson Sound and Amon Duul... more mellow and musical, still druggy and damaged. Track six, "Superhimmeli", comes off like something by cult '60s ESP tribe Cromagnon!! (Perhaps due to having the same keening horn cry as heard in Cromagnon's "Caledonia".) There's a hippy chant drone density to a lot of this that's VERY satisfying. It's like an ancient celebration underway, wooden space rock rituals, accompanied by electronic squiggles or birds atwitter, burbling and gurgling sounds in the margins... sunshiney yet strange, very strange. Fonal thinks this is one of their best yet and we wouldn't argue.
NB. There IS vinyl of this, but unfortunately the copies we got were damaged -- we're expecting replacements from Finland soon, though.
MPEG Stream: "Tulinen Kiihdytys"
MPEG Stream: "Superhimmeli"
MPEG Stream: "Himmeli Kutsuu Minua"

RIDE FOR REVENGE King Of Snakes (Northern Heritage) cd 15.98
We talk a lot about how weird Finland is, so before we go any further, let us apologize to the majority of Finland who to be fair are probably not weird at all. Now that we've got that out of the way, HOLY SHIT! Is there no end to the amazing and damaged and demented music coming out of Finland. We're beginning to think not.
The latest evidence comes in the form of the brand new full length from Ride For Revenge, who we first heard a while back on a split with fellow countrymen Torturium, their half of the split a downtuned black trudge, like Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT but with that impossible to describe Finnish something that transforms everything into some special sort of what-the-fuck. Creepy synths, plodding drums, grinding guitar and harsh vocals, not exactly black metal, not in the traditional sense at least, but most definitely metal.
On King Of Snakes however, the band have gotten even weirder, and distinctly less metal, but no less heavy. Supposedly there are guitars, but to our ears it just sounds like just drums and lots and lots of bass. Each song a plodding doomic lurch, the drums pounding out a simple rhythm, the riff repeating over and over, most songs with just a single part, very mesmerizing and hypnotic. Like a caveman Circle or a guitarless Gore, these guys just bash out endlessly cycling looped low end and killer crushing doom drum pound. The vocals are a super affected gurgling growl, not in the death metal sense, instead, super dramatic, intoning unspeakable evils, a rumbling demonic baritone, peppered with the occasional super delay drenched goat metal grunt.
Some tracks also have cool creepy keyboards as well, that add all sort of mood and texture, and it's not cheesy metal synth either, it's all strange analog buzz, a sort of krautrocky blur draped over the endlessly pounding groove.
Ride For Revenge are another one of those black metal bands, who seem to be black metal more out of pedigree than sound, but even though this doesn't sound like metal, it is most definitely black. It sounds a bit like Godheadsilo jamming with Finnish alchemical dronelords Tiermes, with the occasional injection of Hawkwinded FX and SUNN-drenched rumble, mysterious and murky swaths of throbbing low end thrum wrapped around the drums like some evil warlock's cloak.
Imagine if Amphetamine Reptile was a black metal label... then these guys would be Halo Of Flies... Most definitely one of our new favorite 'black metal' records...
MPEG Stream: "Erotic Needs In Emotional Void"
MPEG Stream: "Disturbed By Spiritual Tormentors"
MPEG Stream: "Death Of The Feeble Masses"

MALACHI Holy Music (Fallout) cd 16.98
Awesome. A few years ago, some friends of ours -- the Jewelled Antler guys as a matter of fact -- had a once-in-a-lifetime record collector wet dream come true experience while on a day trip up north of San Francisco. They came across some sort of town dump / recycling center place where a whole bunch of old vinyl lps had been left free for the taking. Like, someone's entire record collection! Of course our friends expected to find the usual beat-up Bread, Eagles, Simon and Garfunkel albums, but took a look anyway, just in case... and soon realized they'd stumbled upon a small cache of extremely cool, rare records! Obscure psych rock and free jazz stuff. Terry Riley and Alice Coltrane and even some Yahowha 13 lps!! Lucky bastards. Among the treasures was an album on Verve by someone called Malachi. We got to hear it, were wowed, and ever since have been hoping to find a cd reissue... at last, here it is!!
Psychedelic New Age before either terms were widely known or even invented, Holy Music was recorded one late San Francisco evening in 1966 by proto hippie Malachi. While most people consider psychedelic music of this time to be from garage rock bands who used sitars, Holy Music was truly one of the first psychedelic recordings in the way we define that term nowadays, meaning long and druggy, hypnotic, droney and blissed out. These five pieces named Wednesday (the day in which he recorded them) are raga-tinged guitar cycles accompanied by Jews harp, tom toms and meditative chanting, that bridged an eastern ornamentalism with earthy western counter-cultural invention. Malachi was the Animal Collective of his day. Allen Ginsberg was a big fan, and if you like your psychedelia to be both dreamy, drifty and earthy then we're sure you'll be big fans of Malachi too. Recommended!!!
MPEG Stream: "Wednesday - Second"
MPEG Stream: "Wednesday - Fifth"

