PURITAN Sagittarius (Skinny Chest/Elsinor) cd 10.98
In the not so distant future, there will be classes at Evergreen State (perhaps sponsored in part by K Records) such as 'Indie Songwriting 101: Malkamus and Barlow.' The Northwestern outfit Puritan (who may have some association with AQ favs Death Cab For Cutie) have seen the future and matriculated from this class with honors, by demonstrating a working knowledge of not only Pavement and Sebadoh, but also their respective influences Capt. Beefheart and Neil Young.

PURITAN, THE Lithium Gates (Spinefarm) cd 16.98
The demise of legendary doomlords Reverend Bizarre had two strange but positive after effects, first, there seemed to be a flood of posthumous RB releases, more we think than when they were actually a band, a from-beyond-the-grave release schedule to rival Biggie or Tupac, as is further demonstrated by yet another new Reverend Bizarre release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list! The second outcome was the more inevitable one, a whole slew of new projects from RB mainman S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), whose voracious need to rock would obviously need a new outlet, and thus we have The Puritan and Opium Warlords. Both born of Hynninen's newfound obsession with ultra doom, with sludge, especially of the Japanese variety, Boris, Corrupted, Solar Anus, Hynninen set forth on a mission to create some serious Japanese style ultra doom sludge. We'll have the Opium Warlords disc for next list, but for now, we shall celebrate The Puritan, and Lithium Gates, which compiles two previously released, now out of print vinyl lps, one of which we never had, the other which we had in extremely limited numbers.
We've become convinced, that Hynninen must be somehow related to Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo. They're both Finnish, they both front or fronted kick ass heavy rock bands, and both have totally twisted senses of humor, which finds its way, however subtly (or not) into their music. So while the Puritan was originally inspired by Japanese doom and sludge, by the time it worked its way through Hynninen's cracked Finnish filter, it had been transformed into something else entirely. Something heavy and brutal, but warped and far out and brilliant.
This is no ordinary doom. And is far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre. Although on first listen, maybe not so far removed after all, beginning with the first Puritan lp, The Untitled, the sound is ultra heavy, downtuned, spaced out, melodic, with a distinctly classic strain of classic doom running through it, the opening intro could indeed be the opening salvo from some doom classic, and the follow up too does not sound that far our, awesomely epic and troo vocals over a lumbering slow motion dirge, but then the record shifts gears, and "The Sulphur - Coloured Clouds Are Hurrying Through the Lithium Gates" explodes like some nineties noise rock juggernaut, loping bass, crumbling guitars, jagged riffing, only to gradually slow to a nearly complete halt, before slipping back into slow motion ultra doom dirgery. "The Sepulchral God Holding a Speech for the Moribund" sounds almost like some extra heavy slowcore, with some dramatically crooned Slough Feg like vox, before a strangely haunting outro, with clean guitars, whirling ambience, mysterious sampled voices, including a classic Charles Manson rant, all hovering beneath thick washed out guitars and lilting sweetly sorrowful melodies. Then it begins to get even weirder.
The second half of Lithium Gates contains the entirety of The Black Law, the second Puritan lp, which begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlor music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us of Midwestern pigfuckers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly AmRep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift.
From there on out, the record continues to devolve gloriously with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with more deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed.
Needless to say, fucking awesome! And essential listening for any one into sounds slow and low, doomy and heavy, fucked up and far out.
MPEG Stream: "Opposite the Fireplace - The Wall of Shotguns"
MPEG Stream: "The Stars Above Us Are all Evil"
MPEG Stream: "The Sulphur - Coloured Clouds Are Hurrying Through the Lithium Gates"
MPEG Stream: "The Blue and Purple Lesson in Love"

PURITAN, THE The Black Law (I Hate Records) 12" 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Reverend Bizarre may be dead. But The Puritan lives on in his place. The Puritan being the new group founded and fronted by RB's S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), this being their second missive, the first, another quite limited 12", that managed to go out of print before we could nab any. For part two though, we did manage to grab a bunch, but be warned, it too is crazy limited and there's a good chance these will be the only copies we can get. So doom obsessives, dig in...
But, this is no ordinary doom. And it's quite far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre as well. The record begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlour music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us more of Midwestern thud rockers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly Amrep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift.
The B side begins with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed.
Needless to say, fucking awesome! (btw, those new to The Puritan, or doom in general, might want to pick up the last Reverend Bizarre double cd too while you're at it, So Long Suckers, that band's mighty doom swansong).
We're kicking ourselves for missing the first 12", as this, our first experience in the strange doomy world of The Puritan most definitely has us wanting more...

PURKINJE SHIFT Five For The Road... And One For The Ditch (Samizdat) cd 10.98
With equal parts Don Caballero, Breadwinner, Shellac, and Turing Machine, The Purkinje Shift flexes their muscular heaviosity as an instrumental math-rock / power trio who has all the complexities down to a science and is a force to be reckoned with. Recommended.

PURLING HISS Hissteria (Richie Records) lp 16.98
Purling Hiss's Public Service Announcement was our Record of The Week a while back, a fantastic and unexpected collection of lo-fi eighties style power pop, super catchy bedroom brewed folk, and lazy, lysergic psychedelic drug rock drift, all sounds that were apparently at odds with their 'normal' sound, which was a heavy blown out super in-the-red psychedelia, which was on full display on their s/t lp on Permanent, which indeed was white hot and freaked out and heavy, and awesome, just WAY different then PSA.
So we really didn't know what to expect with this 4 song ep, and we were surprised to discover, that while it definitely leaned sonically more toward their heavy psych, they also managed to infuse plenty of pop into these jams, the result being a sound that is essentially a mix of the two. The guitars are heavy, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums pounding, the sound looped and repetitive and hypnotic, but within this Stooges-y / White Heaven rocking out lurk all the little things that made PSA so killer, hooks, melodies, the opening track "Passenger Queen" is pretty heavy and swaggery, but then the sound shifts and the band whip out a brief bit of total tangled pop, only to slip right back into it. Obviously folks who are looking for more of the introspection and hushed strum and folkiness, or even the lo-fi psychedelic space jams, might be overwhelmed by the rock, but we're digging this big time.
Check out the second track "Whipple Dam" with an absolutely killer, super stonery main riff, accompanied by ooooooh-ing vocals, another glimpse of the hidden poppiness, before the moaning reverby vocals and mathy almost tech riffing take over. "Space Roots / Limerence" is more of the same, heavy, psychedelic, subtly poppy. The record finishes off with the slithery blues boogie of "Down On The Delaware River" which sounds like s super blown out, lo-fi, in-the-red take on classic Bowie, a little bit glammy, with more oooooh's and some seriously bad ass leads. Awesome! Maybe not immediately as catchy as PSA, but way heavier, and crazy hooky in its own way.
Thus, RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Passenger Queen"
MPEG Stream: "Whipple Dam"

PURLING HISS Lounge Lizards (Mexican Summer) lp 19.98
We made Public Service Announcement by Purling Hiss our Record Of The Week back in October of 2010, and for good reason, it was a fantastic collection of classic old school power pop, dreamy tripped out psychedelia and lo-fi bedroom 4 trackery, all woven into a blurred murky bliss out, a gorgeously confusional record that fused tape hiss and weird sonic dropouts to some of THEE catchiest classic rock sounding pop music EVER, all peppered with long stretches of hazy bongsmoke psych guitar trip outs. And while the records since have been great as well, they seemed to focus more on the heavy psych side of PH's sound, a blown out white noise psychedelia that had more in common with Fushitsusha or White Heaven or Liquorball, that the oddball power pop and home brewed bedroom folk that PSA referenced, but even then, PH couldn't seem to shrug off that keen pop sense entirely, which is what made those records so goddamn good as well.
But we're happy to report, on this new ep, PH have returned to that murky washed out classic pop that had us so smitten in the first place. Just give opener "Voices" a listen, all hazy humid guitar buzz, tangled psychedelia, muted and smeared into hazy swirls, the vocals lazy and laid back, a woozy drawl, the melodies impossibly lilting and catchy, a practically perfect slab of slo-mo psychedelic power pop dirgery, complete with lots of "ooooooh"s and plenty of wah wah'd guitar leads, same with track number two "The Hoodoo", a gorgeous heady collision of squiggly distorted guitar leads, warm washed out riffage, simple pounding rhythms, and those laid back vox, the vibe here a bit more Stooges-y but still distinctly classic poppy, especially with the crazy catchy chorus and more "oooooh" falsetto back up vocals.
And so it goes, the whole record unfurls in a hazy, blurry, druggy power pop haze, almost like an ACTUAL power pop record, only playing slightly too slowly, on a busted up old turntable, woozy and warped, the lo-fi murk and sonic warble only adding more warmth and druggy dreaminess to Purling Hiss's already blissed out power pop psychedelia, and sort of the perfect sonic addendum to their (his) beloved Public Service Announcement record!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Includes a download coupon!
MPEG Stream: "Voices"
MPEG Stream: "The Hoodoo"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Man"

