DOWNLOAD & VIDEO: GuMMy†Be▲R! - Night With No Light Feat. ZOMBELLE

It appears Herr GuMMy†Be▲R! has fully dispensed with all the deviance and aural torture of his embryonic tracks and has now fully inducted himself into a twilight zone of producing left-field euphoric house. The sounds in this are so sweet, his tone palatte getting richer with each release. I'm really after a full 8-minute anthem from him, he keeps putting out these sub 4-minute pop shots that are all killer but could really do with an extended workout to flex their full potential.

This new one if from his upcoming Oakland ep, video made by Zombelle

DOWNLOAD: Joris Januar - Liar Paradox

Joris J/Ratbag
Liar Paradox
DOWNLOAD


I wrote about the German industrial dark electronica producer Joris J a while ago, and he's now back with a split release for the blog-label Kulturterrorismus. The album is the label's first release, and it underscores their interest in the dark side with imposing conviction.  The first three tracks belong to Ratbag - a ghostly presence clanking about in the night with pitch black brain scraping noise, ectoplasmic undercurrents of bass and bottom end drone lurking about making it all dense, slimy and aggressively harrowing. 

Joris J's half is more discordant and disorienting.  Lots of smooth silky tones, distorted - eveningwear tattered and shredded with a sultry plunging neckline.  The intro to Stand Alone Complex is an absurdly jaunty blast of end-of -the-pier big band, a fountain of technicolour in the dark that just as quickly disintergrates into the mass of collapsing waveforms that it burst out of.  The ensuing tracks crawl filthily through to the end with plenty of interesting scenery to keep your ears hooked in.

More details on the Archive.org site for the album HERE

The Last of the FMs

It's Sunday stats time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

This is the last time I complain about my ipod.

This is the last time I complain about my ipod. Does anyone know why itunes has to restore it every time I plug it in? “ipod cannot be recognised”. I have reinstalled it, deleted everything out of it, started again from scratch, reset everything temp-file / ipod related in my laptop, registered and signed in to everything Apple/itunes related. It just won't recognise it. Pretty annoying. I won't mention it again now, promise.

01. Peaking Lights - 49

02. Fen - 30

02. Daughters Of The Sun - 30

04. Liturgy - 24

04. ∆AIMON - 24

06. Julianna Barwick – 18

07. Seams - 15

08. Silver Bullets - 14

09. Gkfoes Vjgoaf - 13

10. Airs - 12

10. Vondelpark - 12

1 – First essential release of 2011 and my first review for the Sonic Router blog: bit.ly/fgE4uC

2a – Still intently listening to Epoch thinking it is great, like truly Great-great. Production is lovely right down to the cymbal sounds.

2b – Not Not Fun's next essential release after Peaking Lights. Hand-beaten cosmic tapestry of improv folk drone and krauty rhythms.

4a – Doesn't come out 'til May, Thrill Jockey are sending round the promos now heralding it as THE crossover black metal album. It;s not, and it won't – too full of shrieking and Metal Tones to win over anyone not already into it. But it is fucking awesome, no doubt.

4b – Finally got round to this Tundra Dubs release; grimy industrial metal tinged Ritualz-esque witchhouse. Some of it is heavy chop/screw hip-hop influenced, other parts are Skinny Puppy/Marilyn Manson riffy and dirgy. Really good.

6 – This is amazing too! Released on Sufjan Steven's Asthmatic Kitty label – heavily fx'd vocal loops, layered onto each other in different styles – droney foundations with operatic leads, all breathlessly wordless incantations and ritualistic chant. Beautiful stuff.

7 – His free download ep from bandcamp. Lovely electronic stuff. His new material is a real progression on from this – which is to say he has some serious skills – www.seams.bandcamp.com/album/a-juvenile-rush

8 – Free falling mix of prehistoric dance music, bluesy bric-a-brac, spaced-out jungle junk folk. And stuff.

9 – Love this guy!

