ISHIZUKA, TOSHIAKI Drum Drama (PSF) cd 16.98
First new record in six years from Toshiaki Ishizuka, a veritable underground drum legend in Japan. Having founded Japan's first radical political punk combo Zuno Keisatsu, as well as having played and recorded with Kan Mikami, Keiji Haino, Masayoshi Urabe and many others, you might be expecting some sort of super intense deconstructed psychrock drum damage rhythmic workout, but Ishizuka's solo percussion recordings are of an entirely different stripe. No blown out psychedelia, no punk rock pound, no splattery free jazz freakouts, instead, Drum Drama, Ishizuka's third record of solo percussion, is just that, dramatic, a dark and dreamy series of slow shimmering soundscapes, as much, if not more, about texture and mood than rhythm. The drum kit here is only a part of Ishizuka's palette, spread out in a very un-drum kit like manner between wide open expanses of huge gong swells, chiming bells, bowed metal, wood blocks and tinkling chimes. Incredibly deep and physical sounding, a slow burning series of drones and shimmers. Drum Drama contains three brand new tracks, as well as two redone pieces from his long out of print debut, but they flow perfectly. An organic drift of midnight ambience, punctuated by strange bits of percussive filigree, but spending most of its almost 40 minutes drifting through deep dark cavernous expanses of sound.
Huge low end reverberations underpin delicate drifting bells, all the sounds given ample time to spread out and flutter into the ether. All woven into moaning minimal melodies constructed from dense overtones and subtle shimmer. Here and there twinkling high end sparkles surface, super percussive skitter wraps around super melodic tom fills, occasionally sounding kind of like a super slow abstract free jazz "Wipeout", but played by the Starfuckers... just drums, spread way out across the soundfield, with some serious stereo panning, the fills swerving from one speaker to the other, a dizzying dreamy soundscape of percussive melody and strange rhythmic texture.
Elsewhere, the drones morph subtlely into super affected free jazz splatter, over a dense cacophony of clanging metal and industrial clatter, very kitchen sink with bits of cutlery, tea kettle scraping and all manner of shuffling and clinking and rumbling amidst smooth resonant muted drum fills.
The second half of the record is an even more subtle wash of undersea shimmer, thick rumblings build to propulsive percussive overload, just about as psychedelic as a room full of drums and pieces of metal can get. The record fades into a barely there drone, the hiss of the tape and the analog recording almost as loud as the simple subtle rhythmic shadings....
Hard to believe a record like this is the work of a drummer. And that there is even a drum kit involved at all. Shimmery percussive dronescapes, bowed metals, reverberating gongs, rolling metallic balls, little squalls of splattery free jazz shuffle, bits of martial drumming all woven into a lovely and zen like exploration of a dark and mysterious world of rhythm and sound. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Ca"
MPEG Stream: "Mu"

KING, JD & THE COACHMEN American Mercury (Ecstatic Peace) cd 10.98
BACK IN STOCK, this highlight from list #251...
The Coachmen are probably mostly known as the band that featured a pre-Sonic Youth Thurston Moore. We always just assumed that JD King was in fact a made up entity and was in fact Moore. But apparently the two met way back in 1976, bonding over their love of all things Velvet Underground, Flamin' Groovies and the like. So the two joined forces, started a band, and jammed around NY until they broke up in 1979. At which point Moore went on to Sonic Youth while King went on to become a illustrator / cartoonist. A few of those records came out in the mid eighties on Ecstatic Peace, which is probably why we all assumed that The Coachmen was just Moore in disguise. But King and the Coachmen resurfaced in the mid nineties with a new record before sort of fading away again, and then wham! 2006 and they're back again!
So what the heck do these Coachmen sound like? Well, it's been ages since we've heard the old records, but we do remember it maybe being some sort of disconnected convoluted garage rock buzz blues stomp although it's been so long it's all a bit fuzzy. But fuzzy actually does begin to describe JD King And The Coachmen circa 2006. Imagine abstract streaks of fuzzed out guitar and dreamy tendrils of minor key melodies, hovering over thick swells of distorted buzz and a dense web of noodily bass lines, peppered with muted percussive thuds, or deep cavernous tangles of dense guitar over angular riffs and thick swaths of fuzznoise and simple tambourine, or tripped out space rock drift all tangled up in thickly reverbed guitar, freaked out psychguitar drift and moody mumbling backdrops of shimmering acoustic guitar and muddy bass rumble, or a tripped out disembodied Stoogesy stomp wrapped in swirling layers of distorted psychedelia and warm whirls of frothy fuzz.
This is some sort of alien garage rock, some disembodied blues, broadcast from some other time (past? future? both?) from some other plane, a mysterious alternate universe that has more in common musically with bands like the No Neck Blues Band, Avarus, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the rest of those druggy free rock troubadours than it does with the Velvets or the Groovies. But that's the magic, it's like King and his cohorts are a tribe of modern mediums, who mixed up a magical brew of guitar, bass and percussion, managing to conjure up a brood of garage rock ghosts of the past, letting them get all tangled up with the free noise spectres of the present.
MPEG Stream: "Agony (For Arshile Gorky)"
MPEG Stream: "Bees Caught In The Wrong Hive"
MPEG Stream: "Blues For Elizabeth Bentley"

CLOUDLAND CANYON Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004 (Tee Pee) cd 16.98
This record totally knocked us for a loop. And the thing is, I'm not entirely sure we can explain why. This is one of those rare records that is darn near indescribable. The label suggest Cloudland Canyon would appeal to fans of Boards of Canada, Animal Collective, The Dead C., Ash Ra Tempel, This Heat, Gong, most of which we can definitely see (maybe not the Boards Of Canada), there is a definitely a far out krautrock vibe, some classic long lost, extra damaged super freaked out sixties or seventies psychedelia, but filtered through modern technology. It's almost like some super computer a million years in the future began picking up these strange transmissions from the old Earth, German Oak, Faust, Amon Duul, but after traveling billions of miles and being interpreted by some alien machinery, those songs and sounds came out sounding, well, completely fucking nuts!!!
It's like some sort of laptopped Dead C / Ash Ra mash up. Rich clouds of metallic shimmer surround looped guitars, creepy chanted vocals are submerged in demented spacey FX, dense deconstructed pop songs emerge from the chaos, rife with swirling vocals, and layer after layer of drone and processed harmonies, fuzzy shopping mall synth warbles beneath straining lo-fi vocals, the whole thing run through some intense stereo panning. Suddenly the band burst into some stomping propulsive psych rock jangle before the whole thing splinters into a gorgeous expanse of tranquil ambience, beneath delicately finger picked guitars, everything always within a cloud of mysterious sonic events. Dense cinematic soundscapes of keening high end and minor key pizzicato strings melt into super fuzzed out classic rock jams, with horns and pulsing basslines, but buried in a dense swirl of My Bloody Valentine haze, with relentlessly squiggly riffing, buried vocals, a dizzying array of chaotic sound, tinkling chimes and little bits of percussion. Strange collages of warped warbly sound drift into weird seventies circusy prog with calliope like organ, moody riffing, and awesome male / female vocals, like some totally drug drenched unhinged Fleetwood Mac. Nearing the end of the sonic journey, the record devolves into huge stretches of squiggly analog synth, tangled and intertwined into fuzzy warped low end drones, squirming and buzzing with the different layers constantly shifting and slipping in and out and around each other. Woah. Gorgeously and incredibly fucked. And thus completely recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Opening / Ice Of Rift"
MPEG Stream: "Clearlight Intry"
MPEG Stream: "Carolina Foxtail / Sea Chirp"

AVARUS Ruskea Timantti (tUMULt) 2cd 15.98
BACK IN PRINT AND BACK IN STOCK!!
Quite a few of you who read our list are probably already followers of the whole Finnish folk-psych underground, right? So this Avarus will most likely already be going in your basket (especially since it contains all of their WAY out of print early releases!)... But if you're not yet a Finn-folk-freak, you'll also find this to be a great introduction to one of the key bands from that scene...
This double cd collects the early recorded works of the mysterious Finnish free folk collective Avarus. Previously released as limited run cd-r's and 7"s (in tiny runs of 50-200 copies), these tracks are a tantalizing glimpse into the mist-shrouded musical world of Finnish underground music, equal parts the hypno rock of fellow countrymen Circle, the pagan ritualism of The Wicker Man, the droning throb of Faust, the propulsive rhythm of Can, and the lo-fi clatter and skree of the Dead C.
Imagine a land of forests and fjords, a land of dark skies and windswept landscapes. Then imagine the sort of music this land would evoke. Droning hypnotic clattery free folk, dark and propulsive, mesmeric Krautrock, rhythmic pagan musical rituals, all detuned guitars and hand drums, chanting and wild free percussion, and everything in between.
Avarus combine psychedelic folk rock, motorik Krautrock, free jazz and modern noise into a totally mesmerizing, totally unique modern avant noise/folk, unfurling lengthy meandering almost funereal jams, desolate and mournful, but dreamy and pastoral, machinelike and hypnotic at the same time. Strummed acoustic guitars frame distant throbbing caveman percussion, dreamy soundscapes are punctuated by occasional clang and clatter, all swaddled in the warm drone of amp buzz and ambient hum. Lo-fi, rambling, ramshackle blues jams mutate into wildly propulsive psych-folk with intensely strummed guitars and far-away flute melodies.
Dipping their toes into whatever variant of their unique 'sound' that strikes their fancy, Avarus sway woozily from atonal Jandek-ian campfire hippy hoedowns, to wild jams with spastic drumming and sing-songy melodies plucked out on beat up, strangely tuned guitars, to wild clattery bursts of percussion splattered haphazardly over a Skullflower-ish skree, to stripped down, jangly hyperactive psychedelic rock to loose ambient soundscapes of whir and buzz and twang, with slithery, sitar-like guitars. Occasionally Avarus kick up quite a racket, a thick slab of sound, with LOTS of guitars, feedback and some seriously dense drumming, recorded hot and overblown, adding just the right amount of distortion and haze to the recording. It almost sounds like some New Zealand noise rock band like Gate or UK psych/drone ensemble Sunroof! -covering- Avarus!
Epic and endless, rumbling and stumbling, spacey psychedelic folk jams spread over two discs, TWO PLUS HOURS. Imagine the Total or The Dead C playing Finnish forest music. Or the Tower Recordings covering International Harvester next door to Reynols' practice space? Droning, damaged clatter, like the wild drunken cavorting of drugged out hippy carpenters. Spacey and druggy and totally mesmerizingly beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Horuksen Vasemman Silman Mysteerikoulu Royh Eli Vuh Tai Siis Moi Kaikki: Rikottu Noidat Haluavat Luusi Universumin Pienin Kysymys Varisten Kokoontumislaulu"
MPEG Stream: "Horuksen Oikean Silman Mysteerikoulu Astraalikaali 25 Metria Kavellen Veden Alla Kirjoitusmerkki Aikamerkki Arkistosali"
MPEG Stream: "Kihara Silmapisara"
MPEG Stream: "Yo Tuli Ja Beduiini"