PURLING HISS Public Service Announcement (Woodsist) lp 14.98
WOW, did this record pretty much immediately blow us away! We had never actually heard these guys (this guy actually, he also plays in Birds Of Maya), but had always thought Purling Hiss was a pretty awesome name, so not expecting too much, we threw this on and then BAM, we were sold, smitten, obsessed even, finding ourselves playing this to death, getting these songs stuck in our heads, and not just the songs proper, but even the weird little recording anomalies and random bits of musical glitchery. For a record that sounds, and is maybe meant to sound, so lo-fi and tossed off and just sort of half assed, a druggy murky muddy home brewed pop record, it's impossibly catchy and well crafted and AMAZING.
A heady mix of classic pop songsmithery, blown out psychedelic drift, abstract tape experiment fuckery and fragmented bedroom 4 track alchemy, Public Service Announcement plays at times like some classic rock record that's been dubbed a million times and then played back in your crappy car stereo, the one with only one speaker and no bass knob, and at other times like some inspired Guided By Voices mini pop epic, and occasionally like some super baked, basement psych jam blowout, wasted and lazy and drifty and divine.
The record opens with "Run From The City", which within 5 seconds establishes itself as some impossible instant classic, with a totally killer guitar lick that IS the song's hook, the track sounding like some lost punky pop gem from the seventies or eighties that somehow got left off of every compilation since, the verses crunchy and muddy and melodic, those guitar leads just sealing the deal. In fact, we could barely get to the rest of the record cuz we just wanted to keep playing the first track.
"Porch Dude/Slight Return" offers up our first glimpse of Purling Hiss as wasted and stoned psych jam drifters, shuffling drums, swirling flanged guitars, everything hazy and wreathed in pot smoke, little spidery leads surfacing here and there, bit otherwise a blurred and bleary drift, the slight return of the title being the revisited melody from the album opener.
And then there's "Don't Even Try It", the other song we can't seem to keep from just playing on repeat, with it's folky guitar and vocal intro, the tape speed constantly shifting, the sound warped and warbly, like someone with their finger on the record as it spins, and then the chorus comes in, with it's "woo ooo ooo" refrain, and the song suddenly reveals itself as some pretty perfect pop. Lo-fi yet lush, vocal harmonies, guitar melodies, a hook to die for, all hazy and sun dappled and catchy as all get out.
After a brief (but AWESOME) minute long Van Halen loop, that manages to be totally twisted yet totally catchy, the record slips right back into fuzzy lo-fi pop, more oooh's and aaah's, summery steel string strum, dreamy harmonies, and sweet pop hooks, before unfurling some serious psychedelia in the form of "Gypsy", a sprawling droned out chunk of druggy spaciness, and at that point if you're not already under the record's spell, you bliss out and drift off and let the record carry you wherever it will, whether it be to "Zor" a thick buzzing, swirling, yet still dreamily melodic bit of dark drone, or to "Beautiful Earth Creature" which is another perfect chunk of jangly pop, replete with those warped speed fluctuations that end up becoming irrevocably part of the song, or to the heady spacepsychjam freakout of "Malice In Wonderland" or to the twisted Ariel Pink-ish warbly fuzzy FM radio pop of album close "1976".
Warped and wonderful and definitely one of our new favorite records.
MPEG Stream: "Run From The City"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Even Try It"
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Earth Creature"
MPEG Stream: "Bedroom"
MPEG Stream: "Gypsy"

PURLING HISS s/t (Permanent Records) lp 16.98
List 357's Record Of The Week, Public Service Announcement, by Purling Hiss, was a huge hit around here, an awesomely hooky lo-fi collection of home recorded GBV style 4 track pop, mixed with slow, shimmery lysergic psychedelia, but apparently, that record was a bit of an anomaly, as all of PH's other recorded material seems to be super heavy and freaked out psych rock a la White Heaven or Burnt Hills or Acid Mothers Temple or Comets On Fire. Sure the pop element is still present, but it's buried under glorious squalls of psychguitar and pounding drum damage.
The tracks here are long too, so once the vocals fade and the song proper disappears, the songs keep on going, stretched out super extended heart of the sun psychedelic space rock excursionism, incendiary sprawls of white hot guitar freakout.
But, as mentioned above, the songs do still retain some of that poppiness, albeit in seriously small doses, but the presence however slight of that pop, manages to imbue the rest of each song with a subtle pop element, that keeps things from devolving into full on wankery. "Woo hoo" vocals abound, but they're wrapped in hazy streaks of buzz and howl, there are hooks too, they surface here and there, and occasionally, one of the shredding distorto guitars will start playing one of those perfect pop melodies, before letting it splinter and explode back into a psychedelic frenzy.
The B side is weirdly tracked, with several super short blasts of blown out psych heaviness, but right in the middle is an awesome, extended space-psych jam, the guitars explosive and white hot, but underpinned by super melodic looping, walking basslines, which sort of remind us of Redd Kross at their most psychedelic, but again, that little bit of melody, grounds the rest of the song, and transforms a sidelong blast of shreddery, into something weirdly poppy and melodic and listenable, and fucking AWESOME!
Maybe a bit too fierce and fiery for folks who were mainly into the pretty pop side of that first Purling Hiss record, but anyone into the above mentioned bands, or at all into freaked out psychedelia, then this is most definitely the shit.

PURO INSTINCT Headbangers In Ecstasy (Mexican Summer) cd 13.98
As these young ladies from Los Angeles settle into their new moniker (they first hit the scene known as Pearl Harbor) they continue to evolve their hazy take on breezy and washed out shoegaze pop. There is something about the overall sound on Headbangers In Ecstacy that induces in us such a swirling and cloudy state. With songs that seem to exist in worlds that bring to mind The Swirlies, The Feelies, Chapterhouse, Lush, and Blondie. Or what it might sound like if Ariel Pink got to produce a record for Julee Cruise. It's dream-pop that's detached enough to let your mind take it wherever you want. This is the perfect album for those days when you can't tell whether you are happy or sad but you know that you just want to keep floating somewhere in-between.
MPEG Stream: "Everybody's Sick"
MPEG Stream: "Lost at Sea"
MPEG Stream: "Silvers Of You"

PURO INSTINCT Headbangers In Ecstasy (Mexican Summer) lp 16.98
As these young ladies from Los Angeles settle into their new moniker (they first hit the scene known as Pearl Harbor) they continue to evolve their hazy take on breezy and washed out shoegaze pop. There is something about the overall sound on Headbangers In Ecstacy that induces in us such a swirling and cloudy state. With songs that seem to exist in worlds that bring to mind The Swirlies, The Feelies, Chapterhouse, Lush, and Blondie. Or what it might sound like if Ariel Pink got to produce a record for Julee Cruise. It's dream-pop that's detached enough to let your mind take it wherever you want. This is the perfect album for those days when you can't tell whether you are happy or sad but you know that you just want to keep floating somewhere in-between.
MPEG Stream: "Everybody's Sick"
MPEG Stream: "Lost at Sea"

PURO INSTINCT Stilyagi / Put Medved To Bedved (Mexican Summer) 7" 5.98

PURO INSTINCT (PEARL HARBOR) s/t (Gloriette) 12" 12.98
We really loved the Pearl Harbor record on Mexican Summer, which is sadly already out of print, there was something about it that stuck out from the onslaught of new lo-fi minded garage pop bands. With this new record, the band is transitioning into a new moniker (Puro Instinct) because of catching some grief from the '80s SF band Pearl Harbor, but luckily while the name is changing their sound is only evolving and getting more entrancing and seductive. We recently caught them opening for Ariel Pink and it was such a perfect hazy swaying daydream experience. And we have to say we have never seen a band with collectively such amazing flowing blonde hair!! Vidal Sasoon should really jump on board and sponsor them. But beyond their mesmerizing hair, their music actually feels very similar to that folicularly glowing and flowing sensation. These four new songs continue their smart take on mixing a 4AD sensibility with a washed out pop aesthetic. Like Beach House covering the Cocteau Twins, or Nite Jewel stepping away from the late night dance floor and entering an even more smoke filled blissed out world of moody mystery. Makes us want to sit in our bedrooms lit only by candles, as we lay so dazed, eyes closed, letting the sounds from the vinyl just seep into our skin and course through our veins.

PURPLE CONFUSION, THE The Sound Of The Atom Splitting (Gooom) cd 15.98
Ever since we discovered M83 and their gorgeous shimmery blissed out shoegazey electronic pop, we've been desparately trying to track down more stuff on Gooom, the French label that M83 (and Cyann & Ben as well) call home. While a lot of that stuff is already out of print, we did just manage to get a few titles in enough quantity to list. Purple Confusion actually features half of M83 as well as Gooom head honcho Jean-Philippe. So you can probably just imagine what this sounds like. Everybody who freaked out over the M83 will love this too. Take the My Bloody Valentine meets New Order sound of M83 add some propulsive Krautrock rhythms, some Stereolab rainy day mesmer, some DJ Shadow creepy ambience, and plenty of Autchere-ish skitter and glitch and you'll have a rough idea of where Purple Confusion are coming from. This is a brain bending, soul stirring blend of pop and fuzz and new wave and techno and glitchcore and dronerock and electro and all stops in between. Highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Return To Nassau"
MPEG Stream: "Running Behind Butterflies"