V/A On The Brink (Psychic Circle) cd 16.98
Oh yeah! I'm sure you all remember in your youth, just going nuts on the dance floor, shaking and frugging and getting down to the latest smash from the likes of The Shock Absorbers ("It's Your Thing"), The Keith Mansfield Orchestra ("Soul Thing"), or Ken Woodman's Picadilly Brass ("Mexican Flier"), right? Whew, those were the days! What, you weren't making the scene in swinging sixties London? Well this comp should give you some idea what it maybe might have coulda been like, it's called On The Brink. Subtitled: Return Of The Instro-Hipsters. And the cover blurb goes on to state: "A happening and eclectic mix of vintage instrumental grooviness from the UK, with sitars, flutes, organs, horns and fuzz guitars." And that's no lie. This cd, compiled by none other than noted psych record collector Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond, is a veritable cornucopia of late '60s/early '70s instrumental toe-tappers from studio-bound big bands and nightclub combos letting their hair down and getting their funk on, swank stuff that could be the soundtrack to the coolest cocktail party ever. Delightfully goofy, some of this, dated of course, and verging on the psychedelic for sure... especially Stanley Myers' "Organ Fantasia In D Major", now that's an awesomely groovy freakout. Myers is one of the few names we already know here, session sitar guy Big Jim Sullivan being another, but it's nice to also become acquainted with the often ephemeral likes of The Chris Barber Soul Band, Trax Four, The Mike Cotton Sound, The Les Reed Orchestra, The Fidd, The Vic Flick Sound, and all the rest. 20 bands, 20 tracks, jazzy and snazzy, lush and bombastic, racy and romantic... not a clunker in the bunch, though we might have to frown about how much The John Schroder Orchestra's "Nightrider" sounds sooo much like the famous theme to Batman. Definitely if you love library music, or those In-Kraut compilations, this is kinda like the UK version of the same sort of thing, almost... and being British and from the swinging sixties, it's also no wonder that a lot of this could fit nicely in a spy movie, some of it very James Bond/Austin Powers sounding. The cd booklet includes notes on each track, photos, and lots of bright color. Right on.
MPEG Stream: MIKE VICKERS "On The Brink"
MPEG Stream: STANLEY MYERS "Organ Fantasia In D Major"
MPEG Stream: WYNDER K. FROG "I'm A Man"

V/A Ed Rec Vol. 2 (Ed Banger) cd 14.98
We often feel like we're totally out of the loop when it comes to dance music. And as if to prove that point, every once in a while we'll randomly stumble across a disc that totally kicks our ass, only to realize, that the world at large had already been hyping said disc to death. Such is the case with this second comp of far out futuristic electro weirdness from Ed Banger Records. We sort of just picked it up on a whim (some AQ folks were already hip to it, we're not all dance music squares) and were immediately smitten. Wild and fun, funky and funny, heavy and fuzzy and if the person writing this review actually danced, this disc would have had him out of his seat like a shot.
No need to do a total track by track run down, as every single song here is a killer, a few names we knew, most we didn't, but the sound is crazy. And fucking awesome. It's like the music of LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, but supercharged, injected with youthful energy and punk rock snottiness, peppered with more distortion and buzz, fucked up beats, off kilter loops and samples, but remaining totally hooky and danceable.
Some of the best tracks:
The killer dis track "Dismissed" from Uffie, a killer slab of seriously foul mouthed electro nastiness using a bastardized version of what sounds like Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" as the main loop, but it's all about the vitriolic invective, what sounds like a nasty teenage white girl awkwardly rapping and spitting all sorts of goofy playground insults.
Ultra hyped next big things Justice who do their best Daft Punk, and offer up a super damaged cop-show block rockin' beat workout with machine like rhythms and cool crumbling synthy bass lines and awesome glitched out buzz drenched synthesized riffage.
Krazy Baldhead who come closest to Jones Machine for sheer mindless electronic bliss, throbbing synths, bouncing bass, another track that sounds like some futuristic chase scene.
Sebastian, who offers up a blast of ultra distorted beats, weird blown out fuzzy loops, the whole thing chopped and hiccuping like some radio with bad reception or a turntable with fuzz all over the needle.
We could go on and on. Needless to say, every time we play this in the store folks go nuts for it, and even some of the dance music phobic we know have been rocking this like crazy! Some of the other folks on the comp: Mr. Oizo, DJ Mehdi, Mr. Flash, Feadz, Busy P, Klaxons, Fancy and Vicarious Bliss.
Way recommended.
MPEG Stream: UFFIE "Dismissed"
MPEG Stream: JUSTICE "Phantom"
MPEG Stream: KRAZY BALDHEAD "Strings Of Death"

JONESY Ricochet (Cherry Red) cd 15.98
Blimey, here's a "best of" from an early '70s UK prog band we'd never even heard of before, but we are now firm fans of (these nine tracks, at least). Ah, thank the gods for cd reissues and anthologies like this one, catching us up with worthy obscurities from way back when. Nothin' dusty here, as Jonesy kicks out some vigorous, vibrant, jazzy tunage all across this disc, offering up selections from their three albums (No Alternative '72, Keeping Up '73, and Growing, also '73) featuring searing horns, hard-charging guitars, melodic vocals -- and full-on mellotron abuse. The opening cut, "1958" sets the tone, and comes off sort of like Lalo "Mission Impossible" Schifrin meets Caravan. Meanwhile, at the far end of the disc, the wah-wah trumpet stylings of the 11+ minute "Jonesy" remind us the heck of '70s Miles, cool. And in-between, there's lots to like as well. It's propulsive stuff, energetic and superbly played, less about show-offy compositional complexifications (though there's enough of that to keep it prog!) or pretentious concepts (no Lord Of The Rings fantasies from these guys) than wild soloing combined with solid groove.
The liner notes cite such influences and/or comparisons as King Crimson and Nucleus, and they'd be right about those two for sure... we might suggest a little early Chicago as well (hey Chicago's first album is pretty killer, trust us!). Amon Duul II and Neu! are also mentioned, but we can't quite see exactly how those krautrockers can be heard here. But we'd agree that the grooviness and experimentation of Jonesy give them something of a Continental character.
As "prog" becomes more and more the "in" thing (hadn't you noticed?), the time is certainly right for a band like Jonesy to get some posthumous props. We'd suggest, ferinstance, that fans of Crime In Choir should investigate forthwith.
MPEG Stream: "1958"
MPEG Stream: "No Alternative"