HIGGS, DANIEL Plays The Mirror Of The Apocalypse And Other Songs (Open Mouth) cd 12.98
Way back when, years and years ago, before Mr. Daniel Higgs was a well established solo artist, and revered modern mystical musical troubadour, when he was still mostly known as the vocalist of Lungfish and offshoot the Pupils, we listed a super limited cassette containing some of the most amazing raga-drone guitar playing we had heard, and we knew then, that there was more to Higgs than just playing rock music. Every bit of that tape oozed with some cosmic light, as if he was using the guitar to travel between alternate universes and other worlds, the tales of those travels rendered in gorgeously warm and mysterious drone and buzz, strum and shimmer.
Higgs is one of the very few contemporary artists who we would absolutely consider a sort of modern day shaman. A musical alchemist, an artistic cypher, an abstract philosopher, a strangely charismatic, yet disarmingly humble master of any artistic endeavor he puts his mind to. For those new to the work of Daniel Higgs, he's a legendary (but now retired) tattoo artist, an incredible painter, whose paintings are at once hallucinatory and gorgeous (one painting adorns the cover of Leviathan's Tentacles Of Whorror record) and of course an incredible musician, whose sonic experiments range from the mesmeric riffrock of his band Lungfish, to an entire record of solo Jew's harp. But in addition to being an incredible lyricist, an amazing vocalist, and a master of the Jew's harp, Higgs is also a seriously mean guitar (and banjo) player, with a style and sound as familiar as it is totally alien. A gorgeous buzzing steel string drift through the cosmos. Lengthy droning ragas, that drift hypnotically from deconstructed Appalachia to John Cale like slow-shifting skree (joined on those tracks by violin), to moody melancholy crawls, to thick serpentine swirls of snake charmer melody and reverberating steel string shimmer. Raw and lo-fi for sure, but so darkly emotional, and dreamily hypnotic. This cd reissue reminded us of how smitten we were by the original tape release. It sounds just as powerful and intense as it did the first time we heard it. And even now, it continues to unfold more and more on each listen, gradually and subtly revealing mythical musical secrets and lost universal truths, and just like with the cassette, we're thinking seriously about grabbing a cd player, taking a ton of peyote, blasting this disc and laying in the thick grass, sprawled naked on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, beneath a sparkling moonlit sky. In other words, WAY RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 3"

XASTHUR Subliminal Genocide (Hydra Head) cd 12.98
What a long strange trip it's been for Malefic and Xasthur. What's even stranger it seems, is that he ended up finding a new home on the very hip indie label Hydra Head. Sure HH has released its share of dark heaviness, but black metal, especially of the ultra personal, cult and grim kind, is so concerned with staying true, and not selling out. So it's a bit of a coup that HH nabbed Xasthur. Especially after a whole mess of records on Moribund, Total Holocaust Blood Fire Death, Profound Lore and Southern Lord. There has apparently been a bit of a backlash in the true cult BM underground. But fuck 'em. Hydra Head is a killer label and Malefic probably just got tired of being screwed left and right. Plus, oh what a joy it is to watch the true grim warriors weep at the loss, their corpsepaint smearing in long grey streaks. But it really is their loss more than any one 'cuz damn if this isn't the best Xasthur record since Nocturnal Poisoning. And that's saying a whole lot considering how much we've loved pretty much everything he's ever done.
The thing With Nocturnal Poisoning is that it was this perfect mix of sorrowful melancholia and black buzz, the sound was murky and muddy and fuzzy, but above it, were delicate melodies, dreamlike minor key filigree over a bottomless black pit. It was that strange juxtaposition that made it so special. Take that pretty element away, and you're left with just another black disc of Burzum worship. It's a little like the oil paining on the cover. You could see the texture of the canvas and the individual brushstrokes beneath the art. And with the music, it was the same thing, you could see the various elements, feel their texture, see the thick grainy backdrop upon which Malefic placed all of his dreamlike melodies and murky anguished howls.
Every record after that contained similar elements, and amazing songs, but it seemed like the recordings got more brittle, lots of high end buzz, not so much of that glorious malefic murk.
Subliminal Genocide almost sounds like it was recorded right after Nocturnal Poisoning and shelved for the last few years. It's THAT heavy and dreamy and melancholy and murky and goddamn beautiful.
There's not a lot of black metal that you might consider truly beautiful, but the songs on Subliminal Genocide, aren't just blasting thrashing metal, they are gorgeous lilting laments, epic and majestic and minor key. Taken out of a black metal context, they'd sound like some sort of super emotional epic post rock, but as they are, buried under thick layers of blackened buzz and wrapped in huge swaths of fuzzy sonic fog, they become even darker and more desolate, lonely and mournful. Almost none of the record is faster than a loping midtempo, about half the tracks are slow motion dirges, downright doom, with the double kick coming in more as a thick black low end cloud than any sort of actual blast, and a handful of tracks are nothing but swirling whorls of sad black ambience.
And because of the fuzzy indistinct production, and the thick murky halo around every track, lots of Subliminal Genocide sounds like some bastardized black metal version of M83, or Tim Hecker, or a little like Jeck and Marclay spinning old scratched up Burzum lps slowed waaaaaay down.
This record is simultaneously so dark and depressed and utterly evil sounding, but also fuzzy and psychedelic and totally blissed out, it's sort of hard to imagine, especially listening to this right now, that there could ever possibly be a better combination.
MPEG Stream: "Prison Of Mirrors"
MPEG Stream: "Beauty Is Only Razor Deep"
MPEG Stream: "Trauma Will Always Linger"

XASTHUR Subliminal Genocide (Hydra Head) 2lp 28.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available on vinyl. Ultra deluxe gatefold jackets, printed inner sleeves, new artwork, and super thick vinyl. And as with all these things, once these are gone we probably won't be able to get more...
What a long strange trip it's been for Malefic and Xasthur. What's even stranger it seems, is that he ended up finding a new home on the very hip indie label Hydra Head. Sure HH has released its share of dark heaviness, but black metal, especially of the ultra personal, cult and grim kind, is so concerned with staying true, and not selling out. So it's a bit of a coup that HH nabbed Xasthur. Especially after a whole mess of records on Moribund, Total Holocaust Blood Fire Death, Profound Lore and Southern Lord. There has apparently been a bit of a backlash in the true cult BM underground. But fuck 'em. Hydra Head is a killer label and Malefic probably just got tired of being screwed left and right. Plus, oh what a joy it is to watch the true grim warriors weep at the loss, their corpsepaint smearing in long grey streaks. But it really is their loss more than any one 'cuz damn if this isn't the best Xasthur record since Nocturnal Poisoning. And that's saying a whole lot considering how much we've loved pretty much everything he's ever done.
The thing With Nocturnal Poisoning is that it was this perfect mix of sorrowful melancholia and black buzz, the sound was murky and muddy and fuzzy, but above it, were delicate melodies, dreamlike minor key filigree over a bottomless black pit. It was that strange juxtaposition that made it so special. Take that pretty element away, and you're left with just another black disc of Burzum worship. It's a little like the oil paining on the cover. You could see the texture of the canvas and the individual brushstrokes beneath the art. And with the music, it was the same thing, you could see the various elements, feel their texture, see the thick grainy backdrop upon which Malefic placed all of his dreamlike melodies and murky anguished howls.
Every record after that contained similar elements, and amazing songs, but it seemed like the recordings got more brittle, lots of high end buzz, not so much of that glorious malefic murk.
Subliminal Genocide almost sounds like it was recorded right after Nocturnal Poisoning and shelved for the last few years. It's THAT heavy and dreamy and melancholy and murky and goddamn beautiful.
There's not a lot of black metal that you might consider truly beautiful, but the songs on Subliminal Genocide, aren't just blasting thrashing metal, they are gorgeous lilting laments, epic and majestic and minor key. Taken out of a black metal context, they'd sound like some sort of super emotional epic post rock, but as they are, buried under thick layers of blackened buzz and wrapped in huge swaths of fuzzy sonic fog, they become even darker and more desolate, lonely and mournful. Almost none of the record is faster than a loping midtempo, about half the tracks are slow motion dirges, downright doom, with the double kick coming in more as a thick black low end cloud than any sort of actual blast, and a handful of tracks are nothing but swirling whorls of sad black ambience.
And because of the fuzzy indistinct production, and the thick murky halo around every track, lots of Subliminal Genocide sounds like some bastardized black metal version of M83, or Tim Hecker, or a little like Jeck and Marclay spinning old scratched up Burzum lps slowed waaaaaay down.
This record is simultaneously so dark and depressed and utterly evil sounding, but also fuzzy and psychedelic and totally blissed out, it's sort of hard to imagine, especially listening to this right now, that there could ever possibly be a better combination.
MPEG Stream: "Prison Of Mirrors"
MPEG Stream: "Beauty Is Only Razor Deep"
MPEG Stream: "Trauma Will Always Linger"

