IT'S HALLOWE'EN! OoooOOOoOo but more importantly it's last.fm thread day

 This week's last.fm listening stats:

Sing and Sign makes a random reappearance

Bit of a slow, quiet week this week I think, other than finally getting the †‡†, Woe and Weapon albums:

01. †‡† - 49

02. Dream Boat - 36

03. Woe - 25

04. Emeralds - 22

05. Sing and Sign - 21

05. Solar Bears - 21

07. Umberto - 20

08. GuMMy†Be▲R! - 18

09. Wild Nothing - 16

10. Twin Shadow – 14

1 – witch house has been coming up with the goods recently; this is almost the equal to the SALEM album in terms of atmosphere setting and occult detail, really physically involving inducing euphoric rushes.

3 – Black Metal ha been delivering all year this year, the roll call of incredible releases just keeps getting longer.

7 – Not Not Fun has had a good year this year too, maybe a renaissance even after being mired in a couple of years of gungy drone. This is incredible – a combination of Goblin & Black Devil Disco Club, a soundtrack to an unmade film – witch house possessing the soul of italo disco.
8 – new album is coming!!!!!!!! another of witch house's most arresting producers.

Track of the week:

I'm going to say this, Umberto's Temple Room:

Wold – Freermasonry

WOLD – Freermasonry: new album out Autumn 2011 on Profound Lore. Art work in progress; here's the tracklist.  Very exciting; far too long to wait.

1. SOL
2. Free Goat of Leviticus
3. Annex Axe
4. Dragon Owl Didacticism
5. Working Tools for Praxis
6. Free Eyes
7. Freermasonry

It's Halloween

VIDEO: Kotki Dwa - Halloween

Kotki Dwa were one of my favourite bands when I started up NFR and I played a lot of tracks off their demos albums out a lot then they seemed to slip out of sight. They've got a really chirpy quirky sound going on on, a good sense of humour and more importantly, they know pop hooks and they know beautiful tones to make their pop hooks out of.  I got a genuine little flutter of excitement when I found out they were reanimated, with a creepy 50's horror film style video for their comeback track (why not) Halloween; shot on Super 8mm film by Loopshapers.

They've also given the track away as an mp3. They're so lovely!

Download: Kotki Dwa - Halloween

The Recommender's Best Blogs of 2010

Fellow Brighton based music bloggers The Recommender have decided to compile a definitive list of the best music blogs on the web, as voted for by other music bloggers. Maybe the first large scale peer to peer vote ever undertaken and one I'm pretty keen to see the results of - I can't be the only person suffering from blog fatigue, and as compelling as it is to check out another new one every week - or day! - someone needs to help us cut through the noise and show us a list of those that other music bloggers really trust and revere; and as they say themselves " It doesn’t get more back-scratchingly awesome than this, so VOTE VOTE VOTE…". 

Jump over to them to cast your votes:

http://therecommender.net/2010/10/28/the-best-music-blogs-of-2010/

I assumed mp3 blogs don't count - at least, my opinion is that only editorial lead blogs should really be voted for. So I cast my votes this way:

Lurker – http://www.lurkerspath.com/ – Extremely insightful metal blog, with detailed articles and interviews, always about elevated music.  
Sonic Router – http://www.sonicrouter.com/ – The only dubstep blog you need to read. interviews, reviews, mixes.
Anti Gravity Bunny – http://antigravitybunny.blogspot.com/ – Love the writing style of this and he’s always unearthing deeply underground weirdness.


For what it's worth, my back three, which I was really pained to have to choose between were/are:

Altered Zones - www.alteredzones.com - A Pitchfork sister publication it may be, but it's like a best of underground bloggers site, and has chosen it's contributors pretty well.
The Decibel Tolls - www.thedecibeltolls.com - A daily, usually vulgar, music blog focused on psychedelic, shoegazing, space rock, folk, post rock, hauntology, ambient/noise, ...  Also has a tidy Problem With Blogs description that is decisive in it's accuracy.
The Left Hand Path - www.thelefthandpath.com - Stewart Voegtlin and Todd DePalma's Stylus column's own site. Amazing Metal invective.

FFFF: Weapon - Furor Divinus

This week's Fast and Furious Friday Feature is another savage assault from the Black Metal paradigm; this time it's Weapon, from Canada. The Canuck just seem to have an extra element of spite and violence in everything they come out with. must be the temperatures, everything from Conqueror to WOLD is immensly ferocious in an elemental manner and this is no different, though it has an almost melodic, hella catchy dynamism to it.  The new album, From the Devil's Tomb is out on Monday on Agonia Records, so this doubles as your teaser for that.

Incredible

http://seaquence.org/

can I get this as an App please?  They're my kind of pets.

Download: Nattymari - Mi▲mi ▲ssfuck

Second dose of Nattymari-ness for yr Friday is this latest mix that starts of with a boom!  His own blurb for it, again, cuts right into the malnourished underculture that his twisted rescrubs revel in; the mix offers up brief flashes of the original material before snatching it away in a scaly claw and rushing into the howling darkness.  This mix is as sexually explicit as they come, emphasising the sensual bump and grind of the dancefloor with swollen baslines that sag horrendously, draping themselves across horribly distended beats; thick throated voics mumur through sunken larynxes; sickly sweat slicked flesh sticking and sliding, groping blindly around this crepuscular bacchanal.  