PURPLE IMAGE s/t (Radioactive) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When we first put this on, we were like, damn! Opening track "Living In The Ghetto" is some kick-ass, fuzz-filled, freak funk/rock from this all-black '70s act from Cleveland (whom, of course, we've never heard of before, as with so many of the Radioactive label's reissued rarities). And it was perhaps too much to ask for the whole of their eponymous 1970 album to keep up with the heavy acid rock like that track. No, soon Purple Image take a turn into some smooth and tender R&B territory, though weird synth interludes and psychedelic effects keep our interest, and there's definitely some more nuggets of tough fuzz rockin' to be found on here. The album ends with "Marching To A Different Drummer", a meandering fifteen minute mostly-instrumental garage psych R&B fusion jam, with shrill guitars, funky horns, phased drums, wild harmonica... Definitely cool, though they're no Funkadelic. Still, at least a couple of the cuts on here, particularily "Living In The Ghetto" would for sure make this worth it to any big fan of that Chains And Black Exhaust compilation!
MPEG Stream: "Living In The Ghetto"
MPEG Stream: "Lady"

PURPLE IMAGE s/t (Spiral Groove) lp 24.00
We listed a reissue of this on cd a while back, that's long out of print, but we're happy to see it's now been done on vinyl...
When we first put this on, we were like, damn! Opening track "Living In The Ghetto" is some kick-ass, fuzz-filled, freak funk/rock from this all-black '70s act from Cleveland. And it was perhaps too much to ask for the whole of their eponymous 1970 album to keep up with the heavy acid rock like that track. No, soon Purple Image take a turn into some smooth and tender R&B territory, though weird synth interludes and psychedelic effects keep our interest, and there's definitely some more nuggets of tough fuzz rockin' to be found on here. The album ends with "Marching To A Different Drummer", a meandering fifteen minute mostly-instrumental garage psych R&B fusion jam, with shrill guitars, funky horns, phased drums, wild harmonica... Definitely cool, though they're no Funkadelic. Still, at least a couple of the cuts on here, particularly "Living In The Ghetto" would for sure make this worth it to any big fan of the much beloved Chains And Black Exhaust compilation from way back when!
MPEG Stream: "Living In The Ghetto"
MPEG Stream: "Lady"

PURPLE IVY SHADOWS Whoever's South is Northern Also (Dark Beloved Cloud) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Newest in Dark Beloved Cloud's series of clear-vinyl albums cut on that famous New Zealand hand-run lathe. We've got the West Coast exclusive on these and it's limited to 100 copies worldwide. A well-crafted, desolate sort of folk/pop, the singer's voice reminds us of, like, a cross between Richard Hell and Allen Callaci from Refrigerator, very evocative.

PURPLE RHINESTONE EAGLE A Morum Tali (Eolian) lp 12.98
We got a handful of these when the band were in town, but they disappeared before we could even hear it. We managed to get more finally, and HOLY SHIT, it's not hard to hear why we couldn't keep these in stock, some seriously fuzzy, Sabbathy, mystical metal garage rock, or something. The women from Portland, kicking out the jams, warm, languid, buzzy, doomy jams, super psychedelic, the guitars muddy and fuzzed out, the bass deep and throbbing, the drums pounding and a bit chaotic, the vocals wild and emotional and intense, reminding us quite a bit of Christina Billotte, in fact Purple Rhinestone Eagle sounds a bit like some weird mix of Quix*O*Tic and Pentagram. Which is a very very good thing. The vocals go from woozy deepish croon to wild punkish wail, perfectly balancing the warbly wandering mesmerizing basslines and the warped minor key leads. The sound is sometimes epic and frenzied and very metal, sometimes brooding and murky and garage-y, often the two elements blurring into something else entirely.
Anyone who has been digging Jex Thoth or The Devil's Blood will definitely dig this, and White Magic fans who might enjoy a more mystical and metal Ms. Billotte, might just dig this as well.
Eye popping hand silkscreened sleeves, full color insert with lyrics and lots of rad psychedelic photos, pressed on opaque green vinyl, and yeah, probably pretty limited.

PURPLE RHINESTONE EAGLE The Great Return (Stank House) lp 14.98
Record number two from this all female power trio from Portland, don't let the hippy cover art fool you, this is some awesomely psychedelic and fuzz drenched Sabbathy stoner garage doom space rock fuzz pop. In our review of their first record we said it sounded like "Quix*O*Tic meets Pentagram, due in no small part to the soaring dramatic vocals (not to mention the heavy riffing), and this time around the same still applies, in fact the vocals are even more intense and emotional, which had us wanting to alter that description to now read "Sleater Kinney meets Black Sabbath", tough to argue with that, but then why would you want to. These ladies SLAY, unfurling groovy stonery riffs, unleashing thick swaths of metallic crunch, thick buzzing riffage, powerful simple drumming, rad psychedelic leads, the sound heavy and metallic, but laced with a witchy folky vibe, which the band fully embrace, sometimes ditching the heaviness entirely and weaving lush sonic spells of acoustic guitar and dreamy vocals, only to launch right back into some stripped down dirgey, doomy creep, some lumbering metallic downtuned crunch, or some groovy wah wah laced stoner rock. Awesome!

PURPLE RHINESTONE EAGLE / NORTHERN SWORDS / FORSORCERERS Fantasy Quest (Poison Apple) 7" 5.98
Ok, how can you go wrong with a record called Fantasy Quest, that features awesome, high school binder, D&D fantasy pencil art, with a dog headed warrior princess wielding a shield and a tiny mouse with a sword waving a pennant, some ghosts, a winged rabbit headed warrior, a creepy forest, a castle, even harder to resist when you realize it's a compilation of all female, mostly instrumental, fuzzy, psychedelic hard rocking, metal bands from the Northwest! FUCK YEAH!
First up is Purple Rhinestone Eagle, whose record we went nuts for a while back, and their track here is just as good as anything on the full length, pounding, groovy, garagey, a little stonery, a lot space-y, riffy, metallic psych rock with a pinch of NWOBHM, so so good!
Here they're teamed up with Northern Swords, whose track is a two parter, you gotta flip the disc to hear the whole thing, and it slays, like a more loose Fucking Champs, still tight and technical, with killer harmonized guitar leads, killer drumming, the second part is super aggro and WAY technical, and relentlessly rocking, both parts sound like they COULD, or SHOULD have lyrics about dragons and swords and sorcerers, you can almost hear the airbrushed seventies van, and leather pants, the fringed jackets and feathered hair, the big amps and smoke machines.
Finally, Forsorcerers (awesome name btw!) finish things off, kicking out the only jam with vocals, total hard rocking classic garage rock, like Thin Lizzy crossed with the Runaways, more awesomely tangled guitar harmonies, and bad ass female vox.
Not sure what's going on up North, but we definitely want more.
Pressed on super striking white / black / grey splatter vinyl, with a printed insert, and the aforementioned bad ass cover.

PURPLE TRAP Decided...Already the Motionless Heart of Tranquility, Tangling the Prayer Called 'I' (Tzadik) 2cd 19.98
Purple Trap is a "supertrio" indeed--the unearthly vocals and guitar of Keiji Haino, backed by ubiquitous bassist Bill Laswell and free-jazz drum legend Rashied Ali! Certainly fans of Haino's Fushitsusha outfit, who themselves released a double cd entitled Purple Trap, will dig this double cd sprawl of howling fury.

PUS s/t (Universal Tongue) cd ep 10.98
From the same label that gave us records from Alkerdeel, Aidan Baker, Bongripper, Expo 70, Caina, Gorgontongue and Persistence In Mourning, comes this, the debut ep from UK sludgelords Pus, whose sound is a lurching, lumbering downtuned heaviness, that owes as much to Electric Wizard as it does Moss. The guitars are thick and oozy and blackened, downtuned and tarpit groovy, the drums simple and solid, the vocals a reverb drenched bellow that sounds a bit like Mike Williams from Eyehategod crossed with Justin Broadrick circa the good ol' Godflesh days, each song mostly a single riff, pounded at relentlessly, laced with occasional gouts of wah drenched psychedelic leads, the songs once in a while oozing into something more blackened and dirgey, or something more propulsive and downright rocking, but for the most part, it's a relentlessly tranced out black dirge, doomy and psychedelic, mesmerizing and hypnotic, culminating in the extra noisy title track, which substitutes the bellowing vox for a weird droned out monk like chant, the guitars a big muddier and murkier, the result something weirdly dreamy and trippy.
Definitely recommended for fans of all things slow and low, doomy and sludgey. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "The Black Swordsman"
MPEG Stream: "Pus"

PUSCIFER 'V' Is For Vagina (self-released) cd 15.98

PUSH BUTTON OBJECTS 360 Degree Remixes (Chocolate Industries) cd 13.98
Push Button Objects, the Miami-based hip hop producer, here releases an interesting new track, 360 Degrees, with mic duties handled by Del tha Funky Homosapien and Def Jux's Mr Lif, and nice turntablist scratching courtesy three-time DMC champ DJ Craze. The original track is here, and it's excellent, plus you get 5 remixes, of which the best is certainly from El-P (Company Flow), who adds a heavy doom-laden creepiness to the original track. El-P was also the only remixer who thought to play with the stereo mix on the chorus, whose "Left, Right, Up, Down" just cries out for stereo separation tricks. The Herbaliser mix is also commendable, and the other contributors include Prefuse 73, DJ Spinna, and Kut Masta Kurt. Vinyl enthusiasts please note that the double 12" does NOT contain the Prefuse material, but does contain 3 versions of each DJ's mix (dirty, instrumental, clean).
RealAudio clip: "360 Degrees (Original)"
RealAudio clip: "360 Degrees (El-P remix)"

PUSH BUTTON OBJECTS 360 Degree Remixes (Chocolate Industries) 2x12" 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Push Button Objects, the Miami-based hip hop producer, here releases an interesting new track, 360 Degrees, with mic duties handled by Del tha Funky Homosapien and Def Jux's Mr Lif, and nice turntablist scratching courtesy three-time DMC champ DJ Craze. The original track is here, and it's excellent, plus you get 5 remixes, of which the best is certainly from El-P (Company Flow), who adds a heavy doom-laden creepiness to the original track. El-P was also the only remixer who thought to play with the stereo mix on the chorus, whose "Left, Right, Up, Down" just cries out for stereo separation tricks. The Herbaliser mix is also commendable, and the other contributors include Prefuse 73, DJ Spinna, and Kut Masta Kurt. Vinyl enthusiasts please note that the double 12" does NOT contain the Prefuse material, but does contain 3 versions of each DJ's mix (dirty, instrumental, clean).