HARVEY MILK Special Wishes (Megablade / Troubleman) cd 14.98
It's funny, for years, you couldn't find a Harvey Milk record to save your life. Reissues, cd-r's, rumors about the band all trickled out and were lapped up by all of us ravenous doomdrone hounds desperate for more music from this mysterious Southern dirge rock behemoth. Then suddenly, a few years back, things began to change, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men got reissued on Andee's tUMULt label, a cd compilation of singles came out, and then the Kelly Sessions. We were loving it. But then it all stopped. Nothing. Until we started hearing rumors again about reissues and more excitingly, a reformed HM and a new record!! And you know what? The rumors were true, the band is back together, and just released this here brand new album. Hot on the heels of the amazing DVD we raved about last list, and alongside a double disc reissue of Courtesy (with a bonus live disc!) reviewed elsewhere on this list, Special Wishes makes us want to just lay down and weep. That's how much we love this band. And how long we have been dreaming about this day. Very few bands can inspire such ridiculous loyalty and utter fanboy obsession. But Harvey Milk are pretty much unlike any band ever. When ranking the weirdest heaviest, GREATEST bands of all time in our heads, Harvey Milk are ALWAYS there, and almost always in the top 5, and depending on our mood, often in the number one spot.
With most bands, we tend to recommend older albums, you know, the new one is for fans only, but if you don't already own any records start with this other one. But even if you've never heard Harvey Milk, Special Wishes will undoubtedly convert you to the way of the Milk. And you WILL have a new favorite band.
The record starts with "I've Got A Love" a crushing pounding slow motion jam, with howled anguished vocals (that Allan thought sounded like Eugene from Oxbow) and thick walls of downtuned guitar, and some weird grinding background drone. SO heavy and glacial it makes the Melvins sound like Blink 182. OK, maybe that's not entirely true, but you know what we're getting at. The next two tracks are equally dirgey, and brutal and impossibly, infuriatingly slow and heavy. But then comes "Once In A While" a groovy classic rock / Southern rock jam, that sounds like Paw on 16 rpm, pretty and melodic, but somehow still way too heavy and creepily ominous. Up next is the appropriately titled "Instrumental" which combines HM's pummeling sludge, with some seriously acrobatic prog rock arrangements, like a super heavy Don Cab. Two more tracks of crushing glacial beauty, plodding brutality, pop hooks buried beneath two tons of guitar sludge, completely and mesmerizingly pulverizing. Then it's The One. Our favorite song of the year. A song so completely unlike anything Harvey Milk has ever recorded, but somehow a song that couldn't have come from anyone else. "Old Glory", the tale of a flag, or THE flag, a strangely beautiful pop song, finger picked acoustic guitar, gorgeous melodic crooning, and a sudden burst of lush psychedelic guitar harmonies, eventually the band kicks in, with massive guitars and probably the most kick ass classic rock guitar lead to ever grace an underground rock record. Full on "Freebird" shit. Wow. One of those songs that we listen to over and over and over. A song that sounded so totally out of place on first listen (although we loved it immediately) but became sort of the heart of the record for us. The final track is almost even weirder. "Mother's Day" is a massive and majestic epic, warm warbly organs, dreamy violin playing a mournful melody, with "God Bless America" melodies all over the place, when the band finally kicks in, it's like the underground doomdirgesludge version of that last song all cock rock and classic rock bands play live, huge soaring chords, everyone swaying back and forth, lighters held high, it sounds like a pisstake, but at the same time it sounds so fucking good. Which is pretty much an apt description of Harvey Milk in general. Confusing and confounding, crushing and majestic. But totally fucked up and emotional and brilliant, and still as far as we're concerned quite possibly the greatest band EVER.
MPEG Stream: "I've Got A Love"
MPEG Stream: "War"
MPEG Stream: "Love Swing"
MPEG Stream: "Old Glory"

ANGEL EYES Something To Do With Death (Underground Communique) cd 9.98
Angel Eyes are another band ready to make their mark in the blossoming post rock / sludge metal scene, and manage to do just that with Something To Do With Death, making -that- sound completely their own. So much so that upon hearing this disc we freaked out and immediately got in touch with the label and got a bunch of copies for the store. The general vibe is one we've come to love, the slow building brooding moodiness, a creeping post rock slow burn, minor key guitar, distant droney shimmer, simple martial percussion, building in intensity, the opening track could be Mogwai or Godspeed, with its understated majesty and about-to-explode urgency. Track two, the awesomely titled "By The Time He Was My Age, Orson Welles Had Made Citizen Kane", starts off with more loping post rockiness, but quickly lurches into some seriously fierce Neurosisy sludge, but within the roiling churning downtuned brutality, lurks plenty of mournful melody and subtle sonic shadings. Making this more than just heavy, more a an emotionally loaded ferocity. In fact each song is a expansive and beautifully convoluted journey, from massive pummel, to dreamy shuffle, to tribal ambience, to blown out guitarnoise and back again. So fucking good. Obviously, anyone who digs Isis, Pelican, Godspeed, Tides, Conifer, Minsk, Mouth Of The Architect, Rosetta, Minsk or any of the current crop of postrockmetal outfits NEEDS THIS NOW!
MPEG Stream: "Two Too Many"
MPEG Stream: "By The Time He Was My Age, Orson Welles Had Made Citizen Kane"

EXPO '70 Exquisite Lust (Kill Shaman) cd-r 5.98
We were sent a whole batch of cd-r's from this mysterious group Expo '70, and all the various cd-r covers were designed to look like old seventies krautrock or free jazz records. Which definitely grabbed our attention. Plus they're called Expo '70, so while we weren't exactly sure what to expect, we were definitely thinking it was bound to be good. And boy were we right. This is good. Great in fact. But that wasn't all, the faux vintage covers and the band name ended up being seriously indicative of the sounds within. Gorgeous drifting ethereal krautrocky ambience is what Expo '70 is all about, and eyes closed, you'd be hard pressed to not think this was some Ash Ra Tempel disc or some long lost A.R. and The Machines lp. Crafted entirely from guitars, sitar and Moog, each track here is some sort of lengthy, mesmerizingingly blissed out minimal drone jam. Guitar figures are looped into hypnotic cycles, over shimmery whirls of fuzzy sound and distant drones, the looped riffs slowly shifting and gently changing shape. It's almost like some sort of new age space rock Steve Reich. Swirling FX surround warm deep guitar tones floating weightless in a glistening expanse of muted color and twinkling sonic sparkles. So completely blissful and dreamlike and captivating. One of our favorite new discoveries.
Fans of far out krautrock, deep dark drone, and outerspace guitar exploration will be in absolute heaven, or at the very least in some darkened room, in a trance, drifting off to some druggy dreamy other dimension...
MPEG Stream: "Hitherto"
MPEG Stream: "Motorik"

AMLEE, ERIK Afternoon Dream (Mandragora / Fire Museum) cd 13.98
Earlier this year, we reviewed two volumes of dreamy psychedelic sitar improvisations from multi instrumentalist Erik Amlee. Two discs, both absolutely gorgeous, so gorgeous in fact that we could barely keep them in stock. So we were super excited to get our hands on this, the newest release from Amlee, an actual cd, not a cd-r, another set of improvisations, this time performed on both sitar and acoustic guitar, and again so lovely and tranquil, blissy and dreamy.
Deep swells of buzzing strings drift lazily, the acoustic guitar strumming along in the background, adding yet another layer of steel string buzz. Some of the tracks are totally loose and abstract, druggy expanses of slippery psychedelic sound, murky and fuzzy, like the jammiest spaciest parts of Spacemen 3 and Hawkwind stripped down into weird stoner acoustic ragas, all drone and shimmer, a buzzing swirl of warm drug den ambience and sunny afternoon sparkle, a seemingly impossible mix that sounds pretty much perfect together. Some of the other tracks are much more structured and guitar based, gorgeous little chunks of neo-Appalachia, but with all sorts of extra buzz, all nestled within a billowy fog of spacey FX. And still others are a glorious mix of the two, a dreamy collision of Eastern Raga and Western twang, a slithering squirming drone that buzzes and builds into thick squalls of resonating strings and swirling ambient hiss, all wrapped in a blown out, super distorted, reverb heavy sound thanks to some post-recording production. So great. The perfect balance of freaked out psychedelic raga bliss and shimmery lilting buzz and twang. SO RECOMMENDED!!
MPEG Stream: "Pulse Quickens"
MPEG Stream: "Entering The Mist"