Miami Nightlife. Coke thin bodies sweaty with self importance. Sheen of meatgrease. Girls in more makeup than clothes. Still smelling of last night's alcohol. Shots are called as the music pumps out the empty promise of the night. Outside palm trees mock the ragged; on the endless quest for methadrine excitement. The morning comes to reveal receding hairline and acne scars. Lines are cut like morning coffee.

Scan and repeat

Autoplay:

MI▲MI ▲SSFUCK by nattymari


Tracklisting:

D13 D13 D13 (/V\14/V\1455PH*KK)
c0M3m477R3ss
H4NDJ0B
D1R7Y R1D3
B1TCHPH*KK
R1M J0B
brown reas0n t0 live
B350 N36R0
FR33BAS3
SH1TPL4Y
CR1M3
BUK4K3
FUCKT4RD(*)

VIDEO: GuMMy†Be▲R! - Planned Parenthood (Nattymari Obliteration)

Got two Nattymari events for you today - in my small corner of the interweb he's been looming pretty large ove the last couple of months having some kind of permanent effect on my synapses; when I talk I can hear the words slowly falling from my mouth about four beats after I felt them leave. Synaesthetic, corrupting; and here's the first example of why, and a repairing of how I first came across him - in collaboration with GuMMy†Be▲R!, this time, together in an audio-visual nightmarish scene of deeply dragged remixology:

DOWNLOAD: Mpala Garoo / Sunbells Fenimore

Mpala Garoo is another of my top finds from Russia's underground - actually, this one was given to me by Twilight Owls - and is one of the better artists I've come across. Just one man - Ivan - plays a similar kind of summery tropical heat-haze as Ducktails. There's a fifteen minute, four track album available to download from Last.fm track by track, which I've reposted here.

The first track Open Way Up High's reverb soaked chillwave swing feels very much in thrall to Landscapes, which is no complaint at all. It is a beautifully languid shimmer of a track that lasts for an all too short 2.24 - I could easily leave this on repeat for twenty minutes and not tire of it.  The second tracks wheezy little organ flourish adds a wonderful background tone to the similar lithe guitar work shaking it's hips around the foreground while a shuffling conga beat gently harries it. Magic Fiesta has a bit of the spooky jungle groove of High Wolf about it - gurgling drums and a slightly warped focus make it a progression and deviation from the previous two tracks to signify something worthwhile going on out there.

01. Open Way Up High
02. Primitiittii
03. Magic Fiesta
04. Kid Island


Ivan also plays in Sunbells Fenimore; a project that features the same island guitar tone and pace from Mpala, but it's fattened out with some deeper oceanic riffs; thick trancy tendrils of tone that weave around the bubbles of guitar notes, and pushes things that much further away from the safety of the shoreline - things gets pretty turbulent in Paradising, but no less hypnotic as the chaotic crashing and fizzing carries the metaphor of the sea, blistering heat, salty spray and boiling breakers into sonic realisation. I guess there's a Nu-Age flotation element to it, despite the more caustic nature it retains a sense of centred focus that the more musically kinetic Mpala doesn't have. It's a natural deviation; recalling the fiery return to Earth of Oneohtrix Point Never or the tranquility of Dolphins Into The Future, a lucid sky-gazing treatise on sun-soaked mystical spirituality.  Go to his BANDCAMP for three tracks of meditational serenity.

DOWNLOAD: Velvet Breasts - Ancient Dream

DOWNLOAD - Ancient Dream LP


DOWNLOAD - How Does It Feel EP

Here's another good find from my recent forays into Russia - Two releases from Saint Petersburg's murky post rock duo Velvet Breasts - a band who wear Velvet Underground influences out on their sleeves and inside some of the tracks too - they even have a song called White Light. They have a sparse drum kit that is used to punctuate, and beat into strict direction, a guitarist who plays the same needling lines as Lou Reed, searching for a gap in the percussion to spike down hard on and let rip with some howling feeback and free running riffing. There's a variety of styles chopped out and jammed from the amps, a combination of teasing post-rockisms and harder body jerking aggression; of open duelling interplay, improvisations that sway woozily between determined coherence and able texture heavy ambience - leaning heavily on delay and reverb pedals they fill up the space with an engaging horizon on which distant shapes are scratched out, emerging warily from clouds of feedback and static; slowly pulling focus before crescendoing into stark clarity.  When their tracks open out they really pull.

There's plenty good moments across these two releases, so if noisy lo-fi post rock is your thing this should suit you well; and if you fancy showing your appreciation you can also buy their Ancient Dream LP from Ukranian label Taqueot.