JODOROWSKY, ALEJANDRO The Films Of Alejandro Jodorowsky: Fando Y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain (Anchor Bay) 4dvd/2cd 49.00
Visionary cult cinephiles get ready to drool! If you were as excited as we were about the recent reissue of Kenneth Anger's early films, then this incredibly packaged and affordable 4dvd+2cd box set of the early films of Chilean theatrical genius Alejandro Jodorowsky will surely make your head explode!!! Fando Y Lis! El Topo!!, HOLY MOUNTAIN!!!! Marvelously restored and beautifully remastered, there is so much amazing material here that has either never been available before, or only available previously as extremely hard to find poor quality transfers from mediocre prints.
AND there's more! This set also includes the absolutely killer SOUNDTRACKS to both El Topo and yes, Holy Mountain!!! The Holy Mountain Soundtrack has never been released before and it so totally kills, and why wouldn't it, Don Cherry is all over it! But more about that in a minute, there's also bonus features, interviews, deleted scenes, audio commentary, a documentary and a short film from 1957 that was presumed lost until it was found early last year.
So for those who may be unfamiliar with Jodorowsky's films, a bit of back story:
Born in Chile and struggling to become an actor, Jodorowsky became fed up with the idea of scripted theatre and moved to Paris to study mime. Working with the great mime, Marcel Marceau while at the same time influenced by the Surrealists, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, Jean Cocteau's mythical fantasias, and the European Art House cinema of Fellini and Bunuel, Jodorowsky relocated to Mexico to form the theatre troupe, The Panic Movement, which would stage early happenings (involving lots of nudity and rotting food) and existentialist plays by Ionesco, Beckett and Fernando Arrabel. It was Arrabel's play, "Fando Y Lis" that would inspire him to move away from the theatre into cinema, but far from any structured or direct form of filmmaking. Jodorowsky wanted to re-interpret Arrabel's play by filming it completely from memory and in a remote and ruggedly extreme locale. Here he would bring together all the soul-baring psyche of experimental theatre, the role-playing excess of costumes, props and pageantry, the ritualistic entanglements of violence and beauty as catalysts of transformation, and most importantly the notion of existence as a journey through all kinds of personal and mystical revelations both sacred and profane. All of these qualities permeate each of the three films here.
Ok, you get the idea. So let's just break it down for you, what you get from this awesome box set:
--Fando Y Lis (1968): Jodorowsky's first full length black and white feature started riots at its premiere at the Acapulco Film Festival and was banned in Mexico due to its violent sexual imagery and ritualistic mocking of church beliefs. Based on Arrabel's play about a pair of dysfunctional lovers (one impotent, the other paralyzed) in a Fellini-esque quest for the spiritual city of Tar.
Extras on this disc include the 1994 French documentary, La Constellation which features interviews with Marcel Marceau, Peter Gabriel (who was inspired by El Topo, when he wrote The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway), and the French sci-fi illustrator, Moebius, who began working with Jodorowsky on the failed attempt to film Frank Herbert's Dune, which sparked Jodorowsky's interest in graphic novels.
--El Topo (1970): The bloody surreal western that spawned the Midnight Movie. Funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, this film is like a Sergio Leone film on a serious dose of brown acid.
Extras include an interview with Jodorowsky about the Midnight Movie phenomenon.
--Holy Mountain (1973): The ultimate spiritual quest film. Jodorowsky takes us through every imaginable belief system only to completely shatter our preconceptions about spiritual enlightenment.
Extras include deleted scenes and commentary about Jodorowsky's continuing interest in the Tarot.
--La Cravate (1957): A 35 minute silent film in color based on Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads about a girl who sells heads and the men who are her customers. This film was presumed lost until its discovery last year in someone's attic in Germany!
--El Topo Soundtrack: 18 tracks composed by Jodorowsky and John Barham inspired by both the soundtrack work of Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota. Full of flutes and droning horns, accordions and organs and twisted Mariachi styles.
--Holy Mountain Soundtrack: 24 tracks composed by Jodorowsky, Don Cherry and Ronald Frangipane. Ranging from spiritual free drones to acid rock to Moroccan desert jams to pensive marches to soft jazz and everywhere in between. There are even themes for each of the nine planetary characters. Such a wild, weird, and wonderful soundtrack and it alone is worth the price of admission.
Phew! So can you guess, that this is totally and absolutely recommended!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "La Catedral De Los Puercos (The Pigs Monastery)"
MPEG Stream: "Vals Fantasma"
MPEG Stream: "Las Flores Nacen En El Barro (Flowers Born In the Mud)"
MPEG Stream: "Trance Mutation"
MPEG Stream: "Psychedelic Weapons"
MPEG Stream: "Baby Snakes"

EARTHLESS Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky (Tee Pee) cd 16.98
Their indubitably stonery name Earthless makes sense right away, when you consider how much the intro to the first track, "Godspeed", sounds like a spaceship taking off. Then the riffs kick in, aggressively establishing a higher orbit from whence their guitarist can launch further into space, continuing onward and upward into the "cosmic sky" to free minds, asses, whathaveyou.
Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky (sounds like an Uli Jon Roth album title!) is the second album from San Diego's heaviest and most mindblowing instrumental psych guitar-centric power trio, featuring Hot Snakes drummer Mario Rubalcaba, bassist Mike Eginton, and most crucially, guitarist Isaiah Mitchell. They're known for the eternal jamming of their live shows, Isaiah soloing endlessly (like, for a whole hour!) and seemingly effortlessly, channelling the spirits of guitar heroes past like Jimi Hendrix and Randy Holden. Trower, Roth, West, Marino, Iommi too. Dude's such a great guitarist!!! And the rhythm section here backs him up oh-so-solidly.
As with their previous record, you get two "side-long" pieces, starting with the five-part "Godspeed", nearly 21 minutes that turn up the Breadfan and get really intensely Metallica'd after some prog-jazz organ flourishes, with galloping chug awesomeness in sorta Champsy vein (and it's Tim Green from the Fucking Champs guesting on organ on this track, he recorded this album at his Louder Studios). Yeah it gets remarkably metal, then swings back to the Hendrix/Holden style wailing.
If all this too muchness ain't enough, then there's another, even slightly longer track following, "Sonic Prayer", in which Earthless continue to outdo all yer Hendrix, Hawkwind, Flower Travellin' Band, psych guitar freakout fantasies. And heavy as it all is, it's also super smooth sailing. Perhaps imagine a jammier Mammatus, or a more disciplined Acid Mothers Temple, or a more expansive Stinking Lizaveta...
Also, we've mentioned before that fans of the Groundhogs should like this band, and what do we find here? As a special cd-only bonus, there's an extra 4 minutes 36 seconds of Earthless covering "Cherry Red" from the Groundhogs' masterpiece of prog-blues heaviness, 1971's Split. Of course they do it perfectly, with spot-on vocals, even!
Their new label Tee Pee has done this up right, putting the cd in mini-lp sleeve gatefold packaging, with suitable hippy-skull artwork inside, very convincingly like it's an Akarma label reissue of some lost treasure from long ago, kinda like it sounds.
MPEG Stream: "Godspeed"
MPEG Stream: "Sonic Prayer"