SPEKTR No Longer Human Senses (aka Et Fugit Interea) (Appease Me) cd 10.98
Finally back in print and available again, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Here's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem:
Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite new weird black metal records!
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"
MPEG Stream: "IV"

SPEKTR No Longer Human Senses (aka Et Fugit Interea) (Panik Terror Musik) lp 22.00
Available on vinyl for the first time, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Packaged in a super thick, super striking gatefold sleeve, all super minimal grey on black, and pressed on amazing, white, black and gray splatter vinyl! LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!
Here's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem:
Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite fucked up black metal records ever!
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"
MPEG Stream: "IV"

IKE YARD 1980-82 Collected (Acute) cd 14.98
As hard as it is to believe that there can still be a steady stream of amazing reissues of '70s psychedelia from all around the world (but there is!), we're equally amazed that the purveyors of '80s grim synth punk have also been re-emerging with increasing regularity and surprising quality. While the German collector's label Vinyl On Demand have been at the forefront of the '80s resurgence of cold, cold, cold post-punk (mostly of the Germanic variety), Acute has also uncovered some gems, offering us the Metal Urbain reissues as well as a handful of pre-symphonic Glenn Branca projects. Now Acute presents Ike Yard. Hailing from New York back in the early '80s, they were one of the few American bands to sign to Factory Records (the most notable other band being ESG). This collection of tracks from 1980 - 1982 culls all of the material from Ike Yard's one LP on Factory and an EP for Le Disque Du Crespuscule plus the requisite unreleased material. Initially, Ike Yard really does sound like Factory should be their home, easily paralleling the death disco prowess of Public Image Limited or Section 25. Their dour monochrome post-punk enjoys a spectral production quality which haunted all of the Martin Hannett produced Factory recordings. But gradually the Factory overtones disappear in lieu of an claustrophobic electronic sound which reminds us a lot like early Cabaret Voltaire, or rather what we wished CV would sound like given that CV hasn't really weathered all that well up very. Ike Yard though is another matter, as they seemed to really fight over whether to groove on a primal, sexual funk or to alienate their audience with their cold, electro-primitive detachment. Between the metallic synth arppegiations, drum machines struggling to work through the complex patterns, and the angular swatches of screeching guitar, there is Kenny Compton's chilling, zombified vocal delivery that really pushes Ike Yard deeper into the realms of urban malaise. A very cool reissue.
MPEG Stream: "Cherish"
MPEG Stream: "NCR"
MPEG Stream: "Kino"

PART TIMER s/t (Moteer) cd 15.98
We really have to come up with a name for this stuff. You know, that sort of deconstructed fragmented pop, glitchy crumbling, fuzzed out ambient weirdness, everything blurry and buzzy and soft focus. Jeck, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, and now Part Timer. It's another one of THOSE SOUNDS, the kind of sounds we can't ever get enough of, just like super hard ragga jungle or buzzy drone-y black metal, it's a sound that we are absolutely in love with. If we could figure out away to make these records go on forever and ever and ever we surely would (for now, the repeat button will have to suffice).
But as we've mentioned in the past, it's not enough just to assemble some lilting folk or some pretty ambience, and then haphazardly "fuck it up" with weird electronic bleeps and bloops or fuzzy drones. No, it takes someone special to allow organic prettiness and jagged digital disruptions to co-exist so perfectly. It's like some strange alchemical art, allowing two such disparate sounds to exist as one, as if we couldn't possibly imagine them separate.
And rarely has there been a more beautiful, and subtle example of this art than on this debut release from Part Timer.
First and foremost, this is simply a gorgeous dreamfolk record, glistening guitar melodies, languid and lazy, sweet and sundappled, with tinkling piano, fluttering flutes, ethereal angelic female vocals, drifting bits of abstract twang and distant reverbed horns, shuffling muted rhythms, a breathtaking collection of shimmery pop folk perfection. And that's before we even consider the fascinating and constantly fluctuating production, a series of bizarre treatments, rendering each little perfect pop nugget or drifting free folk flitter in a completely different light.
A little bit of soft folky twang, becomes a haunting stuttering soundscape of steel strings and weird tape recorder clicks, sweet pop vocals become totally obscured beneath filmy layers of fuzzy distortion and glitchy grit. Weird almost-IDM rhythms materialize from distinctly un-techno song parts, before coming apart into some murky ambient drift. The whole record is glazed with strange bits of sonic sorcery, a little sprinkling of dusty old looped record crackle, warm smears of fuzzy foggy melodic murmur, warped warbles and staticky grit, chopped and shuffled vocals, thick drifts of white noise tape hiss, all miraculously managing to act more as subtle accompaniment rather than overpowering noise.
The perfect blend. Catchy and simple, dreamy and lovely, but slightly off kilter and subtly damaged. Like discovering a tape of some lost folk pop classic, all degraded and decayed, and then trying to repair and reassemble it, but realizing that there is too much tape hiss and too many drop outs to fully restore the tape, only then realizing that somehow, the final product, this, is even more lovely than the original could have ever been.
MPEG Stream: "Unwritten Letter To No. 9"
MPEG Stream: "We Made A Big Mistake"
MPEG Stream: "Daytona"

ANGMAR / THE TRUE ENDLESS Unholy Virtues / The Dirty Raw Experience (Bestial Burst) cd 10.98
BACK IN STOCK! Managed to get a few more copies of this back in...
Killer underground black metal battle to the death between the Finns and the Italians, released on Finnish cult metal label Bestial Burst. Angmar, from Finland (not to be confused with the French Angmar, who shared a split with Alcest recently) offer up some fuzzy plodding blackness, dirgey and primitive, ultra lo-fi and buzzy, with simple drumming, and super anguished vocals. A sort of buzzing black thrash with some old school Celtic Frost moments here and there.
The True Endless from Italy counter with their own black blast, some serious buzzing black Mayhem worship. Lightning fast swirls of thick fuzz guitar, manic riffing and blurry blast beats. Two tracks of completely blown out Norwegian style classic blackness, bookending a gorgeously depressive doomic dirge, with sludgy guitars, plodding glacial drumming and howling guttural vocals.
Slightly sexist (sexy?) aside: The True Endless also feature on bass, Soulfucker, quite possibly the hottest corpsepainted lady we've ever seen!
MPEG Stream: ANGMAR "Stone Christ Semen"
MPEG Stream: THE TRUE ENDLESS "Who Stopped The Time?"

CIRCLE Tyrant (Latitudes 0:10) (Latitudes / Southern) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BRAND NEW CIRCLE ALBUM!!! TYRANT!! INCREDIBLY LIMITED LATEST INSTALLMENT IN THE LATITUDES SERIES!!! IT'S HERE!!!!
Okay, just wanted to get your attention. We've been waiting for this for a long, long time. As have many of you, we imagine. We've all been loving the Latitudes series of ultra limited releases from bands like Ginnungagap, Shit And Shine, the Grails, Ariel Pink, Sir Richard Bishop... so when we heard that Finland's gods of metallic hypno drone rock were going to do one, we were so psyched, and so we waited anxiously, but patiently, until finally, after months of waiting, they arrived, just a few days ago, and as if we even have to tell you, IT'S AWESOME!!!
But this declaration of awesomeness does require a bit more elaboration, as Circle have a wide variety of awesome sounds: murky propulsive modern day krautrock, wild guitar heavy NWOFHM proto-metal, extended ambient drones, loping mesmeric jazzy shuffle, it's really hard to know where the band will head next. As if it were too much to wish for, Tyrant, somehow manages to combine all of their disparate sounds into one practically perfect whole, and some of us are declaring this our favorite Circle record in ages (no mean feat, since their last one, Miljard, was fantastic, a Record Of The Week too). Three 15 minute tracks, each one a slow building epic, droning, dense, dark, hypnotic, but each with its own unique elements.
The opener, "Screaming Luovutus", is an endlessly looping space rock drone mantra, a relentlessly throbbing bassline, haunting little swirls of fluttering keyboard melody, little bits of guitar filigree, simple propulsive rhythmic shuffle, all woven into a endlessly throbbing krautrocky swirl, when suddenly over the top strange whispery demonic growls surface, super distorted, another layer of fuzzy sound, howling and whispering all ragged and harsh, almost like Circle covering Abruptum or a black metal Necks, if that makes any sense. Dizzying and weirdly heavy, a black ambient krautrock drone groove, if such a thing were possible. And if it were, you know Circle would be the ones, ahem, ARE the ones to make it happen.
The second track, with the very metal title "Steel Torment Warrior", is maybe the least metal of the batch. A super creepy, almost jazzy, soundscape, of muted rumble, bursts of super effected dubbed out drums, flurries of spaced out FX, hushed hissed vocals, splattery free jazz skitter, warbly, seasick guitar tangles all wrapped in a druggy blissy ambience. It's like a less propulsive Necks, a damaged jazzy shuffle looping into infinity, but twisted into a uniquely Circular shape.
The closer, with the even MORE metal title of "Amputation Crusade", is the grooviest and space rockiest of the three, a simple darkly melodic guitar figure, loops lazily above a slow slithery bassline and a super laid back, barely there rhythmic shuffle, like Can or Faust in extreme slow motion... you can hear the Necks again, but the band add some extra druggy fuzz guitar, and the laid back riffing is pregnant with the possibility of imminent explosion. Strange vocals lurk below the surface, the whole thing an epic trawl through some jazzy black space rock soundscape. Near the end, things build to a bit of a subdued climax, the guitars ringing and chiming, the drums pounding a bit more, very epic and majestic, but still somehow muted and laid back, petering out into a creepy little coda of guitar FX and gurgling monster vocals...
Wow. Seriously, we love Circle and everything, more than most folks, but this disc is an absolute killer!! Heavy and droney, groovy and jazzy and completely epic and mesmerizing and amazing!!
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert (featuring the band posing with spiked gauntlets in front of Stonehenge!!! Well, actually, in front of the chainlink fence in front of Stonehenge, which somehow makes more sense). The cover has two strange NWOFHM / Tyrant (the 't's in tyrant are battle axes of course) hooded knights silkscreened on the front and each copy is hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, about 250 of which made it HERE. That's right, we got an entire quarter of the pressing. And we're pretty sure that still won't be enough, we guarantee these will not be around for long...
MPEG Stream: "Screaming Luovutus"
MPEG Stream: "Steel Torment Warrior"