DOWNLOAD: I†† - Preliminary Invocations

 I††
Preliminary Invocations
AMDISCS
DOWNLOAD

On Monday I put up a new track from husband and wife duo I†† in advance of this: the full AMDISCS released album, Preliminary Invocations. Like I said before, it's the unrefined nature of this that really makes it, and yet again (after Dream Boat) I get to say that AMDISCS release an album with a vision, narrative and form that attempts to create something cinematic, sounds steeped in the creepy and ghoulish; but if it comes off as unrefined, it's only in the same way that early horror films seem somewhat unconvincing with their fake blood and plastic teeth - they were the best tools their creators had at their disposal, and are just a small illustrative, symbolic parts that work in unison with the greater ambition of the story they wish to convey - and that is certainly true of this album; if you pulled the mixes apart, each element wouldn't work, each sound seeming a little slight when thrown into relief - but when they work together, as one heaving, shifting mass then it really starts to bite hard into you.


Starting off as definitively witch house as you like, the violent open handed slap of the clap beats on dis†▲n† make their presence felt with a sharp and deliberately punctuated pace. Following that the shadowy presence of drag gets sucked into the mix; the digital fx of covergirl tear into glottal vocals and drop their guttural pitch shifted remains into an abyss of panning synth scree; then Golden RΔtio drags them even deeper in an oOoOO style.  The following two tracks put the screws into the distortion elements throwing eddies of caustic shortcircuiting atmospherics and outright noise into the middle of the album, backed by the 808, giving it an air of the more primordial †‡† pieces. Goetic Terra lays a darkly howling guitar tone with shades of doomy black metal under a fabric of glitching feedback and from there the album slowly winds down through a final few tracks experimenting within a different palette of supernatural tones, slowly screwing down the tempo, pushing the bass around into moaning silhouettes against the darkening shades that draw around the three final chapters until the final clanking wheeze of The Vibratory Formula of a Bast shivers to a climax.

It all makes for one of AMDISCS more gothically sinister releases, nicely timed for Halloween, and puts I†† up there with some of the better producers of the witch house genre.

Gremlynz - White Rot

Reposted from God of Blues, because this is as ace and eerie as waking up and finding the world empty.

So I'm coming up off this Gremlynz release that I recorded at the beginning of this month. I'm hanging out, it's 7AM, highly early fuckin weirdo time for me. There's rain pounding down outside, and a calming, cool has set in. There's a fucked up, ominous, eerie ambiance that surrounds my hometown, which I've had to move back to recently -- unfortunately. I can't explain it. Maybe it's a vibe that everyone feels in their hometown, but I like to think that that's just this place. I like to link there truly is a reason for the freaky vibes, like maybe it was developed over an ancient burial ground or something that presents some vague sense of terror on some level.

Done a lot of walking around the past few days, and watching these rust colored leaves drop and tussle with the wind has been a delight, but that odd, creepy atmosphere won't leave. I'm totally ok with it. I actually embrace it. It's a part of my psyché, and without it, without that odd zone to crawl into and take in, I don't think releases like this would be possible. That feeling is sort of necessary, I feel.

Cut out and keep

Stream:

 Gremlynz - White Rot (Excerpt) by pinkpriest



Here's also links to the 22 copy released Gremlinzz casette on Dial Square Tapes that they've given out since it sold out. Again, as ace as the spades that dig yr graves.

SIDE A
SIDE B

LIVE VIDEO: Gnod @ Supersonic 2010

Here's a video of Manchester's psychedelic neo-folk drone trance band Gnod playing - elevating it - live at Supersonic Festival, Birmingham. 23rd October 2010. This physically pulses, even from the video you can feel the speakers throb in thrall to the ritualistic (and I really don't want to use the word vibe here).....

GuMMy†Be▲R! Preview 2

Here's the second teaser for the new GuMMy†Be▲R! self titled LP, coming soon.....

VIDEO: oFF - MISSTHEMAWAY

Following close behind last week's Emodancers Berlin producer oFF has released another slowly crawling space-walk of a track complete with eerie video for visual effect. So far, I'm really enjoying this unearthly cosmic sidestreet that witch house has slipped down; a sound begun in oOoOO's Seaww, with the atmospheres of Balam Acab's See Birds that has combined in the form Holy Other and now oFF.

Arabian Horses

Arabian Horses
Fatayri
DOWNLOAD

Check out these two ultra stoked dudes - another of Russia's low-slung noise drone troupe, along with AWOTT from yesterday and the rest of the emergent bands drawing dense tracts of trancendent dissonance out of their amps of on the east side of Europe. This is Arabian Horses, this is their album Fatayri and it's a good one, they've got every reason to be so happy with themselves.  This free download album is a slow moving, sinister and deliberate blend of motorik pulse and industrial clanking; distorted fuzz creeps along these tracks with a kind of dread purpose, flashes of tempo raising drumming bursting out over them to drive on the sense of momentum, breaking up the spiralling drone and keeping things interesting.

Asian Women on the Telephone

Eastern Europe seems to be producing some pretty fine guitar music of late - not including various kinds of metal, which this wide area consistently excels at - but recently there has been a lot of shoegaze, drone, post rock, witch house; bands like The Moglass, Arabian Horses, Love Cult, PinkShinyUltraBlast, Twilight Owls, and of course Prague's AMDISCS label who I have a pathalogical need to mention at least once a week.  Add to that, this band.