FLIED EGG Dr. Siegel's Fried Egg Shooting Machine (Universal Japan) cd 22.00
Freaky early '70s psych rock from Japan here folks, as you may know already on account of how we highlighted the reissue of this band's second album on our last list. This one, with a truly hard-to-beat title, was Flied [sic] Egg's debut, released originally in 1972, on Vertigo -- with Flied Egg one of the few, if not only, Japanese acts to appear on the roster of that legendary UK-based label known for proto-metal, jazz-prog and other "hairy funk" delights. This album dishes such delights all over the place, ranging from the Blue Cheer meets Uriah Heep heaviness of "Rolling Down The Broadway" to the weird choral interlude of "15 Seconds Of Schizophrenic Sabbath" to the classical prog flourishes of "Oke-Kus" (sounding like a warped version of ELP) to the sheer hippie psych-pop lunacy of the title track. And more! All in all, this is quite as crazy as its Dali-esque cover painting indicates. Definitely an essential for our Japanese '70s psych section, and anyone who loves them some acid rock guitar!
MPEG Stream: "Dr. Siegel's Fried Egg Shooting Machine"
MPEG Stream: "Burning Fever"

FLIED EGG Goodbye (Universal Japan) cd 22.00
Yes that's right, Flied not Fried Egg. Uh, 'cause they're Japanese. Think about it. Hey, it's their joke. Anyway, this one's for all you '70s heaviness lovin' proto-metal fans, it's something that we got in along with the Flower Travellin' Band reissues we listed last time. Goodbye is Flied Egg's second of two albums (both '72, and both on the famed Vertigo label, best known as the home of Black Sabbath). We also intend to review their first one, with the marvelous title of Dr. Siegel's Fried Egg Shooting Machine, which as you might guess is some pretty wild acid psych. We decided to list Goodbye first, though, just 'cause we can simply say it's a no-brainer for Blue Cheer fans.
Basically, this album is distinctly (even on cd) split between two sides, the first half recorded live, possibly at their farewell concert, we'd guess from the title. This in-concert portion is the heaviest, it's all bad ass fuzzed out blooze rawk swagger that makes us think Blue Cheer, Blue Cheer, Blue Cheer! (Also Grand Funk/Cactus/Mountain.) Hear 'em rile up a cheering crowd with these party-pleasers: "Leave Me Woman", "Rolling Down The Broadway" (a stompin' composition that appears in a studio version on their debut), Josea/King's "Rock Me Baby", and the twelve-minute-plus "Five More Pennies", which includes a drum solo in addition to all the acid guitar excess. Following all that, the studio half of the album gets a bit more proggy and wigged out (ending with a multi-part piece entitled "521 Seconds Schizophrenic Symphony"!) while also containing a couple of mellower melodic numbers, the sad and gentle "Out To Sea" and "Goodbye My Friends".
Members of Flied Egg also did time in some other hard rockin' underground Japanese psych acts whose reissues we've previously reviewed, including Strawberry Path and Brush!?... if you dig those, or the likes of FTB, Blues Creation, Speed Glue & Shinki, or Too Much, then Flied Egg is for you too.
MPEG Stream: "Rolling Down The Broadway (live)"
MPEG Stream: "Five More Pennies (live)"

FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND Anywhere (Universal Japan) cd 22.00
At long last, back in stock! The cd reissue of the 1970 debut album from AQ faves Flower Travellin' Band is still a Japanese import, but on a different label at a cheaper price (yay!), and is now housed in a regular jewelcase this time rather than a mini-lp styled sleeve. Before we launch into what's gonna be relatively long-winded review, let's just state up front that this has the best album cover EVER: the band themselves cruising down a rural highway on choppers wearing nothing but their birthday suits!! But if that's not enough to get you to buy this, read on...
As you may know, we've given a big thumbs up to the album Satori, the masterpiece from Japanese '70s psych rockers the Flower Travellin' Band [Satori is is also back in stock in a Japanese pressing, reviewed this list too].
Anywhere doesn't quite scale the heights of Satori but it'll help you to understand how they got there. Along with a great take on "House Of The Rising Sun" (a nod to Frijid Pink?), this album also explicitly demonstrates, via covers, these Japanese freaks' radical recognition of the genius of two of their Western contemporaries, Black Sabbath and King Crimson. Like many other great artists, with humble beginnings Japan's Flower Travellin' Band cut their teeth on the material of their mentors. Though Anywhere is primarily a covers album, it's also quite a testament to both the band's veracity in their reproductions and their creativity in realigning the building blocks of rock & roll. Their cover of Black Sabbath's self-titled track was actually recorded in the same year as the original and their version of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" only a year after its release. And they aren't merely content to play only the "Schizoid Man" opening riff, like so many other bands that have attempted to cover it, but take on the entire piece in all its schizophrenic freaked out glory, getting waaay into the improv element of the mid-section. The same is true for "Black Sabbath" and you have to appreciate singer Joe's take on the unique Ozzy voice. The most interesting track on the record though has to be their attempt at straight-up blues rock -- while their "Louisiana Blues" starts and finishes almost pedestrianly enough on the "Minglewood Blues" riff by Gus Cannon (of Cannon's Jug Stompers) that was popularized in the rock scene by the likes of The Grateful Dead and Captain Beefheart, the interior of the song is a complete departure of sorts. Not only devoid of the original progression, it's not even "bluesy" at all. Here in the extended jam that makes up the meat of this musical sandwich, the Flower Travellin' Band's Eastern roots surface a bit. It's a precursor to the sound of their later albums Satori and Made In Japan.
MPEG Stream: "Louisiana Blues"
MPEG Stream: "Black Sabbath"

FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND Satori (WEA Japan) cd 26.00
ALL RIGHT! BACK IN STOCK!! An all-time AQ fave here, that we've been unable to get for much too long. At last, we've got a Japanese import which, while more expensive than the version on defunct UK label Radioactive, is much nicer lookin' and undoubtedly more legit. So if you missed it before, we absolutely recommend that you pick it up now! Here's our original enthused review of this classic:
This is an album (and a band) that are not celebrated nearly enough -- possibly out of misguided notions of their being another bad psych knock-off among the many crowding the record racks in the early seventies. But Japan's Flower Travellin' Band were no mere cheesy imitators of occidental rock 'n roll, they were in actual fact a full-fledged, pioneering tour de force of psychedelic progressive hard rock, equaling the krautrock heavies of the era. FTB can be compared favorably to Amon Duul's better efforts with their experimental meandering (think Yeti), and the best trancey spaceouts from Can. Yet there's never a sense that FTB lose track of their compositions no matter how far out they take a track. Perhaps because even more than these experimental Krautrockers, FTB's heavy (fucking ominously heavy) sound points to a major Sabbath, Purple, and Crimson influence. Released in 1971, Satori is the band's second and arguably best album. From the first screech/howl at the beginning of track one -- "Satori Part I" (the tracks on the album are all "Satori", parts I-V) -- from vocalist Joe, who inhabits a zone somewhere between Can's Damo Suzuki and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, the album gets straight down to business. Joe's scream is followed by a foreboding bass, guitar and drum dirge that's straight up collision between Cream and Black Sabbath in which no one survives. It's got so much more teeth than either, it's not even funny, predating punk by a good many years. "Satori Part II" however is quintessential FTB Over a pounding tribal drumbeat, alternating between a buzzing sitar-esque guitar drone and a melody line that curls ripples and lilts like a plume of burning incense smoke, guitarist Hideki Ishima lays out one of the creepiest, coolest guitar leads ever. If that ain't enough, vocalist Joe's singing is like that of Axl Rose being channelled by the Sun City Girls! Even if the rest of the album were total shit -- which it ain't -- the cost of this cd would still be well worth it for this song alone! "Part III" -- an instrumental -- picks up where II leaves off but slows the tempo down to a deathly pace, which makes it even heavier. This is the Sabbath influence on FTB writ large. Replete with an improv freakout before returning to the original riff and building into a frenzied crescendo. Needless to say, if you weren't bobbing your head at the beginning of the song, you will be by its end. "Part IV" could be considered FTB's "blues" number, with Joe picking up the harmonica instead of singing. But instead of churning out the expected twelve bar formula, FTB truncate the form and construct a minimalist jam around a short riff instead. "Part V" shows yet another facet of FTB's seemingly infinite potential with Hideki (?) playing some kick ass, spooky koto-like guitar overdubbed on top of some heavy psych. Damn! They could have done ten fucking albums around this schtick alone and probably never lost our interest... sigh... Absolutely, fucking recommended!!!!
That's what we said then, and we still mean it now -- to this day, almost any time you come into the store, you might well hear the Flower Travellin' Band blaring. Well, especially now that it's back in stock. YEAH!!!
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part II"
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part III"

FOOD BRAIN Social Gathering (Universal Japan) cd 22.00
Another reissue of heavy psychedelic weirdness from early '70s Japan, in the same series as the Flied Egg and Flower Travellin' Band discs we've listed lately. Food Brain features the Hammond organ excess of Hiro Yanagida and the acid fried guitar of Shinki Chen (names you might know from other outfits like Speed, Glue and Shinki, Love Live Life +1, April Fool, and solo too). As well, Hiro Tsunoda (the Jacks, Strawberry Path, Flied Egg) is on drums, and Luis Kabe (Golden Cups) on bass. Together on this, their only album (1970), they cook up a progressive, confusionally avant-garde feast of bluesy riffage, freeform improv, drug-addled humor, and hippie rawk heaviosity. There's plenty of raw jamming, the sort of stuff these guys would probably have loved to bring to the ballrooms of San Francisco... but amidst and among, there's lots of weirder moments too, more at home in the krautrock realm perhaps. For instance, the brief track five, "The Conflict Of The Hippo And The Pig", what sounds like a guy maniacally playing a straw. Or the entirety of the epic quarter-hour 8th track, "The Hole In A Sausage", which features a horn-grunting free jazz freakout in collision with a near-metallic distorted bass riff on a famous classical symphonic theme.
MPEG Stream: "That Will Do"
MPEG Stream: "Liver Juice Vending Machine"
MPEG Stream: "The Hole In A Sausage"