PUSH BUTTON OBJECTS Dirty Dozen (Chocolate Industries) cd 14.98
Reissue of the classic "Cash" and "Half Dozen" eps recorded in 1995 and 1996, plus two previously unreleased tracks from producer Edgar Farinas. Very catchy, electronica with a gritty, dark undertone, and a hip hop hump. Reminiscent of Disjecta or early u-ziq.

PUSH KINGS Push Kings (Sealed Fate) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Sweet, practical, Beatlesesque pop from Northeasterners who we predict will be huge, probably soon after the release of their second album. On the Dambuilder guitarist's label. Read recent SF Bay Guardian for a spot-on review from smart AQ-l subscriber Gabriel Roth, one of the very very few local writers we trust (well, since you asked -- other critics we trust include Alvin Lu, Chuck Stephens, and the much-missed Sia Michel who was recently wooed away to NYC by SPIN -- we wish her well and know she will not forget, as so many have, what real music writing -and appreciation- consists of.)

PUSH KINGS Push Kings (Sealed Fate) lp 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Sweet, practical, Beatlesesque pop from Northeasterners who we predict will be huge, probably soon after the release of their second album. On the Dambuilder guitarist's label. Read recent SF Bay Guardian for a spot-on review from smart AQ-l subscriber Gabriel Roth, one of the very very few local writers we trust (well, since you asked -- other critics we trust include Alvin Lu, Chuck Stephens, and the much-missed Sia Michel who was recently wooed away to NYC by SPIN -- we wish her well and know she will not forget, as so many have, what real music writing -and appreciation- consists of.)

PUSHING UP DAISIES s/t (self-released) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We originally listed this way back in 2004, and finally managed to get another batch of these back in!
Besides having an awesome name for a metal band, Pushing Up Daisies is also an eight piece. A goddamn EIGHT PIECE! Vocalist, keyboardist, bassist, TWO drummers and THREE guitarists! And it shows. The guitars are everywhere, serpentine and slithery, jagged and ear piercing, downtuned and crushing. The dual drum attack is a pummeling unstoppable force. But it's not just about the instrumentation. Pushing Up Daisies are a fierce metal hybrid, equal parts screamo, metalcore and even a dash of black metal, with brain bendingly complex arrangements leaning WAY towards the prog end of things and plenty of weird breakdowns, from super reverbed dubbed out space rock to strangely loping Three Mile Pilot like bass driven melodic passages, to James Gang wah-guitar funk, but always bookended by crushing hook filled METAL. Lots of stops and starts, high end guitar melodies weaving in and out, punctuated by massive and muffled three-downtuned-guitar chugs that rattle your fillings they hit so hard. Lots of two guitar bands don't take advantage of their extra axe and waste it by having both guitarists play the same thing, but Pushing Up Daisies utilize their triple threat to full effect and it really adds a unique edge to everything with all sorts of slippery intertwining melodies, strangely haunting guitar harmonies and layer upon layer of sonic weirdness. One of our favorite new metal records!
MPEG Stream: "Bus Ride"
MPEG Stream: "Clipping Cupid's Wings Pt. A"

PUSSY Invasion (Vintage / Rockadrome) cd 14.98
We know a LOT of you are familiar with the band Jerusalem, one of thee ultimate holy grails of '70s proto-metal, thankfully reissued by Vintage/Rockadrome a couple years ago. We made it our Record Of The Week at the time, and still sell 'em steadily, every week!! And this list, you'll also find the vinyl version of that reissue, repressed. One of the heaviest, doomiest proto-metal finds ever, coming closer to the gods Black Sabbath than most, but with their own primitive, almost punk charm!
Jerusalem only put out that one rare lp, but that's not the end to the story. Rumor had it that there was a second album in the can, never released. Well, as we mentioned in our Record Of The Week write-up, the actual fact was that when Jerusalem broke up, sometime in 1972, 3/5ths of the ex-members immediately formed another band, Pussy, and what we've got here is Pussy's entire recorded output, finally seeing the light of day!!
Not to be confused with another British band called Pussy, a psych pop outfit from the '60s (what's with these young men liking Pussy as a band name so much? Cat fanciers, huh?), this Pussy were a power trio, consisting of Jerusalem's rhythm section plus their lead guitarist. Apparently, the lead singer and 2nd guitarist from Jerusalem had wanted to go in a more progressive/polished direction, which lead to the split, and resulted in the formation of Pussy, by those who wanted to keep things rather more raw and rockin'. However, Pussy do sound somewhat different from Jerusalem, and not just 'cause bassist Paul Dean took over on vocals (on the other hand, he was also always the main songwriter in both bands).
While their songs are full of throbbing rhythms and crunching distorted guitar riffs, Pussy don't come across quite so doomy and dark as did their previous incarnation. There's a bit more of a poppy "glam" thing going on here, Pussy sounding something like a heavier T.Rex at times! Banging a gong, getting it on, boogying down, complete with handclaps and cowbell. Slade and The Sweet could be other influences/comparisons, which means this has something in common with the proto-metal treat we listed last time, by Incredible Hog... Some songs remind us of Stray ("I Keep Remembering You"), others of early UFO ("Moonshine"), and one ("Pig Mansion") even hints at a proto-metal version of early Brian Eno. There's even a number on here that Andee thought sounded like something from the first Duran Duran album, though we're not sure if anyone else thinks so. These rollicking tracks are all energetic and fuzzed out, with lots of bouncy, rubbery riffing. Definitely a good time, and thus getting played in heavy rotation here at the store ever since it showed up!
There's a total of 16 tracks on this cd, including both sides of their only previously released record, a 7" single from 1972, the great "Feline Woman" (inspired by Sabbath's version of "Evil Woman"?) backed with "Ska-Child" (definitely NOT a ska number, though it does feature groovy hard rockin' horns!). Then there's four more songs from demo sessions circa '73, plus the ten tracks, with a new guitarist, from what was meant to be their full-length album, all produced (as was Jerusalem) by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, who also sings some backup. So cool that this long lost gem is finally available! The 20 page cd booklet includes lyrics, photos, and detailed liner notes about the Pussy story...
MPEG Stream: "Feline Woman"
MPEG Stream: "Pig Mansion"
MPEG Stream: "Take Me Home"

PUSSY Pussy Plays (Edsel) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This release from Hertfordshire UK band Pussy was overlooked upon its release in 1969 but over the years it has become a valuable find for prog/psych enthusiasts, selling now for over hundreds of dollars when originally it languished in the bargain bins. Now it has finally been officially reissued on cd. Devout fans of 60's psych are sure to be stoked. Pussy's music is sappy and trippy, but in the best meanings of both words.
RealAudio clip: "Come Back June"

PUSSY CAT L'Integrale (Magic) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We recently got a bunch of '60s French pop compilation cds in stock, and they've been delighting us to no end. One of the chanteuses who appears on Sixties Girls Vol. 1 is Pussy Cat... yes, you heard us correctly! Her name is Pussy Cat and this is a whole cd full of her sweetheart pop tunes. Dare us to say it? Well, do ya? They're darn near purrrr-fect. Oooch! SORRY!
MPEG Stream: "Ba Ba Ba... Boof"
MPEG Stream: "Moi Je Prefere Ma Poupee"

PUSSY GALORE Live: In The Red (In The Red) cd 12.98
The late-80s lineup of Pussy Galore was Bob Bert, Neil Hagerty, Jon Spencer, and Kurt Wolf; this live show is from CBGB 8/5/89. Includes a cover of the Twilighters' "Nothing Can Bring Me Down".

PUSSY GALORE Live: In The Red (In The Red) lp 7.98
The late-80s lineup of Pussy Galore was Bob Bert, Neil Hagerty, Jon Spencer, and Kurt Wolf; this live show is from CBGB 8/5/89. Includes a cover of the Twilighters' "Nothing Can Bring Me Down".