Asian Women on the Telephone is a Moscow-based junkyard art punk improv noise outfit whose self-styled 'purist Dada' experimentalism is very Throbbing Gristle in feel, if not exactly sound - a shifting clanking, urban dronescape, channelled thorugh multiple pedal manipulation with all sorts of bizarre vocals shreiked, hissed, and cackled at intervals through some of the tracks. Their Bandcamp site has three albums up for free download; two from earlier this year and one from last year.  All excellent, involving single minded entities that have a sense of multi-minded purpose:

Chelsea Grandpa
Holotropic Break
AWOTT III




They also have a split casette out on Full of Nothing records with Arabian Horses, available to order HERE

Beginning as a duo in 2007 AWOTT is now a five-piece incarnation, donning constumes, masks and involving all sorts of industrial and psychedelic paraphelia in their stage shows, which in this video makes for a menacing, unpredictable and unclassifiable experience:

I†† - EC - O5

This track is up on the ClanDestine Soundcloud and comes from a mysterious entity named I†† from Richmond, USA.  It's a sound with a certain black luminosity to it; cloaked brain scrape and fevered delusion; totally in the realm of witch house in every way and as much the reason why I keep listening as it is the reason others hate it - crudity being the key element to both those responses I would wager. His Soundcloud and MySpace sites are host to more of this kind of atmospheric ghost drone, so if this is your thing, get in. 

I†† - EC - O5 by Carl Clan D

Wot, No Last.Fm Thread?

This week's OCD stats

Dunno where all the Deerhunter has gone

pretty sure that's been on repeat this week as much as anything. Maybe more in the car than on the stereo though, so:

01. Furze - 31

02. Guards - 30

02. The Gaslamp Killer - 30

02. Solar Bears - 30

05. Blackbird Blackbird – 23

06. Salem - 19

07. Gonjasufi - 18

07. Gkfoes Vjgoaf - 18

09. Forest Swords - 16

10. Asian Women On The Telephone - 15

10. Wild Nothing - 15

10. Gayngs – 15

1 – new album is absurdly good. Barely any shrieking or other black metal kinds of vokkils on it, just loads of deep intonation set to some classic early/pre-BM kinds of riffs like Venom or Hellhammer, whips a xylophone out in a few choice places, barely keeps the drums in time with the guitars – business as usual.

2a - “alternative, doom, new wave, power pop, rock & roll, New York" – more Vintage. Went into rave overdrive on my blog about this band: http://bit.ly/guardsep
2b – Death Gate ep is some immense psychedelic maelstrom.

2c – She Was Coloured In is one hell of a cosmic album – Kraftwerk, Emeralds, Oneohtrix. Well 2010. Well good.
7b - I think I undersold this album when I wrote about it last week. It is incredible: http://bit.ly/gkfoes

10a – Russia is having some kind of musical epiphany at the moment and AWOTT are a pretty full on example of what's going on. Drone + Industrial + Rock.

These New Puritans - White Chords (Forest Swords Remix)

These New Puritans released one of the more intriguing albums of this year, and even if I have to admit I still don't feel like throwing Hidden on that often it does have some strange and magickal pull on me. One of the albums that I have most trouble taking off my stereo is Forest Swords' Dagger Paths.  No need to imagine those two records combined, RCRDLBL have got this swamp haunted remix of TNP's cryptic doomsong. Amazing:

DOWNLOAD: These New Puritans - White Chords (Forest Swords Remix)

 

FFFF: Pissed Jeans - Sam Kinison Woman

Hello Friday; here's your Fast and Furious Feature. Brace yourself, cos this one's got a bite on it.  Have Pissed Jeans always sounded this much like Wire and Mission of Burma, or is it an influenced they've just slipped roofie-like into this single shot of burning-eyed cold-shouldered hard edge that's comin' swingin' for ya.  The single is out on SubPop any time soon.  Here's what they say about the track themselves:

"Pissed Jeans, Allentown, PA’s not least favorite sons recently recorded two new songs, unassociated with nor otherwise promotionally leading up to any upcoming full-length album they have yet to record. These are just two exceptionally great new Pissed Jeans songs. They are called “Sam Kinison Woman” and “The L Word,” and were recorded for this 7" single. That’s it and that’s enough." 