ETHEREAL WOODS In The Forest Of Arden (Supernal) cd 15.98
We're slowly working our way through the blackened back catalog of the mighty Supernal label. They've been responsible for some of our all time favorite black metal weirdness (Benighted Leams, Fleurety, Meads Of Asphodel) as well as some seriously intense grim blackness (Drudkh, Hate Forest) and all sorts of gorgeous ambient dronemusick as well (M87, Dark Ages, Fall Of The Grey Winged One).
Ethereal Woods falls somewhere between the first two. They are definitely bizarre, strange arrangements, weird production, seriously unique sound, but at the same time they definitely have a traditional black thrash going on in there as well.
Ethereal Woods are some sort of Eco-black metal band from the UK, their unique brand of buzzing loping blackened thrash is rife with "dreamy mysticism and sylvan sensibilities", which is also represented in their song titles, band name, lyrics and the legend across the back of the cd stating: "Ethereal Woods support the campaign to protect rural England!"
And what better way to do that than by unleashing a strange black musical concoction equal parts fuzzed out guitars, simple spacey riffing, mournful arpeggiated melodies, bizarre growled vocals way up in the mix and lots and lots of dizzying circus-y keyboards swirling and warbling and whirring. While they do occasionally bust out some series black blasts, they tend to sort of hover between doomy dirge and sort-of-groovy midtempos, sounding sometimes like a more blackened, more moody and miserable Khold. The rhythms have a sort of seasick waltz feel to them, very hypnotic, and while the guitars buzz blackly, more often they just sort of drone beneath dreamy sad sounding melodies, with the keyboards drifting like black clouds, giving the proceedings a strangely epic slant. Quite cool, and as you might expect from Supernal, pretty weird too...
MPEG Stream: "The Withered Oak"
MPEG Stream: "A Prophecy Of War"
MPEG Stream: "The Honour In The Stars"

GRAILS Black Tar Prophecies Vol's 1, 2, & 3 (Important) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It maybe took a little while, but folks around here finally started digging the Grails, A LOT. After their last record, their second release on Neurot, the band went through some personnel shifts, which often trigger the end of a band, but in this case, pushed the band in new directions and resulted in some of their best music to date. That Neurot record was cool, but at the time we had sort of reached our post rock, quiet-loud-quiet saturation point. It wasn't that the Grails weren't a great band, it was because we had raised our bar on moody epic post rock. It was no longer enough to just drift along post-rockily before exploding into epic metallic bombast and drifting back again. As pleasant as that is to listen to, there was SO MUCH of that going around, we just needed something more. Soon after the band released an ep of international psych covers and that was the beginning of a glorious new direction. We knew whatever was gonna come next would be a killer, and thankfully, The Black Tar Prophecies, are indeed just that.
The whole three volumes thing was a bit confusing, and still is. We never actually carried volume one, a super limited split 12" with the Red Sparowes, which went out of print before we could get any, we sold tons of volume two, a limited colored vinyl lp on Aurora Borealis, and as far as we can tell, volume three exists only as the two unreleased tracks on this here cd. Regardless, this is some, dark and amazing, absolutely beautiful music. With the Black Tar Prophecies, the Grails finally shrugged off their influences and forged their own sound, never hesitating to experiment, explore, or fuck around with songs and sound. These musical 'Prophecies just might just be the weirdest, most subtle, least rock set of songs they've ever produced. We were definitely always fans, but when we heard that psych covers ep, on which they covered psychedelic songs from around the world, including AQ faves Flower Travellin Band, well, we were suddenly WAY more than fans. They had us as Flower Travellin Band. Anyway, Black Tar Prophecies takes their obsession with psych rock, and their deft mastery of all things post rock, and turns them inward, into a darker, doomier, moodier place. And we love it. Super gloomy rhythmscapes, jazzy piano, totally dubbed out drums, everything bathed in smoky atmospheric swirl. Reminds us a little of Bohren & Der Club Of Gore at times. Songs that wander down dark alleys, streetlights barely illuminating the murky streets, sonic ghost towns, haunting cinematic postrockscapes, like a more rock DJ Shadow, all low slung bass and shuffling rhythms, very smoky and dreamlike. Elsewhere, dreamy psychedelic guitarscapes, strummed acoustic guitars, beneath fuzzed out moody psych leads, really seventies sounding, like a more abstract post rock Hendrix / Santana thing. But the doom inclined among you will find much to love too, here and there, thick slabs of glacial that will have dronedirgedoom nerds frothing at the mouth, as if to prove they can throw down with the big boys (Boris, Corrupted, Isis, Pelican, Moss, etc...) the band unleash massive downtuned dirges, thick washes of slow sludge guitars woven into tarpit riffs of gargantuan proportion, distortion so blown out it crumbles like dirt clods stuffed in your ears, the recording strangely lo-fi, giving the proceedings a dreary droney, Hawkwind meets Gore sort of dirgedoom vibe. Epic and amazing.
This cd collects both the previously released 12"s and adds two exclusive and previously unreleased tracks!
MPEG Stream: "Back To The Monastery"
MPEG Stream: "Black Tar Frequencies"
MPEG Stream: "Black Tar Prophecy"

HARVEY MILK Anthem (Chunklet) cd + dvd 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So it took the rest of the world a while to catch on. Don't be too hard on them. Harvey Milk are one difficult proposition. Don't blame us though. We've been there all along trying to convince everybody just how brilliant this bafflingly bizarre sludge combo really was. Andee even reissued their seminal Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men album on his tUMULt label. And don't blame Henry at Chunklet, the man responsible for this here document. In fact he was right there every step of the way, a one man Harvey Milk archivist and booster club. And of course we don't blame you, loyal AQ list readers, cuz we know you feel the same way we do, you just can't get enough of Harvey Milk's pummeling, crushing, obtuse and confusional heaviness. Well for you, and for us, and for the heavy music lovers of the world who have yet to discover the difficult joy of Harvey Milk, life is is about to get a whole lot sweeter.
Courtesy And Good Will is getting reissued again, on Relapse, any day now, there's a BRAND NEW Harvey Milk record due sometime in the next month or so, there are rumors of a deluxe reissue of the long out of print Harvey Milk debut, a serious holy grail, My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be, maybe with an extra disc, and then there's THIS. Four long years in the making, and it was worth every single second. Most of us who dig Harvey Milk, even those of us who might go so far as to say we are obsessed, never actually got to see the band play live. And this three and a half hour DVD collection of live shows spanning over 12 years is just as much a revelation as we knew it would be.
From super grainy early live footage, when the band was much more of a punk rock, Touch And Go / AmRep sort of beast, you can, out of the corner of your eye, see the sludginess and fuckedupness creep up through the music, slowly and subtly infusing every song and sound with some ineffable something, that helped turn Harvey Milk into a band that sounded unlike any other band, then or now. Theirs was a career trajectory based entirely on getting weirder and sludgier and more obtuse and WAY more difficult and fucked up, a bit like the Melvins, but without the unexpected mainstream success and major label deal. Harvey Milk also unexpectedly shifted gears for a while, letting their ZZ Top obsession take control, and becoming impossibly groovy and rocking, which only lasted a single record before the band returned EVEN MORE damaged and slow and brutal, as if that was even possible.
The band look so unassuming, frontman Creston Spiers just an every day Joe until he opens his mouth and unleashes that impossible low banshee-like howl, bass player Stephen Tanner, with his weird, fey, Doogie Howser look, goofy smile and even goofier sexy hip swivel. And the drums, the drummers... Harvey Milk's songs are so full of space, so slow and stretched out, the drums are often the only thing holding the songs together. Whether they are shuffling in the background, or pounding out a massive slow motion throb, it's the drums that allow the guitars to spin off into space and the songs to unfurl into confusing super spacious epics.
Probably the most amazing part of the disc is when Creston wields a sledgehammer, pounding an anvil in time with the downtuned bass and pounding drums, while howling in that anguished banshee wail of his. Normally it would be weird to see a band set-up like that -- bass, drums and sledgehammer -- but somehow, for Harvey Milk it seems perfect. Creston swaying back and forth, cradling the hammer like it was a guitar, while the band pounds out a sludgy dirge behind him. So good! Woven in to the older material are plenty of long slow drawn out moody post rockisms, with drifting simple mournful melodies, and mumbled crooned vocals that eventually build into the epic whirls of swirling sludge we hold so near and dear to our hearts.
The biggest surprise here is how much footage there is from the band's "ZZ Top period," a stretch that on record only lasted a single album, but live seemed to have spanned several years. A wild and hair twirling, head banging super groovy sort-of-Southern rock with howled and yelped superrock vocals, less obviously sludgy, but still ultra heavy. This was never really a favorite sound for lots of Milk fans (although it is Allan's favorite) but seeing these songs performed live is enough to convince us that maybe we were WAY off and this stuff is some of the best Harvey Milk EVER!!!
It sounds like southern rock filtered through the Melvins. Or Ram Jam played by the Corrupted. It's just so awesome to watch with drummer Kyle Spence's massive Boham-esque kit (complete with Bonham's logo on the bass drum head) a huge gong, just tearing it up Bill Ward style holding the whole thing together... And because of the film stock and the sound and the style, it's almost feels like watching some recently unearthed German television footage of some ultra heavy long lost proto metal band from the seventies, they even whip out a little "Pinball Wizard!" Someone needs to reissue The Pleaser now. C'mon!! Maybe we just weren't in the right frame of mind when it first came out, but we're pretty sure that record would kick our asses now!
After that, the band sort of drifted off and disappeared, before resurfacing in 2005, as a much grungier, hairier looking Milk, all jeans and long hair and Voivod t-shirts, and they sound like it too. A return to the impossibly glacial dirge of Courtesy, but even heavier and somehow more even more fucked up sounding. Like Sabbath at 16rpm, massive lumbering, blown out sludgerock divinity. How many ways can we say it. WE LOVE HARVEY MILK!!! THEY ARE WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE GREATEST BANDS OF THE LAST 20 YEARS!!
There's also a DVD Easter egg (thanks Jace!): just go to the credits menu and push up until "40 Watt '93" is highlighted, for some footage from an April Fool's show where the band tackle three R.E.M. covers, taken from a show where the band covered R.E.M.'s Reckoning in its entirety. Seriously! (the also once did a whole set of Hank Williams covers, let's pray someone has a tape of that stashed!) It's pretty dang cool to see one generation of Athens rock take on another. And they don't really sludge it up all that much, playing 'em pretty straight, but managing to make them -almost- sound like Harvey Milk originals!
Also included is a four song 3"cd containing previously unreleased, super rare tracks, one of which is their version of R.E.M.'s "South Central Rain"!!!
And of course the packaging is breathtaking. Designed by Stephen O'Malley and Henry Chunklet, it's a gorgeous oversized DVD style, fold over interlocking cardstock sleeve, greenish brown, with O'Malley's instantly recognizable graphic shards in dark brown, the title in embossed reflective silver, inside copious liner notes from Henry printed in metallic silver, the back has an angular H and M diecut, through which you can see the inside sleeve, a black folded cardstock gatefold with silver metallic ink which houses both the DVD and the 3" cd affixed to the inside on little nubs. So awesome!
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 1000 COPIES!!!!!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Bubble Buster"
MPEG Stream: "South Central Rain"