OV Noctilucent Valleys (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
Another Of, or rather, Ov album from AQ fave/friend Loren Chasse, known to most of you as one of main movers in the Jewelled Antler cd-r psych folk scene. His solo project Of has turned into Ov now that he's been joined by his wife, who is also probably known to a lot of you as Christine, the person in charge of all the mailorder shenanigans here at Aquarius! Small world, eh? She also has long-time Jewelled Antler credentials, was formerly a member of Skygreen Leopards, and currently jams with Whysp. And like we said in our review of the debut Ov cd-r that came out on Jewelled Antler last year, if you're a mailorder customer it couldn't hurt to make her happy by ordering one of these... just kidding, really she's very professional. But, we DO recommend it anyway to all you folks into droning, drifting, field recording/psych/improv stuff in the Jewelled Antler vein, of course. Noctilucent Valleys carries on the slowly-moving kinetic sculpture sound of its predecessor The Moon Is Down, sleepy, darkly dreamy, glimmering (that's the radiated, glow-in-the-dark "noctilucent" part) and chiming and rumbling. Some moments achieve a disorienting dissonance that brings to mind some old Simon Wickham-Smith / Richard Youngs collaborations... which one of this couple gets to be RY and which is SW-S we wonder? Or maybe we shouldn't. And as well, Loren Chasse admits to indulging in some heavy Fripp/Eno worship here, and indeed we can hear the entrancement of Evening Star as filtered through the lo-fi, home-recorded, Jewelled Antler aesthetic on some of these nine tracks... so nice, if you're in the mood for these moody abstract glacial instrumental (what instruments??) lullabies. Kudos to Soft Abuse for putting this out (so it didn't have to be a cd-r like the debut) but we must make one minor complaint: the one page cd "booklet" (not a booklet), though adorned with nice artwork, is just a bit flimsy, y'know. Whereas this music is much more substantial in nature.
MPEG Stream: "Bone Of The Bone Scholar / Moon Of The Moon Scholar"
MPEG Stream: "Soul Of Swan"

FUCKING CHAMPS, THE VI (Drag City) cd 12.98
You can always rely on The Fucking Champs. Even after a several-year recording/touring hiatus, during which time drummer Tim Soete and guitarist Tim Green had to face a major lineup change -- replacing founding member guitarist Josh Smith (now in mod garage trio The Makes Nice) with Trans Am's Phil Manley -- they've come back to follow up 2002's V with the boldly titled VI and it's like they've never been gone. True they kept their hand in with 2004's Fucking Am album. But still, it's nice to have them back and doing what they do best, which is making Fucking Champs music. Phil fills Josh's shoes with aplomb, fitting in with the two Tims like the old friend and excellent musician that he is. So no problem there.
With renewed fire, VI demonstrates that the Champs really have created a sound unique unto themselves. Say what you will about ironic hipster metal irony gimmickry (no vocals, no bass, nerdy humor), the truth is that you know the Champs when you hear 'em. Sure it's easy to spot the influence of their childhood metal heroes (Metallica, Maiden, Lizzy, Carcass...) but what they really sound like is The Fucking Champs. And not too many bands can claim that they sound most like themselves. And that it's such a damn good sound!! Their majestic harmonies ascend to heaven borne on shafts of light, their chunky "dahdahdah" riffs require immediate and incessant headbanging, their sleek melodies always catch the ear, and their mathy arrangements dizzy and dazzle. Whether in the long run they were smart or not to market themselves mainly to the indie-rock crowd rather than the metal underground remains to be seen. Some might argue that they've painted themselves into a corner, but it's a corner we love to visit!!
Leading of with indeed very Champsy "The Loge" (already heard on Kemado's Invaders compilation btw), VI runs the gamut of Champsy treats and tricks. There's uptempo party rockers that are actually gorgeous prog epics in disguise ("A Forgotten Chapter In The History Of Ideas"), a few gently spacey keyboardy interludes ("Insomnia", "That Crystal Behind You (Are You Channeling?)"), even some lovely, lush quasi-Zep folkiness ("Dolores Park"). And of course plenty more powerful, Champsy compositions showcasing fretboard acrobatics, precision drum battery and stop on a dime tightness. About the only thing long-time Champs fans (like us) are going to find disappointing about this record is that, well, we were hoping Tim Soete would step out from behind his drum kit and SING at least one song here, we love his voice. But he doesn't. Oh well maybe next time he'll go for it and give us another "Extra Man" or "Summer Knights". Instead, Neil Hamburger's voice appears somewhere on here...
By the way, stay tuned at the end of the cd for the "hidden" track of chopped up studio chatter / repetitive riff collage. Brought a smile to our faces, might have been even funnier if they whould have started the record off with it!!
MPEG Stream: "Earthen Sculptor"
MPEG Stream: "A Forgotten Chapter In The History Of Ideas"

PHARAOH OVERLORD Live In Suomi Finland (Vivo) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Bow down, people. Just bow down. If extended, repetitive, droned-out krauty stoner prog a la Circle is your thing, then this disc definitely for you, surprise surprise. Sheer hypnosis. Utterly mesmeric. Sounds sooooooooooooo gooooooooooood. It's hard to think of these guys as just a band, the music here seems produced by some organic force. It's a living thing really. A throbbing monster of an album.
Just like their sister band Circle, of which they're all members, Finnish psychsters Pharaoh Overlord have built a discography (they're up to six albums now, counting this one) that somehow maintains a core identity yet always does something different each time out. They started off with the stoner rock riff mantras of #1, then went to the mostly subdued noirishness of II, followed that with the live-and-raw Battle Of The Axehammer, then came back with the krautrockingly Circle-like diversions of #3, all before delving into the absurdly headbanging metallisms of #4 that even added vocals to their previously instrumental lineup. So, now what? What next? A second live album, this time called Live In Suomi Finland, recorded in Helsinki in May of 2006. On it the regular Pharaoh Overlord lineup of Jussi, Tomi and Janne is augmented by two more Finnish friends, and special guest Hans Joachim Irmler of legendary krautrockers Faust! His electric organ grind here adds an extra dose of distorted drone to the proceedings.
Of the two live PO discs this is definitely the best sounding. It's not as raw and blown-out as Battle Of The Axehammer, it's got better fidelity, but if anything it's even heavier!! Perhaps its the additional "remixing" credited to Irmler, whatever magic he worked in later in the Faust studio definitely makes this more than "just" a live album.
There's five tracks here, though it's a very continuously flowing disc... starting with the infectious riffery of "Black Horse" (which has appeared previously only in another live version on Battle Of The Axehammer), followed by two totally new tracks, "Tutankharmony" and "Zero Gravity" that relax the volume and mood a bit with a sense of smokey, improv mystery. Then they launch into "Skyline", the heaviest cut from II, before winding up / blowing out with a quarter-hour rendition #1's "Mangrove". An incredible 50+ minutes all told. Boy, we wish we'd been there! Too bad SF-Helsinki flights aren't quick or cheap...
MPEG Stream: "Mangrove"
MPEG Stream: "Zero Gravity"