  Pissed Jeans - Sam Kinison Woman by subpop

DOWNLOAD: Guards - Guards EP

Guards
Guards EP
DOWNLOAD

Here's another incredible free album for you, from New York band Guards. 3Syllables are putting this out on limited edition 12" in November, but it is also available to download for free from their Bandcamp right now and it is one of the most exciting and fresh reinventions of recent history I've heard all year - this will make your weekend.  With no web presence other than a recently activated twitter account - possibly at the insistence of friends Cults and Best Coast - and the Bandcamp, Guards offer a fresh enigmatic yet uncontrived take on their self-promotion. Similar to Twin Sister, which I like to describe as Vintage, this is a sound that rolls so many references into it that it sounds instantly classic - IS instantly classic - take opening track Resolution of One; as soulful as a Stax ballad with an injection of garage-rock adrenaline to take it into an altered dimension of musical lineage that continues through the album to mix disparate elements and meld them into a beautifully high-functioning Pop music; a multiverse of free spirited downtuning and dissonance, lilting horns and shimmering waves of chilled surf twang; Cults join them on Sail It Slow, dialling the pace down several notches with a slow-motion take on 50's heartbreaking milk-bar jive; closer I See It Coming matches the epic scale of Arcade Fire with chime backed ooohs and aaaahs but adds a feral a kicking upswing of tenacious rock and roll With an album that's as effortlessly all-encompassing as this they're easily a band that is going to get catapaulted to...you know, like MASSIVE Blog Hype or something even bigger, and deservedly so.

Before the physical album release, they're putting Resolution of One out on 7" through Small Plates now, which you can order from HERE and to celebrate their first ever gig the band have put up new song Swimming After Dark to download from Yours Truly:

DOWNLOAD: Swimming After Dark


They tagged themselves as “alternative, doom, new wave, power pop, rock & roll, New York"  Seem like good people.  Tweet 'em @guardsmusic

DOWNLOAD: ...And The Earth Swarmed With Them - The Fading Voice Of The Old Era Speaks To Us, But Where Are The Ears Left To Hear It?

...And The Earth Swarmed With Them
The Fading Voice Of The Old Era Speaks To Us, But Where Are The Ears Left To Hear It?
Hawk Moon Records
DOWNLOAD

Here's some homegrown post rock epicness from the sleepy downs of Sussex, that their label Hawk Moon, has put up for free download, more than generously in this case, because this is an album that matches the kinds of grim wonderment of Red Sparowes or Grails. You know the kind of sonic landscape you'll find yourself traversing when you see a name like ...And The Earth Swarmed With Them even more so when the album title so evocatively cinematic and imposing.  Production duties have been handled by Justin Broadrick and James Plotkin - a mix and mastering double team that have defined genres, and here they make sure the atmosphere hangs heady and heavy over this like brewing thunderheads over an electric sky, the movements building towards great purpose, narratives that unpack themselves into explosive crescendos before crashing exhausted and supine into silence.  Post-rock hasn't corpsed yet, not while there's these kinds of ideas and such a wealth of life within them.

VIDEO: oFF & GR†LLGR†LL - Emodancers Never Stop

Here's the LOL-tastically titled new track Emodancers Never Stop from one of my favourite Witch House acts, GR†LLGR†LL - creators of a full proper narrative album, and the only real one until SALEM's King Night dropped - whose ectoplasmic mutant hallucinations here involve a mysterious new Berlin outfit called oFF (who also plays degraded Goth'N'B as Gay Mormon Kissing Club) adds another dimension of warped club euphoria to their haunted ghost-hop; a spaced out aura that shares the space crawling slow-motion cosmic ambience of H0ly Other's Yr Love or Blissters; really quite haunting and beautiful.

Here's the video Or find it on Soundcloud HERE

PREVIEW: Craig Colorusso - Sun Boxes

9 DAYS  :  3 LOCATIONS  :  20 SUN BOXES

Here's another gig preview for all my US readers, for a really intriguing peformance that I have no hope of getting to: 

Sound artist, Craig Colorusso, returns to his hometown of Western Massachusetts to peform his latest piece, a solar powered sound installation; Sun Boxes.  For the first three weekends of November, Turners Falls River Culture will host Colorusso’s latest piece at three locations, allowing the participants to observe the piece's evolution as it moves through the town.

Nov. 5-7      Lawn of the Great Falls Discovery Center, 2 Ave.

Nov. 12-14   Peskeomskut Park, Ave. A + 7th Sts

Nov. 19-21   Lawn at the beginning of the bike path, 1st St

Sun Boxes is a solar powered sound installation comprised of twenty speakers operating independently, each powered by the sun via solar panels. Inside each Sun Box is a PC board that has a recorded guitar note loaded and programmed to play continuously in a loop.  These guitar notes collectively make a Bb chord.  Because the loops are different in length, once the piece begins they continually overlap and the piece slowly evolves over time.

Participants are encouraged to walk amongst the speakers, and surround themselves with the piece.  Certain speakers will be closer and, therefore, louder so the piece will sound different to different people in different positions throughout the array.  Allowing the audience to move around the piece will create a unique experience for everyone. in addition, the participants are encouraged to wander through the speakers, which will alter the composition as they move.  Given the option two people will take different paths through the array and hear the composition differently.  Sun Boxes is not just one composition, but, many.

To become part of the drone email Craig HERE

Gaslamp Killer - Death Gate

Mental.  The Mother.Fucking Gaslamp Killer just released his new five track ep on Fly Lo's Brainfeeder label and it is epic. Mixing dusty psychedelia with West Coast electronics, the results here are a tapestry of eerie and otherworldly grooves and loops of string arrangements mixed into some - at it's peak - banging electro/house beats distorted into filter tweaked avalanges of ecstatic noise.  Here's a youtube of the Gonjasufi vocalled When I'm In Awe - a beatless, incandescent twilight psych-trip of a tune.  Totally essential.