MGR Nova Lux (Neurot) cd 14.98
Okay, we blew it. We did. We let this MGR record slip right under our radar. And we regret it. We do. As we've said before, the only thing better than discovering some new record that totally kicks your ass, is discovering some record you ignored or missed for some reason, only to have your ass kicked retroactively. Such is the case with MGR. And to prove just how sorry we are, not only are we listing this disc (a few months late) but we also got a super limited cd-r direct from the band reviewed elsewhere on this list.
Not sure why we didn't give this a listen when it first came out, our defense, as flimsy as it may seem, is that we thought MGR was the abbreviation for manager, so we just sort of figured, that was kind of a dumb name so why bother. MGR actually stands for Mustard Gas And Roses and is the work of one M. Gallagher from postrock metal heavyweights Isis, and is actually quite amazing.
Imagine Isis with all the bombast stripped away, all traces of metal removed, leaving only sinewy minor key guitars to drift over vast expanses of droning shimmer, skeletal but incredibly lush. Dark, moody, melancholy soundscapes, the background a warm swirl of sound, guitars drifting in the fuzzy haze above, unfurling gorgeously melancholic melodies, while all around huge swaths of sound shimmer and shift. There's some lap steel, but it's just another gauzy layer of sound, there are beats here and there, but those already minimal rhythms are processed into indistinct throbs and minimal shuffles and buried way down in the murk, making those tracks sound like some sort of post rock Gas. So good.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

MOUTH OF THE ARCHITECT The Ties That Blind (Translation Loss) cd 14.98
It's getting harder and harder to know what to write about Mouth Of The Architect and the handful of like-minded bands that we love so much. With MOTA we kinda just want to write "THIS BAND RULES!! SO HEAVY AND CATCHY AND COOL. JUST BUY THIS!!! NOW!!!" But since for some reason not everyone does exactly as we say, and often need a little persuasion, we'll dig a little deeper.
Ever since the first metal band started incorporating math rock into their sound, or ever since the first post rock band went all metal (hard to say how it happened, chicken and egg and all that) we have been hooked, BIG TIME! Impossible for us to resist such a perfect chocolate/peanut butter scenario, such bands as Isis, Indian, Conifer, Tides, Pelican, Minsk, Rosetta, who mix all the bludgeoning brutality, the down tuned riffage, the pounding skull splitting drums, the howled throat shredding demonic growl, with all the intricate rhythms, dreamy drones, melancholy melodies, loping dreaminess, krautrocky grooves and meandering moodiness we could ever want.
It sort of makes sense, when you think about it, all of these bands aren't consciously combining two disparate genres, they are just incorporating all of the things we always wanted in a heavy rock band. Post rock bands were often just not heavy enough, metal bands were often not interesting or pretty enough. These bands are both. Everything. Mouth Of The Architect are probably one of our favorites, their sound leaning a lot more toward the massive, heavy, riffy, doom sludge side of the equation, which just makes the pretty parts all that much more special. And the thing about MOTA, is that even at their heaviest, their crushing downtuned riffs are sort of just supercharged mathrock parts, which gives the whole thing a much more moody emotional vibe, gives it a little more groove, makes it a lot more catchy, even subtly so. Not sure what else to say, other than "THIS BAND RULES!! SO HEAVY AND CATCHY AND COOL. JUST BUY THIS!!! NOW!!!"
MPEG Stream: "Baobob"
MPEG Stream: "Wake Me When It's Over"

UNDOR s/t (Bestial Burst) cd ep 8.98
ATTENTION LOVERS OF INSANE, DAMAGED, DEMENTED BLACK METAL!!! It's that time again. Another bizarre and fantastically fucked release to blacken your soul and your heart. This German outfit are obviously channeling the spirit of Burzum and Abruptum, but have also inadvertently conjured up some Benighted Leams and some Dead Reptile Shrine, and the result is completely bafflingly brilliant. A single half hour track, an abstract soundscape of stumbling plodding caveman doom drumming, weird warped downtuned riffing, every available space filled with squealing feedback, while above it all some of the most demented howling anguished falsetto vocals ever, a sort of Weakling meets Bethlehem meets Silencer. A lurching plodding blackened doom, the feedback everywhere combined with the tempo almost reminds us of Eyehategod. So if you can imagine some sort of abstract, ambient, slow motion, black metal, doom sludge you'll get at least an idea of what freaked out grim and frosty otherworld these guys inhabit. If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands, we shouldn't have to tell you, but we will: this is absolutely essential.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled (excerpt 2)"

URFAUST II: Verraterischer, Nichtswurdiger Geist (Goatowarex) 2lp 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of our all time favorite fucked up black metal records EVER gets the super deluxe double lp vinyl reissue treatment. Super thick 180 gram vinyl, a completely gorgeous black on black, super heavy gatefold sleeve, all new artwork, limited to 500 copies, each lp hand numbered. This is so deluxe and so swank, it's almost like a whole new record. For those of you who somehow missed out on the bizarre brilliance that is Urfaust, or were just holding out in the hope, however farfetched, that someone would release some Urfaust on vinyl, well, here you go. Don't blow it! WE LOVE THIS BAND!!!
Here's what we had to say about the cd when we first got it in:
Some of you somehow missed out on the first Urfaust record we reviewed a while back. And how anyone missed it is a complete mystery, I mean, c'mon, how could you overlook a band described as an opera singer, wandering drunkenly down the street, who ducks into a live Karaoke bar, only to discover that the backup band is something like Burzum or Woodtemple, and thus proceeds to CROON maniacally atop their grim fuzzy midtempo buzzing backing, in an ultra dramatic warble that is equal parts Ethel Merman, Devil Doll's Mr. Doctor and Tom Jones?? Maybe you guys just needed a little reminder. Maybe you didn't read the part that said ETHEL MERMAN FRONTING FUCKING BURZUM!!! Holy crap! We wouldn't even have to hear it! Urfaust have to be the most damaged and demented and plain peculiar black metal band around. And it's not just the vocals (which we also now realize also remind us a bit of Morrissey), although they are one of the most amazing parts of the package. The band itself play their Burzum-y black metal to perfection, but they manage to take that black metal buzz and wrap it in layer after layer of affects and distortion, giving the whole thing a druggy, blissed out Spacemen 3 vibe. This is tripped out, drugged up, otherworldly, stumbling loping black metal perfection. The record opens up with a haunting 13 minute ambient soundscape of moaning cellos and creepy otherworldly strings before they all explode into a burst of martial brass and percussion. moments before a swarm of buzzing guitars attack, and the vocalist climbs atop them, like a wailing warrior riding a flying dragon. The songs on this record are much dronier and more hypnotic than the first record, riffs melt into one other, effects smear the whole thing into a slithering squirming mass of buzz and fuzz and moan. Halfway through the record, we get another 10+ minute breather, another gorgeously serene ambient drone, that drifts and shifts before agitated strings join in and the whole thing collapses back into a thick black metal lope. We didn't think it was possible for this record to be better than the first, and maybe it's not 'better', maybe it's just different, but WOW is this weird and baffling and totally brilliant stuff. Together, the two Urfaust records make quite possibly the ultimate outsider black metal document.
MPEG Stream: "Ragnarok Mystifier"
MPEG Stream: "Gespinnst Des Berderbens"
MPEG Stream: "Der Gottesverachter"