PUSSY GALORE Right Now! (Shove!) lp 19.98
The 1987 full length debut from these infamous noiseniks gets the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment. A white hot blast of lo-fi basement blues, slithery stomps and druggy creeps, driven by clanging clattery junkyard drums, strangled angular guitar and bellowed reverbed vox, courtesy of noneother than Mr. Jon Spencer. The songs are short, sharp, urgent, noisy and chaotic, Bob Bert, former drummer for Sonic Youth, provides the beats, the songs lurching and lumbering, a swaggery, staggery sprawl of noise rock punk blues that still sounds so fucking great. The band at this point was rounded out by Neil Hagerty, who would go on to form Royal Trux, and Julia Cafritz, who would later play in Free Kitten, and for as dysfunctional and drug addled as this foursome was, they were a seriously fearsome sonic unit, managing to capture much of that druggy dysfunction on tape, and it's magical. We were arguing about why some of us here LOVE Pussy Galore, but Royal Trux not so much, when someone joked that the key was, that in Pussy Galore they somehow got the heroin just right, just enough to send them spiralling into some sort of drug fueled manic psychedelic blooze zone, but not so far that it all fell apart. Right Now! is frantic and furious, wildly passionate and so twisted and soulful, and somehow, crazy catchy to boot. The record spends most of its time in a full on drugblues noiserock pound mode, but occasionally, slips into some slow, swoonsome dirgey bluesiness that has no right sounding as good as it does.
Obviously recommended for fans of all the post Pussy Galore bands (Royal Trux, Boss Hog, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Free Kitten, Howling Hex, etc.) but really anyone into other twisted strains of weirdo blues (Railroad Jerk, Bill Orcutt, Doo Rag, King Brothers, etc.) who have yet to discover the warped world of Pussy Galore, is in for a treat...
MPEG Stream: "Pig Sweat"
MPEG Stream: "Biker Rock Loser"
MPEG Stream: "NYC 1999"
MPEG Stream: "Pussy Stomp"

PUSSYFINGER Chew & Swallow (Dielectric) cd 12.98
We're pretty sure that Drucifer (Aq pal, turntablist Die Elektrischen, head of Dielectric records, etc.) named his new band, a laptop duo with Dielectric labelmate Carson Day, ahem... Pussyfinger, just so we'd have to keep saying it out loud, inevitably causing the speaker, and the speakee, to either wince or giggle or both. It's been a running joke around the shop. "Hey did we get more of that new Dielectric record, you know, the one with Drucifer and Carson...you know... um..." We've come to embrace the name now. Pussyfinger. See? PUSSYFINGER! So besides the provocative monicker, what's all the fuss about? Well, Pussyfinger is the scientific laptop duo of Drew Webster aka Drucifer (see above) and Carson Day, who have melded their individual approaches to music and the laptop in particular and come up with something skittery and electronic enough to keep Boards Of Canada fans in a tizzy, but fucked up enough to keep 'em seriously confused. Pussyfinger's sound is an organic clatter, it IS glitchy laptronica, but it's arranged and presented like songs, you know like real songs. The elements are distinctly organic, but chopped and sliced and diced in a totally inorganic way. Strings resonate and buzz, but are processed into weird ambient smears of sound. Vocals are all over the place, but they are so fucked with they end up sounding like just another random sound element. The core sound is still electronica, IDM even, there is an Autechre streak a mile wide running through Chew And Swallow, and that's definitely not a bad thing. Things do get noisy at times, thick washes of digital feedback and some full on harsh noise, but there are also some truly lovely moments of tranquil ambience that sort of balance the equation. Ultimately it's the skittery shuffle that is the framework for Pussyfinger's electronic world, think BoC, Autechre, a little Aphex, a bit of Chris Clark, Pussyfinger would not be at all out of place on Warp, but they would definitely bring a bit of black humor and some serious sonic dissent along with them.
Beautifully packaged, with truly horrific, but somehow strangely striking cover art, the perfect complement to Pussyfinger's oh so problematic sobriquet!
MPEG Stream: "Kurenai (Samul Nori Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Mala Gente"

PUSSYGUTT Gathering Strengths (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 23.00
The return of Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho, who traffic in slow brooding black ambience and ultra doom, and whose last two records have been huge favorites around here, which makes sense as we really can't get enough of sidelong tracks, and sprawling expansive stretches of slow rumbling drones, and minimal slabs of blackened doomic crawl, and gathering Strengths does NOTHING to disappoint, offering up a single two part track, spread out over two sides, beginning with what sounds like oboes or some sort of woodwind (it's in fact a clarinet), long layered tones, emitting endless overtones, laid atop a barely there bit of low end rumble, strange melodies emerging from the constantly shifting layers, eventually joined by mysterious strings, chiming bells, super cinematic and soundtracky, and yet another instance of 'why don't these guys score movies', the music sublime and emotional, not what you'd expect necessarily, slowly building in intensity, until finally, the hammer falls, and a black cloud of rumbling doom descends, hardly overwhelming, but instead wrapping around those keening strings, creating a haunting otherworldly bit of black doom chamber music.
The flipside starts off a bit folkier, shimmering drones drift over simple hand drums, the melodies simple and melancholy, a muted firelit psychfolk, smoldering and dreamlike, eventually building to something much more epic and intense, never exploding into a frenzy of doom, or exploding at all, instead, just hovering, and ratcheting up the tension, again, totally cinematic and dramatic, like some timeless ritual being performed by cloaked figures gathered before a fire, while in the background cities crumble and the sky turns to ash.
Intense, and intensely beautiful. LIMITED TO 550. Each one hand numbered, and housed in super striking, silkscreened heavy sleeves.

PUSSYGUTT Sea Of Sand (Olde English Spelling Bee) 2lp 29.00
A mysterious duo from Idaho, here expanded to a trio, offer up 4 sidelong tracks of damaged and mysterious outsider doomdrone on the always reliable Olde English Spelling Bee label. We weren't too sure what to expect, and we missed their performance here a few months back unfortunately, but just have a gander at the list of instruments: bass, violin, crystal goblet, tractor, forest samples, clay pots, tubular bells, organ, synth, gong, drums, bowed cymbals, guitar, sound manipulations, electronics, LEAD guitar, amplifiers and feedback. Those last few are your first clue that this isn't just any old drone record. Although the first few minutes had us fooled. A gorgeous expanse of shimmering low end, glistening harmonics, and a soft distant doomic plod, little bits of static and hiss, a slow slithering blackness, which eventually builds to a stumbling groovy doom jam, with big boomy practice space drums, some seriously downtuned riffage and thick swirls of Hawkwind-ed FX, that lopes and lurches until it fades out into a long slowly unwinding smear of softly buzzing bass.
The second side is a sprawling heavy industrial soundscape of collaged sounds, wind, that tractor mentioned above, all looped and layered, clanging percussion, everything constantly shifting and changing shape, a dark meandering journey through a black forest of sound, a bit like Nurse With Wound meets Wolf Eyes, a chunk of surreal dark ambience, haunting and ominous and while not heavy per se, still distinctly doomy...
The second lp begins with creepy gypsy violins (one of the band members is a classically trained violinist) over a back drop of creaks and moans, a sort of haunted house mood music, beneath abstract riff fragments and random bits of effects building into a slowcore crawl, a mellow doom, each note ringing out and drifting off before the next one hits. Doomy, funereal, soft focus, with those strings a constant presence, super dark and emotional, adding a weirdly cinematic element to Pussygutt's sound.
The final side is another doomy crawl, distant drums, massive slow motion slabs of downtuned guitar, very simple and hypnotic, dark and creepy, not so much heavy as moody and intense, finishing off with a harrowing Hitchcockian string outro which gives way to the sounds of the forest, birds and wildlife, all coming to life beneath the full moon...
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES. Each one hand-assembled copies. Packaged in heavy-duty gatefold sleeves with four spraymounted panels that were custom offset-printed on silver stock with two coats of black ink for extra darkness, so much black ink in fact that, it almost makes your eyes water. Maybe a few huffs inside the sleeve will better prepare you for the mind altering weirdness inside...

PUSSYGUTT She Hid Behind Her Veil... (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
A brand new single-track of sprawling blackness from this mysterious Idaho duo, offering up their own version of the template laid down by Earth way back around their album 2. Which as you probably already know means, metal riffs slowed down to tarpit tempo, the various notes struggling to move forward through a field of crumbling distortion and near static buzz, the riffs allowed to ring out and fade away almost completely, before the next one comes lumbering up behind it.
The strange thing is that live, Pussygutt are a full on band, much more traditionally heavy, with a drummer and everything, even on their last record the epic double lp Sea Of Sand, the band was a lurching doomic behemoth, bordering on the industrial at times, but here, their sound is stripped way way down, and it suits them. They're able to evoke all sorts of moods with their carefully constructed downtuned ambience. This is some seriously sinister shit for sure, sweeping and darkly cinematic, the soundtrack to the eventual collapse of the universe, the sound of dying stars, or of some long slumbering beat awakening after millennia, or maybe Goblin at 16rpm, some haunted house music way too scary for any haunted house you'd ever want to visit.
It's not all heaviness though. Long stretches of sound dip into hushed shimmer here and there, while elsewhere the low end slips away leaving a creepy string section do drift spectrally, like some secret Satanic classical music, but even these moments are always tense with the knowledge that right around the corner, could be lurking another churning black wave of slow motion doomdrone crush. Really fantastic, and more than most of this stuff, infused with a deep otherworldly beauty.
Definitely require listening for folks whose cd racks/record crates/iPods' are packed with Earth, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, To Blacken The Pages, Hum Of The Druid, Expo '70, Nadja, Vulture Club, Hjarnidaudi, Monument Of Urns, Fear Falls Burning, Half Makeshift, Tunnels, Seconds In Formaldehyde, KTL, Light Of Shipwreck...
MPEG Stream: "She Hid Behind Her Veil... "