Yellow Ostrich - The Mistress

Yellow Ostrich
The Mistress
DOWNLOAD

Yellow Ostrich is the solo work of Alex Schaaf - a Wisconsin born New York resident who has put out a string of excellent avant indie-pop releases as pay-what-you-want downloads from his Bandcamp. The sound is a slightly slicker take on Shins kind of college rock; the guitars are trebly, with spindly yet gripping melodies yet there's all sorts of colourful fills, effects and song dynamics going on, similar to how Kevin Barnes plays around with Of Montreal; the vocals are quite nasal, yet Schaaf is posessed with an excellent range of vocal skills and the multilayerd barbershop sections of the opening and closing track especially are remarkably arranged. If Deerhunter added the same to their sound peopel wold go nuts and Yellow Ostrich rally challenges Bradford Cox's songwriting on a few tracks here, with a few gently shifted yet momentous movements of garage pop.  The songs on this new album are even more accomplished and assured than those of his Wild Comfort album earlier in the year; both of which should be taken together as a sign of an emerging talent that will not remain hidden in the depths of the internet for too long.

Here's Schaff's words about the build-up to it and his thoughts on the release:
 

This one's actually quite special.  For the past year or so I've been working on one album called The Mistress.  I've released many other things while working on this album, but this has been the one I've kept coming back to.  It's easily the longest time I've ever spent on one album.  That says nothing of its value to the listener, of course, but I will leave that up to you.  I've labored over it for months, and I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out.  It's the first album to feature musicians other than myself.  I got some friends to play drums and guitars and bass here and there.  Most of it is still just me, but there's some nice touches here and there that I couldn't have done otherwise. 

Here's a video for the album's second track The Whale:

Turbowolf - The Big Cut EP

Rolling straight off a European tour with Dimmu Borgir and KoЯn, Turbwolf are now setting about the UK with Dinosaur Pile-Up. Along the way they've managed to get their first big fat 4 track EP finished up and released. The artwork has a ring of cosmic 70's doom metal to it, but these jams are faster than that, but still pack the same wallop. In spite of touring with those two bands of metallers, there;s nothign Black or Nu about their sound at all; on this CD they have conjured four mystical sabre-toothed grooves and smashed them on to tape with as fresh and effortless a zeal as any rock band currently kicking up the country. And it comes with stickers!

Order it from them HERE

Tracklist:
 
1. Ancient Snake
2. The Big Cut
3. Things Could Be Good Again
4. TW2

Gkfoes Vjgoaf - Light Weaving

Gkfoes Vjgoaf
Light Weaving
DOWNLOAD
Courtesy of Ace of Tapes and Microphones In The Trees

Gkfoes Vjgoaf is Sean Conrad; a US based New Zealander who has been producing a kind of sunburned psychedelic folk of increasing detail over the last couple of years, slowly teasing and pulling at the strands of ideas and trains of thoughts until arriving at his current sound of slowly repeating cycles of sighing drone and shimmering ambient beauty. Like his previous albums there is an air of the retro about Light Weaving, of a distant psychedelia, but one that is resolutely of the now with it's submersion into a transcendental state of repetition and vibration. This is as much for the hypnagogic pop voyager as it is for fans of rough hewn folk.  The kind of freaky fried sounds of Skip Spence and Rocky Erickson time-stretched to the current era of Peaking Lights, Amen Dunes, Lucky Dragons and a large pasrt of Finland's Fonal folk-drone roster; these bands all share a similar ramshackle texture and organicly happened upon feel as Conrad's work, but where an album like Imaginary Falcons had a close playful human intimacy, this communes with nature in a similarly tender fashion, until all passions are unleashed in the final track Celebration Into The Light that layers up one of the most shapely and resonant riffs of the album into a post-rock crescendo of blinding magnititude, just as the title implies.

In his own words;

"Light Weaving is a way of imagining the universe. It is the oneness of all things and the constellations that we use to engage with the world. The music of Light Weaving is building things into nothing. Ebb and flow. These are autostereogram-like sounds for all seasons, unfocus your ears and take in what's really happening... Specifically though, it is a set of live instances recorded in my parents' living room and reorganized on tape in June 2010."



Conrad has made all his previous Gkfoes Vjgoaf tapes and CDr releases available for downloading from these links.
Magic Days (Ace of Tapes, 2009)
Tiger Elephant Panda (Self Released, 2009)
Howl in the River Cave (Self Released, 2008)

What is a Dream Earth Bed (Self Released, 2008)


And finally, here's a video for Winter Fields Through Summer Eyes from last years Magic Days album

Lastfmthread

The week's listening in statistically variegated form off of the DiS board:

Fuck you love songs / Fuck you hate songs

01. Dream Boat - 53

02. L'Amazon Ram Arkestra - 39

03. Gkfoes Vjgoaf - 36

04. Twin Shadow - 34

05. Salem - 33

06. C0ld L▲k3 - 26

07. Deerhunter - 25

08. Black Sun - 22

08. Head of Wantastiquet - 22

08. Blackbird Blackbird – 22

Not written about these ones before:

2 – Sweaty, humid drone like High Wolf but closer and more sticky.