TOAD s/t (Akarma) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Toad's eponymous debut is an underground proto-metal classic, one we've had before when it was a Second Battle reissue and are pleased to stock again now that Akarma has reissued it again. It's cheaper than the previous edition and comes in one of those gatefold sleeves too. Here's our original review talkin' 'bout Toad:
Why does anyone bother with the current crop of "stoner rock" when there's so much better stuff made back in the original stoner age (the '70s) now being reissued?? If you're into the Man's Ruin roster, and prone to buying albums by the latest Swedish Kyuss clone, yet don't have, say, Lucifer's Friend, Flower Travellin' Band, Leafhound, Captain Beyond, or Buffalo reissues in your collection, it's time to get with the program! Not that that's easy, since much of the good old shit is definitely obscure and unheralded. For instance, we hadn't ever heard of this Swiss band Toad until a kindly customer sold back a bootleg cd with an intriguing cover a couple years ago and we got clued in (and then found the legit reish to stock).
This self-titled disc is the first and best of Toad's three LPs, serving up hard-rockin' stoner psych in the best blues-based tradition of early Blue Cheer and Led Zep. The first track "Cotton Wood Hill" will offer a clue about the lineage of this band, as Toad's rhythm section played on the classic LP of that same title by acid-fried Krautrockers Brainticket! Toad boasts an excellent vocalist put to good use on the more melodic parts of their sometimes quite long songs, but a large part of the LP is occupied by heavy (HEAVY) jamming instrumental excursions featuring the killer guitar of one Vic Vergeat. This is genuine heaviness, circa 1971. 1971!!
Just two bonus tracks, "Stay" and "Animals World" on this reish, not the four Second Battle included.
MPEG Stream: "Cotton Wood Hill"
MPEG Stream: "Life Goes On"

ART FLEURY I Luoghi Del Potere (Die-Schachtel) cd 27.00
There's thankfully more than a few labels whose reliable track record and special aesthetic makes us ALWAYS interested in what they're putting out. Several examples: EM Records, Hapna, Ektro, Holy Mountain, Paradigms, Lampse, and Andee's own tUMULt (of course). Also among those "likely essential" labels is Italy's Die Schachtel, an outfit that either digs up the most wonderful Italian experimental obscurities from the '70s or presents the most intriguing new underground bands from their country, always in super-snazzy packaging. Unfortunately, 'cause so much of their output is so great, it's tough for us to keep up with 'em all, but here at least is a review of our of their more recent gems, a cd reissue of an unusual 1980 record by what was a young Italian group called Art Fleury, who played shows with the likes of Area and Henry Cow and was right there on the cutting edge of politically and musically radical avant-prog, Rock In Opposition sound-making... This album of theirs, the title of which means "The Places Of Power", was apparently conceived as an imaginary soundtrack of sorts, and it's indeed quite soundtracky, you could imagine this being the score to a very arty, serious and suspenseful Italian film. It's a sonic collage that effectively deploys skittering percussion and tape-splicing studio fuckery, instrumental prog bombast and jazz improv freedom, the proceedings often infused with moody textures of glitch and crackle, visited by musical cues or voices set amidst radio static, as if sampled from a random spin of the dial. This is very much in keeping with the sounds of modern-day Die Schachtel acts like A and Christa Pfangen, and their colleagues 3/4hadbeeneliminated. We're also reminded of AQ faves Village Of Savoonga, and to several of Art Fleury's contemporaries or near-contemporaries like Faust, This Heat, and Nurse With Wound. You probably get the idea: recommended!
This cd comes packaged in a oversized cardboard box, inclosing a booklet with liner notes along with a poster of the album's black & white cover graphic of a clenched fist. By the way, while six tracks are listed, there's only five actually indexed on the cd, implying that two are run together... thus we might not have gotten the titles of our sound clips right (i.e "e=mc2" might be "La Morte Al Lavoro" actually).
MPEG Stream: "e=mc2"
MPEG Stream: "L'Overdose"
MPEG Stream: "Uno Spettro Si Aggira Per"

BACHI DA PIETRA Non Io (Die Schachtel) cd 17.98
Dunno why, but we're suckers for sinister mumbling in Italian, accompanied by glitchy droning music... which brings us to this, another cd in Die Schachtel's "Zeit" series, which means original, interestin' Italian experimentalism in a nice embossed digipack, a la previous releases like A and Christa Pfangen. This time, it's a disc from a duo known as Bachi Da Pietra ("The Worms Of Stone" or something like that), who delve deep into what could be considered a form of avant-blues... no please don't run away, we really like this! The slow and sad "blues" here are so blown apart that it's more about a mood than anything that ol' Robert Johnson would recognize, though dealings with the Devil seem possible in both cases.
Bachi Da Pietra's music is damaged, dark, droning, doleful, doomed... almost like a depressed Italian Jandek playing in the style of Earth's Hex album...? Or Radian gone "wooden guitar"? Other comparisons could be made to Sinistri, and Larsen.
An ominous moodiness pervades, stark tension increasing, as insistent beats and acoustic guitar strum are deconstructed to accompany the whispery, lonely-sounding vocals (sung in Italian, with English translations provided in the cd booklet). The percussion and guitar playing both sometimes sound like splintering sticks, and you can practically hear the smoke curling up from the singer's inevitable cigarette.
MPEG Stream: "Casa Di Legno"
MPEG Stream: "Altri Guasti"
MPEG Stream: "Fisica Elementare"