PUTHLI, ASHA s/t (CBS) lp 12.98
Indian-born singer Asha Puthli has had a crazy life. Raised with European and Indian classical traditions in Bombay, she always had a penchant for western popular music and started vocally improvising with Indian Jazz bands, which got her attention in western jazz circles. After making it over to the US on a Martha Graham dance scholarship, she was sought out by record executives and found random vocal session work. She cut a few tracks with Ornette Coleman on his Science Fiction lp and sang nearly naked for Peter Iver's Blue's Band. While she wasn't huge in America, she found an audience in Europe. Her bold sexuality and stunning vocal performances made her gravitate towards glam and in 1973 CBS released this solo debut produced by Del Newman who oversaw Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Making fresh use of songwriters of the day, John Lennon, Bill Withers, and especially J.J. Cale, Puthli's debut is a beautiful array of glittery soul and spacious rare groove. Her vocal range can navigate high peaks as well as the deepest valleys, especially in the opener, "Right Down Here", which is pretty much worth the price of admission alone. A startling funky take on the J.J. Cale classic, we first heard this years ago on a mysterious mixtape made by local soul record collector shop, The Groove Merchant (we also discovered Betty Davis on that same tape), and it's been one of our favorites ever since. She went on to make other incredible records, especially The Devil is Loose, which is a proto-space-disco masterpiece. But her debut is less disco, although not any less unusual or unique. Sensual, soulful and kind of strange!
MPEG Stream: "Right Down Here"
MPEG Stream: "Lies"

PUTRESCENCE Mangled, Hollowed Out And Vomit Filled (No Escape) cd 10.98
Sometimes, only death metal really hits the spot. Some of you know exactly what we mean. Every once in a while, you're just in the mood for good 'ol big dumb, thrashy hair spinning, denim jacketed, leather spiked, knee-to-the-groin, splattery, grindy, buzzy, grunted and growled old school death metal. And it certainly doesn't hurt when you mix in some super-tech goregrind and occasional moshy metalcore and once in a while even some weird stretched out static-drone-riffs. In fact that just turns helps turn decent death metal into really cool and seriously fucked up death metal. So thus, we have Putrescence (featuring members of the recently reviewed Head Hits Concrete), who spew forth a torrent of sick sick , downtuned, buzzsaw death metal. With rumbling cookie monster vocals, illegible logo, severed bloody head album art, pentagram-made-out-of-scalpels disc art, ridiculous song titles ("Blood Loss And Trauma From A Vengeful Hatchet Assault To Penile Shaft", "Gunked Up Tree Chipper", "Ebola Infected Plane Crash Victims Raining On A Church Picnic", "Detrunked Wizard Hacked To Bloodied Ribbons" and more!), a sick album title (Mangled, Hollowed Out And Vomit Filled) and of course appropriately evil / stupid band member names and instrumentation credits. "Soiled Depends: studded crotch packed with dope, pants caked with shizzat. Grimmgore: grapefruit clutching six string Satan worship, mass poseur slayings. Dark Lord Skullbong: severer of ties with sobriety, unholy beast summoning. Necromagnon: cataclysmic thunder and reeks of shit from beyond the grave." Yep. Throw in a handful of funny / creepy samples and let 'er rip. Actually the more we listen to this, the more you can tell this isn't 'real' death metal, but actually death metal played by grindcore geeks with a wicked sense of humor.. Which is most definitely a good thing! It's all just way too grindingly technical and weirdly arranged. On one level it may be a pisstake on how goofy metal is, but at the same time, it's also one ultra-pummelling, massively crushing slab of deathgrind brutality!
MPEG Stream: "Raised In An Oscillated Brain Tumour"
MPEG Stream: "Detrunked Wizard Hacked To Bloodied Ribbons"
MPEG Stream: "Self-Strangulation In A Locked Refigerator"

PUZZLE PUNKS BuduB (Time Bomb) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can never get enough Boredoms. But unfortunately, there's never enough Boredoms. We hate waiting years between releases. Thankfully there are plenty of side projects and offshoots to hold us over. One such Boredoms related outfit is Puzzle Punks, featuring Eye from the Boredoms, along with his PP partner Shinro Otake. We carried the limited picture disc of this release years and years ago, but for some reason were never able to get the cd. We recently discovered that there is a NEW Puzzle Punks record (we're not sure if it is indeed new, or just a new collection of old material, but we'll hopefully have it in time for the next list) and at the same time we discovered we could finally get this, the cd version of the Puzzle Punks' 2nd album Budub.
And we forgot just how great this stuff was. Even after a decade the sounds on Budub sound fresh. Weird and fucked too (it is Eye after all) but fresh enough that you could be forgiven for thinking this was some weird Excepter record or No Neck side project. Which just goes to show you how much influence Eye and his gang had and still have on modern music.
The sound of Budub is less caustic and spastic than the first Puzzle Punks records, or the Boredoms records released around the same time. Instead it's a series of experiments in rhythm, maybe hinting at the direction Eye would take the Boredoms on late albums.
Imagine some impossible jam session between the Boredoms and This Heat, or a lobotomized Hawkwind left to jam with the infant versions of the No Neck Blues Band. Or even a room full of musical toys, possessed and allowed to run amok. Dark and deliriously playful. Sometimes creepy and dark, but more often sort of strange and hypnotic. And always some bizarre world of rhythm and rhythmic wonder. Every track a strange sonic trip: analog synth squelches over dreamy chimes and tinkles, processed fuzzy krautrock grooves beneath strange chanted and muttered vocals, murky percussive plod and thud, over which a tiny sped up voice drenched in reverb mews and warbles, haunting vocal and percussion duos, very tribal and mysterious, thick washed out expanses of fuzzy spacerock FX and distant feedback, skittery almost techno shuffles, with bizarre vocalizations, deconstructed melodies played on a toy guitar, accompanied by a slowly wound jack in the box, a grinding wash of super thick distorted throb, a wall of low end whir, a murky world of jungle sounds like a lo-fi Perry And Kingsley and every random rhythmic stop in between.
Boredoms freaks who never picked this up NEED THIS BAD. And all you modern free folks and random rock weirdos into No Neck, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the like might just dig this a lot!
MPEG Stream: "Ouck Nuff"
MPEG Stream: "Unlimited Toothpicker"
MPEG Stream: "Pep & Kep"
MPEG Stream: "Xicotepecker"

PUZZLE PUNKS BuduB (Time Bomb) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can never get enough Boredoms. But unfortunately, there's never enough Boredoms. We hate waiting years between releases. Thankfully there are plenty of side projects and offshoots to hold us over. One such Boredoms related outfit is Puzzle Punks, featuring Eye from the Boredoms, along with his PP partner Shinro Otake. We carried the limited picture disc of this release years and years ago, but for some reason were never able to get the cd. We recently discovered that there is a NEW Puzzle Punks record (we're not sure if it is indeed new, or just a new collection of old material, but we'll hopefully have it in time for the next list) and at the same time we discovered we could finally get this, the cd version of the Puzzle Punks' 2nd album Budub.
And we forgot just how great this stuff was. Even after a decade the sounds on Budub sound fresh. Weird and fucked too (it is Eye after all) but fresh enough that you could be forgiven for thinking this was some weird Excepter record or No Neck side project. Which just goes to show you how much influence Eye and his gang had and still have on modern music.
The sound of Budub is less caustic and spastic than the first Puzzle Punks records, or the Boredoms records released around the same time. Instead it's a series of experiments in rhythm, maybe hinting at the direction Eye would take the Boredoms on late albums.
Imagine some impossible jam session between the Boredoms and This Heat, or a lobotomized Hawkwind left to jam with the infant versions of the No Neck Blues Band. Or even a room full of musical toys, possessed and allowed to run amok. Dark and deliriously playful. Sometimes creepy and dark, but more often sort of strange and hypnotic. And always some bizarre world of rhythm and rhythmic wonder. Every track a strange sonic trip: analog synth squelches over dreamy chimes and tinkles, processed fuzzy krautrock grooves beneath strange chanted and muttered vocals, murky percussive plod and thud, over which a tiny sped up voice drenched in reverb mews and warbles, haunting vocal and percussion duos, very tribal and mysterious, thick washed out expanses of fuzzy spacerock FX and distant feedback, skittery almost techno shuffles, with bizarre vocalizations, deconstructed melodies played on a toy guitar, accompanied by a slowly wound jack in the box, a grinding wash of super thick distorted throb, a wall of low end whir, a murky world of jungle sounds like a lo-fi Perry And Kingsley and every random rhythmic stop in between.
Boredoms freaks who never picked this up NEED THIS BAD. And all you modern free folks and random rock weirdos into No Neck, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the like might just dig this a lot!
MPEG Stream: "Ouck Nuff"
MPEG Stream: "Unlimited Toothpicker"
MPEG Stream: "Pep & Kep"
MPEG Stream: "Xicotepecker"