BONE AWL Bog Bodies / Magnetism Of War (Goatowarex) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Man, this one sure has been a mess, apologies to all the folks who waited months and months, but this completely killer slab of raw primitive grim blackness is now FINALLY back in stock. We originally listed it ages ago, sold out, and then tried to order more, and suddenly everything went wrong, our first box of lps got lost, and it took forever to get in touch with the label to get more, they finally showed up out of the blue after almost 9 months, but they were missing sleeves and there weren't enough covers. So we finally got it all sorted out, and we have a bunch of these in stock, for sure for the very last time. Once we run out these are gone for good. In fact since these showed up, we haven't heard a peep from the label, even after repeated emails, so if you want one of these, and you really should, then grab it while you can, once these are gone, these are truly and finally gone for good.
Since we first discovered local primitive black metal outfit Bone Awl, on a tip from Leviathan's Wrest, we've been pretty much totally obsessed. As have most AQ customers considering how fast we fly through their limited cassette only releases.
So finally, two of those long out of print demos (so long out of print in fact that we never actually had ANY) reissued on super deluxe 180 gram vinyl. Two demos, one on each side. Bog Bodies on side A, originally released as a cassette in 2003, limited to 300 copies, now LONG out of print, and on side B, Magnetism Of War, originally released as a cassette in 2002, limited to 150 copies and also long out of print.
So this vinyl reissue, is also of course limited. Only 400 copies. Each sleeve is cut and paste style, to sort of keep with the aesthetic of the Bone Awl cassettes and as you can well imagine, this stuff is SICK SICK SICK. Bone Awl play super lo-fi black thrash, simple throbbing, furious and fucked up. Murky and primitive, just guitar and drums, manned by the brilliantly named duo of He Who Gnashes Teeth and He Who Crushes Teeth! Simple riffs pounded into your skull, a crushing static black buzz, that is totally trancelike in its simplicity. Tape hiss wraps it's blackened tendrils around downtuned guitars, the drums a simple pounding framework, the vocals a guttural demonic howl. Actually, Bone Awl sound strangely like some sort of black metal Brainbombs, and we shouldn't have to tell you how goddamn good that sounds. As far as we know this is already out of print at the label. We have 25 or 30 copies, and once they are gone, they are GONE FOR GOOD.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

JAZZFINGER The Little Girl On The Plane Who Turned Her Doll's Head Around To Look At Me (Muza) cd 8.98
Jazzfinger may seem like they just burst upon the scene, what with the recent flurry of cd-r releases, but these guys have been making beautiful noises for going on a decade now. We have been LOVING everything, we just can't get enough!! So much so that we pulled out our decade old copies of The Little Girl On The Plane Who Turned Her Doll's Head Around To Look At Me, their debut from way back in 1998 (although it was recorded in 1996-97). And holy shit, did that stuff sound just as good now as it did then. We were so blown away when we first discovered this record, we were convinced Jazzfinger would be huge, then they sort of just disappeared for a while before resurfacing more recently. Anyway, we were lamenting the fact that all the folks who had been freaking out over the recent spate of Jazzfinger cd-r's would never get to hear the one that we might just consider to be the best. The lo and behold, we get a call from Ben Jazzfinger, who out of the blue lets us know that the label still has a stash of these discs! Well, needless to say, we had a little freakout, did a little dance, and ordered us up a whole mess of these amazing discs. Needless to say, if you are already a fan of any of the recent JF releases, this is ESSENTIAL. And all you cd-r nerds into Jyrk, Onomata, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, PseudoArcana are definitely gonna want to check this out!!
So what does it sound like? Well if you're hip to the Jazzfinger already, you probably have a good idea, but as this was nearly a decade ago, the sound is a lot more raw, a lot more varied, and really fucking awesome. A caustic soundscape of high end streaks, like howling dogs and balloons being rubber together morphs into a thick fuzzy dirgescape thick with industrial scrapes and warbly organ, like some long lost Dead C jam, then some damaged acoustic guitar beneath a field of buzzing electricity. A lurching sort-of doom metal free noise dirge leads into a stuttering soundscape of sliced and diced vocal and instrumental snippets, a glistening swirl of shortwave interference, found sounds and thick grinding guitar feedback gradually melts away revealing a bizarre low end landscape of gurgles and rumbles, and some stumbling percussion. A radio broadcast is transformed into a thick super distorted snarling beast, jagged and harsh, swathed in fuzz and sheets of feedback, before it drifts away replaced by a strange beeping bleeping symphony of upper register tones and haunting chimes. Finally, an epic, super dramatic, free noise freaked out psych jam, like the Dead C covering Goblin. The music for some alien horror movie. Thick and caustic and noisy but somehow so creepy and pretty. Such an amazing record.
Beautifully packaged too, in an oversized vellum sleeve, printed in metallic silver, the thick brown cardboard inner sleeve visible through the vellum, the whole thing housed in a thick vinyl sleeve.
NOT A WHOLE LOT OF THESE LEFT, SO WHEN WE RUN OUT, WE'RE NOT ENTIRELY SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE.
MPEG Stream: "Axis"
MPEG Stream: "Wishing I Was Younger"
MPEG Stream: "Fingerman"

SOLAR ANUS Skull Alcoholic: The Complete Solar Anus (tUMULt) 2cd 16.98
It's hard to believe, but it's true. SOLAR ANUS IS HERE! It took almost 5 years, but it was well worth it! But what exactly is Solar Anus? An essay by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille... a burst of plodding pummel from UK freedrone outfit Skullflower... but also, and as far as we're concerned more importantly, a band whose music conjures up a mysterious land of legendary monsters, ancient customs, cult beliefs and ritualized incest, all hidden just below the surface of our everyday world, a place only accessible through Matsuri, a group trance during which music and sound, lights and pictures help transport participants back to those mysterious other worlds and ancient times.
Such is the strange world of Japan's mighty tranced-out psychedelic doomlords Solar Anus, whose sound most definitely exists as Matsuri, a music designed to lull us into a trance and carry us off...  mesmeric, hypnotic and HEAVY.
Here, for the first time ever readily available outside of Japan, is the entire recorded output of the legendary Solar Anus, all collected into one massive head crushing, mind melting double cd.
Skull Alcoholic chronicles the band's dizzying trajectory, from stumbling, buzzing, bloody-stumped, sludge doom behemoths to druggy, tranced out psychedelic outer space visionaries, swinging wildly toward both extremes the whole time. An impossible blend of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and the Boredoms, Flower Travellin' band, Pink Floyd, Boris and the Melvins.
Beginning life as a dizzy and druggy, slow motion stoner doom outfit, with their 1997 album On, Solar Anus channeled both the garagey spacestomp of old Monster Magnet, the epic miserablist doomscapes of Candlemass, and the purposefully obtuse sludge riffery of the Melvins, taking all of these disparate but distinctly heavy sounds and incorporating all manner of primitive percussive rituals, drifting dronescapes, 16 rpm Krautrock groove, dreamy angelic female vocals, massive fuzzed out guitars, huge in-the-red monster drums and swirls of creepy crawly dirge into a truly epic dronedriftdoomgroove sound.
The band's blend of propulsive tripped out krautrock, dizzying drum jams and glacial stoner sludge is at once ominous and swoonsome, crushing and psychedelic, lurching wildly from tripped out tribal Can worship to massive bulldozing metal grooves to super abstract druggy dreamscapes, often within the same song.
Album number two, 1999's Trance!! found the band trudging even more resolutely into a bleak and blown out world of dark doom, sounding more and more like classic doomsters, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Cathedral, but completely tweaked of course, and confusingly blended with epic stretches of lurching lo-fi psychedelic Krautrock blow outs a la Amon Duul II.
By the release of their final album, 2000's Next World News, the band had stretched out yet again, dragging their druggy doom into a head spinning world of cracked skull outerspace trance, spinning even further into the void, not so much heavy as blissed out and psychedelic. Lots of abstract rhythmic workouts, like a more demented, damaged version of Finnish dronerockers Circle, a swirl of confusionally dense and relentless FX drenched Krautrock spacejams rife with belching foghorn brass, squawking birds, dizzyingly dense tangles of hippy drum freakouts, chanted vocals, as well as all sorts of studio fuckery, chopped up tape loops, warbly pitch shifts and layer after layer of fuzz and buzz and psychdrone blur.
Each languorous stretch of fuzzed out metallic groove is swathed in blown out clouds of Hawkwind bongsmoke, but broken up by bleary expanses of chilled out 4am trancemusic, but instead of a post-rave laid back Ecstasy come down, it's like crashing and burning in some dirty back alley from an all night PCP binge, silvery streaks of electronic glitch laid over a pulsing techno throb, surrounded by thick washes of processed tribal drums, the whole thing a very Boredoms like primitive percussive ritual, hypnotic and heavy, sprinkled with all kinds of sparkling sonic twinkles and drifting chimes, and underpinned by a wasted moody muted sixties psychedelia.
A quick look at the band's convoluted thanks/inspiration list gives another glimpse into their twisted musical world: German Oak, Crash Worship, Twink, The Electric Prunes, Stooges, Nebula, Pungent Stench, Timothy Leary, Monster Magnet, Ash Ra Tempel, Sodom, Sleep, Amon Duul II, Exit-13, Cathedral, Joel Peter Witkin, Saint Vitus, Church Of Misery, Corrosion Of Conformity, Romain Slocombe, Jimi Hendrix, Gong, Funkadelic, Budgie, Guru Guru, Electric Wizard, Brutal Truth, the Beatles and more. Phew.
And for all you Asian psychrock obsessives: The Solar Anus track "Dear Mother Coral" is actually a cover of a classic tune by Japanese psych legends JA Ceasar!
One of the weirdest, wildest, heaviest collections of druggy, dreamy, dirge-drone-doom-kraut-space-noise-sludge rock EVER!
Mind blowing psychedelic collage cover art, housed in a super deluxe die-cut 'solar anus' slip cover. Includes a massive 12 page booklet, with the original album art and liner notes. These two discs contain every single bit of Solar Anus ever, including their final recording, the previously unreleased nine minute title track, "Skull Alcoholic"!
2006 truly is the year of the anus! SOLAR ANUS!!!!
ONE TIME PRESSING OF 2000 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Skull Alcoholic"
MPEG Stream: "Dear Mother Coral (JA Ceasar)"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Run"
MPEG Stream: "Conceive Bang"
MPEG Stream: "Die In The Space"
MPEG Stream: "Nightfall New Year"
MPEG Stream: "The Extreme North"