DISKORD Doomscapes (Edgerunner Music) cd 15.98
We must have mentioned before that we're suckers for electric pink on an album cover. Dunno why, it's just a thing with us. Especially when it's a METAL album. How did Boris know? And now Diskord. The shocking pink hues on the cover of this album are part of a garish, trippy painting that's deliberately indicative of the unusual, lysergic-sounding technical death metal these Norwegian guys play. Spaced out, definitely Voivod influenced, grinding weirdness... they're an alien metal machine with lots of cold, sharp edges and many moving parts. And though they're crazy technical and blasting a lot of the time, let's not forget the album is aptly titled Doomscapes, which means they can break it down from the hyperactive heaviness to sheer crushing slabs of sludge, and ooze ambient atmospheric interludes too. Definitely for fans of fellow demented deathsters like Cephalic Carnage and Canvas Solaris, and older bands running the extreme death metal spectrum from Autopsy to Pestilence to Disharmonic Orchestra...
MPEG Stream: "An Architectonic Manifestation Of Death"
MPEG Stream: "Public Static Void"
MPEG Stream: "Harbinger"

STINKING LIZAVETA Scream Of The Iron Iconoclast (At A Loss Recordings) cd 13.98
Oh, Stinking Lizaveta, why do we love you so? We'd count the reasons but it's tough to write about a band that's like, one of the best bands EVER, we'd have to say, particularly if you ask Allan. We'll wax poetic about 'em, for sure, but it's gonna just sound like fanboy hyperbole. And having said that, can you expect an unbiased review here? Hell no, we're proudly biased regarding this virtuoso instrumental three-piece (rock god guitar, Energizer drums, upright electric bass) from Philadelphia. What we'd really like to do is just humbly suggest that you GO SEE THEM PLAY whenever you get the chance, which is more likely than you might think, since they're indefatigably touring pretty much all the time. If only like five percent of the people reading this right now are moved to sometime go see Stinking Lizaveta for the first time on our recommendation, we can feel like we've done y'all a service, since we're super duper sure that anyone who does will be amazed and become big fans too. Who can resist the exuberant, enthralling instrumental prowess displayed by this telepathic trio playing their unique blend of mathy metal, post rock, and heavier-than-thou hippiepunk jazz?? (They call their music "doom-jazz" by the way.)
This new album, their fifth (as always, engineered by Steve Albini) is an excellent demonstration/distillation of everything that's great about Stinking Liz (though we'll offer our usual caveat that they're EVEN BETTER live, you just can't entirely bottle/record that magic). These 16 new songs are some of their best yet, full of the ponderously head-nodding riffage, gorgeous arcs of lead guitar, and explosive rhythmic excitement we expect from 'em. There's moody tension throughout, with clusters of dense note-spirals building to ultimate release. Slow-burners like "Willie Nelson (Tired Of The War)" coexist with the sheer metallic chug of "Indomitable Will" and the darkly psychedelic storminess of "Cyclops", to offer a few examples, these elements prevalent all across this disc, no tracks lacking. And despite being an all-instrumental band (but for Yanni howling into his guitar pickups upon occasion, as on "Soul Retrieval") this isn't just a techy display of chops, it's passionate creativity drenched with sweat and emotion. Another all-instro trio y'know we love is The Fucking Champs, but Stinking Lizeveta are waaaay more soulful. They come a lot closer to the aesthetic of Earthless (another of this list's highlights), but instead of untethered interstellar exploration they compress and complexify that jamminess into tightly-wound compositions. Stirring stuff. And soooooo recommended.
MPEG Stream: "To The Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Indomitable Will"
MPEG Stream: "Soul Retrieval"

WHITE / LICHENS s/t (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
"So it was that three hundred electric moons cancelled the ancient green queen of loves with their blinding chalk rays..."
So concludes one of the obscure, occultic pieces of text excerpted in the cd booklet of this new disc (in this case the Futurist prose poem "Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna" by Filippo Marinetti) and is to us a suitably evocative and cryptic description of the beautiful, distorted drones conjured by White/Lichens, a collaborative project staffed by Rob Lowe (aka Lichens, who records for the Kranky label in his hometown of Chicago) and Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos of the Chicago heavy ambient guitar duo White/Light (who have a cd on Rebis).
Lichens' previous disc The Psychic Nature Of Being on Kranky (lp version on Holy Mountain) we described as "delicate" and "crystalline", constructed mainly from electronically-treated live improv loopings of his own voice, abetted with guitar and percussion. But the scary dronescapes of White/Lichens are more dense than delicate, the added weight of Clark and Lemos' guitars "heavy-ing up" the Lichens sound. You'll hear rumbling low-end and keening highs in this most satisfying set of billowing electric drone, what distantly sounds like a Morse code transmission buried beneath the destroyed residue of 1,000 doomed violins... It's like the Vibracathedral Orchestra scoring an opium induced nightmare, or the organic decay of an claustrophobic early Kluster track exposed to alien moonlight for the past 40 years. There's five tracks here, the first and last being the longest (19 and 16 minutes apiece, approximately) with the middle three around four minutes each. At its most dense and distortion-filled, as on the final track "Bael", this could be a glitchless version of the murky Merzbowian Sheer Hellish Miasma stirred up by their pal Kevin Drumm. Or KTL's most Earth-y moments tempered by the homebrewed, gentle freeform folk-psych of a Jewelled Antler recording.
We don't doubt for an instant that if this was a limited edition cd-r from some mysterious Finnish forest dweller, or lathe cut 10" by a kid in New Zealand, we'd be assured of selling fistfuls of 'em. And therefore, since the well-respected Holy Mountain label judged this to be deserving of not-so-limited cd status, that should indicate it's even MORE worth picking up, than if there were just 50 copies made, intended solely for collectors...
MPEG Stream: "Cimejes, Or Cimeies, Or Kimares"
MPEG Stream: "Belial"
MPEG Stream: "Bael"

INQUISITION Nefarious Dismal Orations (No Colours) cd 16.98
Ready to be touched by the magic hoof?!
Two years ago, we just about sold our souls to Satan in tribute to the glorious magnificence of this band's Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer album. Allan's favorite black metal record of 2005 by far. Now this two-man cult is back with a new album for No Colours and we're sacrificing babies over here in celebrat