PUZZLE PUNKS Puzzoo (Time Bomb) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Boredoms were always about rhythm, even if it wasn't overt, theirs was a sound based on rhythm. From the splattery chaotic hardcore of early records like Soul Discharge, to their later incarnation as a modern hippy drum rock jam band, every bit of their music was concerned with pulse and throb, it was propulsive and hypnotic, looped and cyclical, sometimes herky jerky and chaotic (but still precisely choreographed), other times serene and abstract, but always with some internal mechanism that tapped into all of the rhythms of life, which is precisely what made the Boredoms' music sound so alive and vibrant and often completely brilliantly baffling.
Last list we reviewed Budub, the 2nd album by Boredoms offshoot Puzzle Punks, which was the duo of Eye of the Boredoms and artist Otake Noboru. A fascinating very Boredoms-esque concoction of cracked rhythms and krautrock grooves, but super spare and stripped down. A garage rock This Heat maybe, traversing an abstract soundscape of loops and broken drum lines, pulsing and plodding, weaving skeletal song frameworks, and just leaving them like that, barebones and full of space. And the result was divine. Hypnotic and dreamlike. Some weird space rock broken down to its base rhythmic element, would up and allowed to stumble and lurch on its own.
Puzzoo was supposedly recorded right after that record, in secret, and recorded almost as you hear, not culled from hours and hours of jamming, rather a wholly realized organic musical happening, captured alive and kicking. Puzzoo finds the Puzzle Punks expanded to a trio, with the addition of an extra guitar, and includes some guest performances from two of the other Boredoms, one of them being Boredoms / OOIOO heartthrob Yoshimi. The result is like a much more beefed up Budub. A little more aggressive, a little more propulsive, but still stripped down and tripped out.
The opening three track salvo is worth the price of admission alone. A solid 40 minutes of damaged abstract spaced out krautrockiness. In fact, just the opener "Puzoo Lunch", a seventeen minute outer space tribal space jam was all we needed to hear. one of those tracks we wish would go on forever. And if the technology existed, we guarantee we'd spend the next 2 weeks listening to the extended 336 hour version, staying home from work, phone off, lights off, drapes drawn, just sort of drifting off in some body rhythm trance. But as it is we'll just have to continually press repeat on the cd player, and just imagine all that other stuff. But what kind of sound would have us in such a frenzy? Some some super bizarre seventies prog rock all tangled up in an alien percussive temple worship ceremony, like a roomful of deranged wind-up toys each given a little tiny set of drums and cymbals, rocking out in miniature to some acid fried psych rock guitar drift. The guitar weaves a deconstructed lo-fi garage rock, with angular no-wave riffs that drift over a motorik clangscape of clockwork thumps and a cacophony of tinkling bells and chimes and cymbals. Above it all hovers some blown out fuzzy blues guitar, weaving lazily in and out of the tangled rhythms. A dense swirl of warbling melodies and strange little sound effects wrap the proceedings in a mysterious spaced out conic cloak, the various guitar lines and melodies constantly mutating and shifting pitch. An impossible alien krautrock groove, an improbable junkyard space rock symphony, like some stripped down garage rock super jam with members of the Boredoms, This Heat, and No Neck Blues Band. Phew. And that's just the first track.
Track two, "Puzoout" follows a similar blueprint, but wraps its rhythms in fuzzy clouds of 8-bit video game sounds, whorls of primitive lo-fi synth and damaged guitar, all over a dizzying splatter of simple shuffle and propulsive skitter. Like a (more) outsider Acid Mothers Temple, but recorded on some sort of children's tape recorder. Track three, "Puzzub", the final part in the unbeatable one-two-three punch, is another druggy rhythmic workout, this time even more stripped down, a blissed out slow burning tribal jam, the main element being mouth harp which gets distorted and twisted, and stretched into a raga like buzz, in the background simple tablas and primitive metallic percussion, all wrapped in a super thick fuzzy veil of staticky haze, and warm warbling shimmer.
The final four tracks, ranging from under three minutes to a little over five minutes, are stunning little fragments of what must be (or could have been) monumentally epic lo-fi space jams, each one a dense little assemblage of deconstructed rhythms, melodic shards, fuzzy ambience, motorik propulsion, machine-like whir and druggy psychedelic atmospheres. All of them could have been stretched into hours instead of minutes without losing any of their mysterious power.
The sound of Puzzle Punks is very reminiscent of groups like No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, but especially the Finnish contingent of the neo-tribal forest drone folk sound, Avarus, Kuupuu, Kemialliset, Anaksimandros, but infused with a distinctly Japanese aesthetic, as well as a gloriously unhealthy obsession with krautrock, space rock, This Heat and all of the various permutations of the word Puzzle (Puzunk, Puzzdozer, PuZZ-Top, ZZ-Topuzz) So dementedly recommended. As is the previous disc Budub, which we still have a few copies of...
MPEG Stream: "Puzzoo Lunch"
MPEG Stream: "ZZ-Topuzz"
MPEG Stream: "Puzz-Top"

PYHA Ruined (Misanthropic Art Productions) cd 13.98
Avid readers of the list will no doubt be familiar with Pyha, the Korean one man black metal band, and his record, The Haunted House, which was recorded when he was just a teenager, and eventually, after much digging and emailing and tracking down, released on Andee's tUMULt label. Still ranks as one of our favorite black metal records ever. And as we proclaimed in the review of that record: "The essence of pure inspired ultra personal musical expression. Powerful and intense, blown out and buzz drenched, depressive and melancholic. Totally in the red, digital distortion, crumbling and furious. The vocals anguished wails and tortured howls, the drums simple programmed beats, weirdly clipped and processed, also wreathed in distortion, keyboards offering up more buzz and shimmer. Total bedroom lo-fi production, but completely idiosyncratic and inspired." We sold tons, and it inspired much worship from the aQ grim black hordes and rightfully so. The ultimate slab of genius outsider blackness, created with little knowledge of the genre, relying more on passion and creativity and ingenuity, and the results were more inspired and more inspirING than 90 percent of the black metal out there. If you've yet to experience that record, check out the review, listen to the sound samples, and GET ONE! You will NOT be sorry. But if you're already a fan, and perhaps, like us, listen to that record like crazy still, and wish you had more, well then this is your lucky day. Ours too! We had no idea this was even happening. There ARE several other actual Pyha records, but according to Pyha himself, this is actually a collection of sketches, rough drafts recorded between 2006 and 2007 for a new album that never materialized, originally intended to just be given out to friends, but then Korean label Misanthropic Art heard it and decided to release it, which makes sense cuz this stuff is KILLER.
Definitely well removed from the sound of the Haunted House, obviously since it was recorded years later. But in many ways it has the same vibe, the same energy, the guitars still buzz, and we're talking BUZZZZZ, but this time the bass is a driving force, thick and heavy, the tempos mid to plodding and doomy, the sound is last black metal and more dark blackened buzz drenched dirgery, the actual playing is definitely improved, the sound more melodic and less textural, at least on the opening track. But then the follow up, titled in Korean, is way more blasting and buzzy and black, the sound in the red and totally and fantastically blown out, but the bass here too, adds a cool melodic component, that makes the song sound more poppy than it is, but also more melancholy. The vocals are processed and seriously sick, but all woven together, it's darkly depressive and strangely pretty.
The next track is even more drenched in buzz, a white hot wall of white noise buzz, the vocals still harsh and demonic, but here the drums are weirdly loping, and the main melody manages to come through, again giving the song a distinctly lilting feel.
The further into the record you get, the more strange and experimental it gets. The next track is some sort of gloom pop, a thick crunchy guitar melody draped over a sea of static buzz, and some strange dueling vocals, clean and chantlike vs metallic shriek, it's almost like a blackened sea shanty, or some traditional folk number transformed into black metal. The following song is more of the same, more distinctly black metal, but again, crooned clean vocals, woozy bass and mournful melodies all woven in, and finally, the last track, the sound is much more murky and muddy, the sound blurred and warm, with some really cool guitar melodies wound into the otherwise droned out blackness. It's actually almost shoegazey at times, like M83 or MBV, the guitars washed out and hazy, and a main melody that's all spidery and wistful, transforming the buzz into some sort of blackened dream pop.
The bonus track is a nearly 14 minute stretch of black ambience, all deep drones, and whirling abstract shimmer, laced with bits of glitch and shards of electronics, the song is peppered with woozy synths, processed demonic vox, more a growly whisper, some disembodied piano, the sound shifting from tranquil to ominous to intense and finally back to tranquil again, eventually drifting off all meditative and understated. Incredible.
Sad to think that Pyha no longer makes black metal, but it's quite a blackened sonic legacy he's left behind, with more hopefully to be unearthed and released in the future...
MPEG Stream: "Burn The Naked Grapevine"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