ASHES Hymn To A Grey Sky (Supernal.) cd 15.98
Another awesome Supernal release from a few years back that we never managed to review until now. Loyal AQ list readers should already be intrigued just based on the fact that some of our all time favorite black metal records and dark ambient drones have come courtesy of Supernal, Benighted Leams, Drudkh, Hate Forest, Dark Ages, Fall Of The Grey Winged One, Contra Ignem Fatuum and on and on. We're happy to report that Ashes fall into that category of black metal we just can't ever seem to get enough of, that freaked out midtempo, stumbling, damaged, demented, outsider black metal. Imagine Benighted Leams if they were a little dronier and a little more ambient, leaning a bit more toward Burzum instead of Darkthrone.
Weird warbly melancholy acoustic guitars, wavering keyboard ambience, totally fucked up drumming, spastic and stumbling, totally damaged drum programming, all wrapped in a blissed out stumbling black metal buzz, and topped off with some of the most fucked up vocals EVER, a guttural, super processed, creepy insectoid gurgle. Hymn To A Grey Sky is tracked as a single 47 minute track, which is usually annoying, but in this case, we can't imagine NOT listening to the whole thing at once. Long expanses of distant keyboards and simple martial drumming, buzzing loping Burzumic buzz with circusy keyboards way down in the mix, more of those creepy vocals draped over the top, dizzying confusional double bass drum programming, dreamy soft focus drone interludes, a big stretch right in the middle of the record of nature sounds, running water, insect buzz, birds chirping, rustling leaves before stumbling back into a killer midtempo buzz drenched black metal dirge, complete with muted classical guitars, some weird dark ambient In The Nursery style timpani and synthesizers, drifting into an almost new age coda to yet another one of the weirdest slabs of damaged blackness to come our way!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 3"

JELLYFISH Spilt Milk (Charisma) cd 12.98
We are definitely masters of hyperbole. We admit it. So many of our reviews boldly proclaim records to be "the best ever" or "the most retarded ever" or the ever popular "most fucked ever". The thing is, at least from where we're sitting, there CAN be more than one "best ever", and there ARE many "most fucked" records ever... why not? It depends on your mood, what you're doing, where you are, stereo or headphones, car or computer, happy or sad, depressed or romantic, and hell, it could be as simple as a whim. Sometimes, you feel like listening to a specific record, and for that 40 minutes, it is without a doubt, THE BEST RECORD EVER. Now, granted, some 'best records ever' are all time top 10's, while some are favorite records of the summer, and others are favorite make out records, or whatever, but all of them are awesome. For us to make that sort of proclamation, a record has to completely rule, totally kick our ass, and get the shit played out of it! But sometimes, it's not hyperbole. Sometimes a record ABSOLUTELY IS, one of the best pop records EVER MADE. Like Jellyfish's Spilt Milk.
This is not a new release or anything, not even a remastered reissue, but 13 years after it was released, it still gets played A LOT, and still pretty much destroys every other pop record around. Jellyfish started out as a bellbottomed, paisley psychedelic retro combo, but quickly blossomed into a completely amazing, heavy rock power pop supergroup. Not in the sense of being made up of members of other famous bands, but in the sense that they were an absolutely super amazing rock group!!! Jellyfish took the over the top bombast and incredible harmonies of Queen, the perfect summery pop of the Beach Boys and mixed in their own off kilter approach to power pop. Incredibly intricate and complex arrangements, but done so deftly as to never take away from the inherent catchiness of the songs. The guitars are huge, crunchy and heavy, like a super charged Brian May, the drumming is incredible, heavy hitting, super creative, and as catchy on their own as any of the guitar parts or vocal lines. In fact, the one time we saw Jellyfish live, vocalist / drummer Andy Sturmer managed to sing all of these incredible harmonies WHILE playing incredible drum parts, on a STAND UP kit!! Totally blew our mind. A look at the cover and the incredible arrangement of instruments in the studio gives an idea of how epic and amazing this record sounds, gongs, timpani, strings, piano, organ, acoustic guitar, harp, xylophone and more and more and on an on.
Some of the songs are delicate and sweet, soft and shimmery, some are bombastic and heavy, some are sweet simple lullabies, others are incredibly complicated slabs of ultra complex prog pop, but every song on here is a stone cold classic. If there were any justice in the world this record would have been HUGE, and Jellyfish would be playing arenas and making music videos and still making even more incredible records. But sadly, the world wasn't ready for this kind of intelligent, heavy, proggy power pop and the band hung it up soon after. But what a way to go. Just listen to the sound samples and see if you aren't immediately kicking yourself for waiting more than a decade to dig in to this utter pop brilliance.
MPEG Stream: "The Ghost At Number One"
MPEG Stream: "Joining A Fan Club"
MPEG Stream: "All Is Forgiven"
MPEG Stream: "New Mistake"

BORIS Dronevil Final (Inoxia) 2cd 25.00
It seems like every Boris release is more anxiously anticipated than the last. But somehow this is the one everybody's been waiting for. A double cd reissue of the previously vinyl only Dronevil. And just to ensure that Boris obsessives who already have the lp don't get off easy, the cd version adds two lengthy tracks to each disc and eliminates the pressing defect that plagued the lp release.
Dronevil is like the Japanese doom sludge version of the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka! Two discs, one drone, one heavy, intended to be played simultaneously on two separate stereos, but both equally listenable on their own.
The 'drone' disc is gorgeous, the first track is a shimmering swirl of sizzling cymbals, thick clouds of reverberating metal, sounding almost like some lost Organum track. Warm metallic swells, that undulate and subtly swing, layer upon layer of gorgeous high end sound. The second is a lugubrious trawl through some dimly lit cavernous underworld, thick tones swirl and drift, super minimal, like the slowed down sound of tolling bells, a slow motion ringing that shimmers and hums, like some distant soundscape viewed through thick panes of fogged up glass. The final drone track is another high end excursion, this time it's a whirl of densely layered tones, like sheets of feedback, played back at different speeds, creating strange tonal clusters and causing the various sounds to beat against each other producing subtle rhythms and streaks of upper register melody. Like a much more minimal Sunroof! or a Phil Niblock piece using Total outtakes as source material.
The sludgier disc (or the 'Evil' disc of the Dronevil pair) starts off with the 21 minute "Red", which starts off with some rumbling low end swells, mirroring the shimmering cymbals of it's ambient corollary on disc 1, then some abstract clean guitar, lots of space, about halfway through in come the keening distorted guitar feedback, streaks of psychedelic skree above the spacious abstract soundscape, finally about 15 minutes in the drums kick in, a simple post rock skitter, the clean guitars coalesce into a sort of Morricone-ish spaghetti western twang, above which some spare soulful leads drift and delicately soar, a slow loping groove like some strange slowcore hybrid of Codeine and Low. Dreamy and so good. The second track is where it actually gets heavy, a super distorted slow motion riff builds and builds until Boris are lurching along like some monstrous space rock behemoth, a sludgy trudge, thick walls of distorted guitar, simple pounding drums, all beneath wild psychedelic leads. Very Hawkwindy for sure. A brief near silent interlude sets us up for the hammer to fall, and it does, huge crumbling riffs dripping with filthy distortion, a sludgy black hole riff, and the wild psychedelic leads just keep getting more tangled and freaked out. So totally intense and heavy and super spaced out. The final track is another massive space doom workout. Heavy and thick and dense, but still somehow spacious and epic. Guitars grind and crunch but they also drift and hover weightless, the drums pound one second, and skitter jazzily the next, everything a huge swirling mass of psychedelic spaciness wrapped in massively thick guitars, ending in a barely there acoustic steel string coda.
Now when you play the two discs together it all makes sense. The heavy disc is so spare and spacey, because the first disc introduces all of these extra layers of sound, and the first disc is so abstract and minimal, because it's main purpose is to fill out the doom drenched space rock on disc two. But it barely matters. Together, the two