3 – Amazing new tape from this New Zealander who has put out loads rustic handmade weird psych folk kind of stuff, but this is pretty different. Really deep trance inducing and beautiful drone

8a – Twilight of the Gods is fucking sick, plus it has Eugene from Oxbow on a couple of tracks to double the illness.

8b – Second album for solo project of Sunburned Hand of the Man man Paul Labrecque. As psychedelic as you'd expect with acoustic guitars, banjos and wildlife samples.

These ones I have written about before
1 - Super

4 - Smashing

5 - Hyper

6 - Mega

7 - Awesome

8c – Wow

FFFF: Keränen

This week's Fast and Furious Friday Feature should freshen you up for the weekend good and proper.

Keränen is the solo electronics noise project of Tommi Keränen, and Bats In The Attic is his first release under his own name, after putting stuff out on his own as Testicle Hazard, Gentle Evil, Les Manures (with Mr Umpio).  He's also played with Incapacitants, Pymathon and many others in random ad hoc line ups.Here's a track off the album for you - released on Pica Disc now

I don't put enough pure Noise noise up on this blog.  Getting dosed up on this hard wired short circuited Nordic swamp noise gabba jabber is making me nostalgic for the time when this is almost all I listened to.

VIDEO: Little Comets - Isles

Here's another totally gripping pop video; this one flows in the in the Mike Leigh / Shane Meadows vein of provincial British grittiness. The band is Little Comets, the track is called Isles.  You can get an orchestral reworking of the track from their website HERE for the cost of your email address.  They are currently touring the UK, on the road from now until November. Check their myspazz for details.

Hear Hums

Hear Hums
Notions Shift at Tryptamine Bay

DOWNLOAD

Gorgeous album of drifting psychedelic ambient bliss with the odd detour into electric shock sparks of ecstatic activity. Reminds me a lot of Sung Tongs Animal Collective, which probably my favourite album of theirs - that west Coast wash of sunbaked beachdazed ocean spray evaporating into the hazy sky - all those precursors to chillwave are here, but exist seperate from all that, where drone rules over beat and all tones are elongated.  Download for free from their Bandcamp from the link above, and/or order a physical copy from InSound HERE

Lynx:

Bandcamp
Excellent blog of album reviews, pictures and thoughs over HERE.
MySpace
  

DOWNLOAD: Nattymari - s0 y0u think y0u can dΔnce

Nattymari has ANOTHER incroyable mix for you, just right for a Friday night (morning), lead by this equally excellent intro:



This mix is dedicated to the circuit djs around the globe. They're in every city, playing every Friday and Saturday night. If good at their jobs, they track the Top 40, Euro and P4K charts like the stock market, yet still have time to post random obscure updates to their twitter accounts. Skilled at their trade, they play the right amount of pop to get the white girls on the floor, yet still appear ironic. Carefully weave in enough esoterica to make the ❐'s think they're ▲. Fill the floor for two hours, only to drop the tempo down to a late night makeout party.


In no way am I trying to disrespect any sort of house or club music, but I'm just glad that I'm not doing it. And if I were, this is how it would go....

DOWNLOAD: s0 y0u think y0u can dΔnce

Tracklist

str0b3lit3
a bAD 3XAMPLE
APATHY
fRESH dUST
cascading
gURL pARTY
1st and lAST & tHE eND oF tHE wORLD
lOUD3R
3Y3 1Z
lIFE B3
ina drag
how come we don't say "I LOVE YOU" enough?
sTEP 2
bRICK dUMMY
NO S3CR3TS
The Impossible Lady in the Radiator
eAT a sALAD

Eagulls

Five-piece Leeds based alt.rock band Eagulls are fast coming up on people's radar in the wake of bands like Male Bonding, Dananananakyroyd, No Age and other new and gnarly kinds of kinetic and weighty guitar raucousnesss around at the moment. They've got two excellent tracks up on their MySpace at the moment, one of which - the epic multiheaded genre-hydra Council Flat Blues - is about to be released on new Moshi Moshi imprint Not Even Records but you can also download their debut 3-track ep, Songs Of Prey HERE  You can get their old sold-out cassette in CD form with bonus tracks at their shows.

DOWLOAD: Ghost Houses - Division EP

Here's some haunted ambient witch house to spook yourself with. California ghostgaze band Ghost Houses' Division EP makes it's influences very clear from the track titles, but as you can see from the artwork they have a very visceral edge to their sound that isn't present in the obvious touchpoints. Available to you for free from their Bandcamp, this is something that would definitely deserve to be released on a nice heavy 7" given the chance (label owning readers take note!)


Check it:

DOWNLOAD: Ghost Houses - Division EP

Tracklist:

1. Division
2. Order
3. Pleasures

Baron - Infinity Variations

Ready for a little post-prog dose of ex-Diagonal member Baron's horn blasting crime fuzz? Here's a triple tracker demo you can stream from his bandcamp. he keeps his myspace pretty minimal, but there's some beautiful pictures on it that illustrate the sounds of these tracks.