PYHA The Haunted House (tUMULt) cd 11.98
Unbelievably grim and blown out Burzumic black metal buzz from a Korean eighth grader! Recordedover the course of a year or two and released when he was 14 years old! It's true. tUMULt has been trying to get this out for ages, and it's finally here. Black metal record of the week? The year more likely. Perhaps maybe EVER.
It took almost two years to track Pyha down, and then almost four more to sort out the eventual release of this grim depressive black masterpiece. Here's how it started:
Longtime aQ pal Steven Schultz (he of Puny Humans and Stalin Claus Superstar infamy) was studying in Korea and bought a bunch of records. None of them really impressed him that much, except for one mysterious disc, by a 'group' called Pyha, which in Korean means 'ruins'. He later discovered that Pyha was the work of one man, er, kid actually, a 14 year old eighth grade black metaller! Needless to say, WOW. Anyway, on returning, Steven passed the cd on to Andee who was BLOWN AWAY. Completely floored, so much so that he knew he had to release it. More people HAD to hear this. So the hunt was on. How to track down a 14 year old kid in Korea. Pre-internet it would have been impossible. But another aQ pal, Jason, was actually living part time in Korea, weirdly enough he's a minor television star there, and offered to try and track down Pyha. Which miraculously he did, and we then discovered that there were in fact 4 albums, all recorded when Pyha was between the ages of 14 and 17! All of which are amazing, and all of which should eventually be released on tUMULt.
But this is THE ONE. The essence of pure inspired ultra personal musical expression. Powerful and intense, blown out and buzz drenched, depressive and melancholic. Andee sent a cd-r of the record to a writer at Terrorizer, who was so impressed, he reviewed the sans-art home burned cd-r in that magazine and gave it a TEN. It's that fucking mind blowing. We mentioned in our recent review of the Wrath Of The Weak record that it was maybe the buzziest black metal record ever. Well, it has nothing on Pyha. Totally in the red, digital distortion, crumbling and furious. The vocals anguished wails and tortured howls, the drums simple programmed beats, weirdly clipped and processed, also wreathed in distortion, keyboards offering up more buzz and shimmer. Long stretches of creepy ambience, samples of speeches and warfare, of wailing weeping mothers and children, all woven into Pyha's buzzing black tapestry. Total bedroom lo-fi production, but completely idiosyncratic and inspired. No blast beats or furious thrashing, instead, the tracks are either midtempo, or no-tempo, with some tracks eschewing drums all together, just a wall of ultra distorted riffage all tangled up with demonic howls. But it's not just howling and screeching, the vocals sometimes emerge as a weird wailing croon, other times as a hushed whisper, while other times a mumbled moan. In fact, a few of the tracks almost sound like some weird black metal Sebadoh, super lo-fi and dripping with distortion, the vocals weary and worn, buried beneath swirling squalls of blacknoise. Others have a distinct shoegaze quality too, that is if you can imagine a shoegaze Abruptum, the drums loping and laid back, the guitars washed out and blurred, the vocals SO distorted they swallow up all the other sounds and become another layer of super saturated sound. Sometimes they even morph into fucked up harmonies, so loud and lo-fi they crackle and splinter, without losing any of their alien beauty. There are long stretches of ambience too. Crackling campfires, crickets, warm whirring synths way off in the distance, ghostly gurgled disembodied voices, whipping wind, all interwoven with tape hiss and buzzing synths, creepy noises, and all manner of sonic detritus.
Three of the tracks here are bonus tracks, recorded later, and manage to fit perfectly with the original disc. One is especially of not, as it's maybe the most melodic of the bunch, thick keyboards drift over a sea of pulsing cymbal sizzle, and barely audible guitar, the drums buried way down in the mix, the vocals growling and hissing and howling, the whole thing very dreamy and drifty and otherworldly. Until the end, when everything drops out leaving just shimmering synths, and the sounds of war, speeches, soldiers, sirens, weeping mothers, crying children, so intense and anguished and moving. Which brings us to the lyrical content. Pyha is staunchly anti-government, anti-war, anti-military, he's a pacifist and an anarchist, and has chosen black metal as the medium to express his message. The packaging is covered in images of Korean wartime atrocities, all of which is even more ironic and sad, when you learn that Pyha (now that he's old enough) is currently in the Korean Army, as military service there is compulsory.
The record closes with one of the most powerful tracks on the record. A seven+ minute blow out, as black as anything else on the disc, and definitely the fastest, as close to a blast as Pyha gets. But it's still loping and woozy. The drums and cymbals are recorded super hot and lay a gauzy layer of hiss over the proceedings, keyboards pick out a delicate minor key melody, hovering weightless like ghosts over the roiling blackened churn below. It almost sounds like Wold at times, as if there was some old 78 playing beneath the wash of black buzz. The track gets heavier and heavier, the vocals more and more demonic and monstrous, the intensity building and building, the main riff, remaining impossibly haunting and majestic as it sinks deeper and deeper into the sea of noise drenched blackness, leaving more and more of that mysterious underlying melody, to drift off and eventually fade away.
Rare is the record, black metal or otherwise, that evokes such intense emotion, that gives the listener chills. Beyond the blackness and the buzz, lies a record of impossible depth, full of emotion and passion. So much so, that it's easy to forget that it was conceived, composed and recorded entirely by a little middle school kid!
Gorgeously packaged in a 6 panel gatefold digipak. Brown and gold sepia toned, with metallic ink, the outside a tranquil Korean landscape, inside a garish gallery depicting the human cost of warfare.
After all that, it might seem like overkill, but this is, without a doubt, THE BLACK METAL RECORD OF THE YEAR. And for some of us, one of the best black metal records ever. What the fuck were you doing when you were 14 years old?!
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Four"
MPEG Stream: "Eight"
MPEG Stream: "Ten"

PYLON Chomp More (DFA) cd 14.98
Yes! Pylon's second and last record (with the original line-up) from 1983 has finally got the same expanded and remastered reissue treatment that their first record received from the hip folks at DFA. It's been a bittersweet couple of years for Pylon, emerging from years of relative obscurity, reuniting for a tour and seeing their records released once again to a legion of new fans, but sad because guitarist and founding member, Randall Bewley passed away suddenly this year. While never as popular as their Athens, GA contemporaries, R.E.M, and the B-52's, Pylon's post-punk influence has remained sturdy and can be heard in many bands from the Riot Grrl era to the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. Pylon's distinct guitar angularity, propulsive dance rhythms and lead singer, Vanessa Hay's seductive growl whipped audiences into a frenzy in the late seventies and early eighties and finally the original version of "Crazy" can be heard for the amazing spitfire track it is. R.E.M.'s more famous cover version just doesn't compete. Way Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Beep"
MPEG Stream: "Crazy"
MPEG Stream: "No Clocks"

PYLON Gyrate Plus (DFA) cd 14.98
DFA delves into the past to resurrect a lesser known American post-punk classic, the debut of Athens, Georgia scene-makers Pylon. Less famous than their fellow Athens compatriots, The B-52's or R.E.M., these four University of Georgia art students nevertheless mined a powerful influence. With their jangly angular art pop with dub influences and yelping female vocals, Pylon felt more in line with British bands Gang of Four and Delta 5, than the sixties/eighties retro of the B-52's or R.E.M.'s mumbling verbosity. Gyrate Plus collects their first album and singles from 1980 and listening to it now, it's surprising how timeless it feels, coming across as a precursor to bands like The Yeah Yeah Yeah's and The Gossip. So Good!!
MPEG Stream: "Cool"
MPEG Stream: "Danger!!"

PYLON Not Cobras (Last Visible Dog) cd 12.98
We've been exploiting the writing talents of Jewelled Antler's Loren Chasse a bit lately, and now Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Blithe Sons...) wants to get into the action too, volunteering to write something about this here disc, an archival release on Last Visible Dog of the clanging and banging of the pre-Avarus outfit Pylon (which is NOT to be confused with the Athens, GA Pylon of the early '80s). Or, to be accurate, he offered to let us use what he wrote about it on the Jewelled Antler email-list, as follows: "Damn, another breath of fresh air blowing over from the Finnish cloudfort. Pylon sends echoing flutes & ram's horn trumpets over fragmented folk & space-rock marching junkshop drums. Maybe there's a detuned guitar flailing along or a fuzzy Casio organ, someone beating out a Morse code on an oven tray or a an old typewriter. Muffled abstract vocals are performed with earnest by muppets, zombies & monks & are shrouded in effects pedals. This shares something in common with related-groups Avarus/Anaksimandros/Maniacs Dream, but with just two members there's more space around each clang & groan. With its joyous clatter, pylon seems to be urging us to dance with goats & green maidens, run wild with robots & monsters." Pretty much sums it up, thanks Glenn!
MPEG Stream: "[Track 1]"
MPEG Stream: "[Track 6]"

PYRAMID s/t (PsiFi) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
3 krautrock albums (from groups you may want to first sample on the "Unknown Deutschland" comps, see below) that were supposedly issued in the 70s in tiny editions of, like, 50 copies or something. The Pyramid album sole track is a mysterious 35-minutes of spacy drone with mellotron, moogs, and Tibetan bells. The Nazgul cd, our favorite of the three, is from 1975 and features 4 long tracks of droning ambience that's easily as good as any current space rock outfit could put together; i.e. Magnog, Labradford or anything else on Kranky. Bonus weirdness: the bandmembers are named Frodo, Gandalf, and Pippin.

PYRAMIDO Sand (Total Rust) cd 13.98
Besides having an awesome logo, and killer creepy elephant cover art, these filthy Swedes have conjured up a seriously brutal, and weirdly groovy slab of sludge-y doom. Exploding out of a swirling storm of whipping winds that open the disc, these guys waste no time in getting down to it. IT being some gut punching, ear destroying heaviness. We were actually expecting something much less musical, much more abstract and slooooow, Moss, Bunkur, Khanate, that sort of thing, and while it does get downright glacial now and again, Pyramido mostly traffic in something much more groovy and stonery, think Electric Wizard, Church Of Misery, Cough, Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Green Machine...
In fact, Pyramido totally sound like they came straight out of New Orleans, that distinctly NOLA groove, but here that sounds is twisted up a bit, given a little blackness, a little crustiness, the songs stretched out a bit more, the groove not so much the focus as simply part of the sound, a sound that is a HUGE, churning, pounding, downtuned beastly thing. The guitars thick and corrosive, the drums a Cro-Magnon pound, vocals buried in the mix, always on the verge of cracking, a throat shredding howl, and within these blackly groovy, crust laden jams, lurk not only some serious hooks, but some fucking KILLER riffs, and although it doesn't make sense, music like this is often bereft of actual great riffage.
Slow, low, sludgy and brutal as fuck, by now it should be obvious if this is your cup of muck, it most definitely is ours...
MPEG Stream: "2 Years 8 Months 21 Days"
MPEG Stream: "Calculating Doom"