VIDEO: LA Vampires (Feat. Matrix Metals) - Make Me Over

This is the brand new LA Vampires video and lead track from the forthcoming collaborative album with Matrix Metals. The LP So Unreal will be out in November on Not Not Fun  You can tell it's Matrix straight from the off, as that deep well of clanging rotating burble kicks in, a suffocatingly heavy vortex of disfigured psych. Awesome. Then Amanda Brown drops in with her unique brand of reggae-rapping (which she's steadily improving on) and gets away with it because the momentum and constant flux of Sam Meringue's music keeps cauterizing her stray ends. She had a piece up on Dummy Mag last week about a choice track she's been into recently, in which she acquits herself slightly better than the Wire interview a couple of months ago.  I dunno, I love her music and I can follow her threads when she waxes enthusiastic but she also manages to cripple herself with statements of dubious veracity like " Lately, there’s been this disgusting overgrowth of ’80s fetishism and I love to claim I’m entirely above it" whilst producing entirely 80's indebted records.  Easily my favourite most frustrating artist ever.

VIDEO: Sanso-Xtro - Hello Night Crow

The beautiful videos keep on coming, this one a magical stop motion shimmer through the forested mountainsides of Wicklow Ireland for the bubbling electronic shimmer of Sanso-Xtro's Hello Night Crow. Video is directed by Fergal Brennan

Twilight Owls

 
Twilight Owls is one of my favourite artists on the awesome AMDISCS label, with a free download available from their page that I've had on repeat since they posted it up. He just made a new tumblr blog with nothign on it yet, but keep your eye on it and see what happens.

He's a solo dronesman mixing song styles with outward looking tones - think Sun Araw, Barn Owl, Pocahaunted, Ducktails rolled over and dragged across the Russian tundra - he can move from subtle to raw to roar with the flick of a switch and does so compellingly across the tracks strewn across MySpace and AmDiscs in the various bands he plays in. He drums in two bands that are on hold at present, Радиолюбитель and He Called Himself Jesus, but he also has an active and very very promising thing going on in the form of Khmury; a psych collaboration with Prea Hrada, in which they take a atmospheric setting, play with the nuances of it, flexing and tensing; building up to a full on galloping charge.

Here's a download and video of them in action.

DOWNLOAD: Khmury - Jam#1

DOWNLOAD: Blissed Out mixtape L8V3 +H3 W47 U L73

Here's the highly anticipated screwjam from Blissed Out, straight from the incredible AMDISCS.

L8V3 +H3 W47 U L73 is a mixtape we made sitting on a porch in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, California. The free download of our dj software runs up tonight. It features reinterpretations of a lot of the radio bangers we have heard touring out to California over the past two weeks: Far East Movement, Katy Perry. It also has a track from How I Quit Crack mixed in that we picked up after playing with her last week in Austin. We played the Smell on Saturday and Showcave this coming Friday and during downtime we have been working on new material. L8V3 +H3 W47 U L73 is a song we made that features vocals of Taylor Momsen from Gossip Girl covering Rihanna and the XX at the same time.

DOWNLOAD

Tracklist:

9/11 Live at the Garden Freestyle – Notorious BIG

FLY Like A G6 – Far East Movement

Track 02 – How I Quit Crack

Rihanna – Only Girl Ryan Seacrest Exclusive

L8V3 +H3 W47 U L73 – Feat.Taylor Momsen, Rihanna, XX

BMF – Rick Ross

Night – Zola Jesus

Ghost Rider – Suicide

Teenage Dream – Katy Perry

Pop Bottlez – Feebzz

VIDEO: Light Asylum- Shallow Tears

This year is definitely on to something special for promo videos.  Here's another excellent clip for Light Asylum's Shallow Tears.  All the hallmarks of an 80's slowdance tearjerker are there in the music then the video twists it up a bit; almost like a sequel to Massive Attack's Teardrop  The video is directed by Fabian Svensson & Jens Klevje @ Conjunction Films, Sweden - who also made the unsettling video for Fever Ray's Keep The Streets Empty For Me

Errors - A Rumour In Africa (Gold Panda Remix)

This is really cool. Awesome dance rock/electronics band Errors remixed by the equally excellent and intriguing Gold Panda - a man with subtle skills behind his laptop, some people taking time to fall under his spell, others getting their jaw dropped instantly.  Here's a combination of the two, from the Drownedinsoundcloud

Errors -  A Rumour In Africa (Gold Panda Remix) by drownedinsound

Glasser - Glad (Delorean Remix)

I'm slowly coming round to Glasser; in almost the same way as it took me time to get into School of Seven Bells, which she reminds me of  a vocally - a dreamy lilting lullaby kind of voice that swoons over every word. Maybe because it's getting colder and I'm feeling a bit cosier I can wrap up in this kind of sound more.  Spanish dance troupe Delorean have been around for a while, making balaeric beats with varying degrees of success, but it all comes together on this remix - both the Glaser vocal and Delorean's liquified remelding of the music.