10 – LA shoegaze/black metal duo's new free d/l. Kind of bizarre, kind of tragic in the mix of really poppy punk hooks married into walls of harsh buzz and fuzz. http://dlvr.it/HZKXb

10. Love this guy! Part II.

Track of the week:

20 second teaser more exciting that 30 minutes of new Radiohead:

DOWNLOAD: Airs - Rainclouds Over The Remains of Hope

Airs
Rainclouds Over The Remains Of Hope

DOWNLOAD

In place of today's Fast and Furious Friday feature I thought I'd throw in a whole album of relatively uptempo shoegazey blackness becaue I've been building up the bpm, whilst keeping it fairly ambient and this is a record that does just that, confusingly so, and sometimes annoyingly so - there's every chance that just as you're really enjoying one of these tracks, they switch it up with something you will hate. 

That got you listening didn't it!

Formed in late 2009 as a fully instrumental outfit, San Francisco band Airs later added vocals to flesh out their sound - sometimes harsh, ragged and very much BM, at other times the are so soft and gently lilting I had to check their Metal Archives page at least three times to see if they had any female vocalists. No, they don't.  The two members of the band, Verwüstung and Xio bring seveal influences together that don't always marry up sympathetically, like the title track and Joyless, whose drive-time college-punk shoegaze (so help me I cannot think of a better tidy phrase for it, check it) gets crashed into by a wall of tremelo fuzz, doesn't quite gel - but when they do get it it sounds like it has huge potential;  Cast Into the Sea dissolves humid blackened gauzey metal into something even less tangible and more dreamy, the penultimate Passing is a slowly boiling fizzing sea of distortion and pulsing rhythm the truly evokes   On another release they also have a weird cover/homage/drag remix of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, that drops the original down a few bpm, shifts the pitch and plays some melancholoy keys over it. You should hear it. Here:

They are planning on taking to the stage some time this year, by which time they will hopefully have gelled all their inconstituent parts into one seamless and more convincing whole. This was probably all meant to sound more positive, but I wouldn't have posted if there wasn't something in here to get hold of.

Sonic Router: Peaking Lights - 936

Here's something I've had in the works for a couple of weeks, but sat on until the day it actually happened, which is now. I am amazed excited to be part of the new revamp of the excellent electronic/dub/beats blog Sonic Router - not so easily defined any more, as they expand their remit to include sounds from farther out from a wider group of writers then the three who started it up, which includes me!

My first review went up this morning, for Peaking Lights incredible new record 936 on Not Not Fun.

Here's a bit, full review HERE:

"The third track is potentially the highlight, dealing in the most sensual sonic experimentation of the record; the bobbing bottom end of 'Amazing and Wonderful' is sprinkled with soft feedback ringing out in fading ripples of delay, echo heavy guitar vibrations and an intimate tapestry of muted arpeggios descend down melody lines that cross each other like dancing lovers. What made Imaginary Falcons such a warming and beatific experience is blushed through this one track, and it's soporific euphoria that transcends all that came before it."

Download: Peaking Lights - Tiger Eyes (Laid Back) via GvsB

STREAM: Belong - Perfect Life

Drone Day continues with this teaser/lead track for Belong's new album Common Life, out on Kranky on 2nd March. What an incredible change of sound this is from their previous snow-drift drone tones, combining ambient with textural and moulding a rock shape out of it - with vocals. Hazy, warped, distant, echoic, dreamy, hazy, warped, distant, echoic, dreamy, hazy, warped, distant, echoic, loops of gentle human frailty buried right in there amongst the mechanical and environmental chaos.

  belong 'perfect life' by kranky


Someone called Know Phase made a fan-video for this, which he describes in amusing detail on his blog|

DOWNLOAD: Snow Beard - Electronic Composition (Old Coal)

It's going to be a bit of a Drone Day today on the blog.  Here's a new piece from Snow Beard - the kind you get when it's subzero so far your face starts to crack, that's about the ambience recreated here. You can hear the permafrost crinkling up and the steely blue of the frozen waters icing up.  Lovely stuff.

Solo artist behind this music, Matthew Morrey, taped this in a rare moment of free space - his output being almost as sparse as the sounds themselves.  There should be a video to go  with this music arriving some time in the future


Stream or Download:

 

DOWNLOAD: Malibu Wands - Trondheim

Malibu Wands
TrondheimDOWNLOAD

Malibu Wands, aka Gremlynz, aka Pink Priest, aka God of Blues releases this new long one, sparse and wintery minimal drone track in homage and dedication to Varg Vikernes, aka Count Grishnak, aka Burzum.

In the 'Wands' own words:

"This is you in the icy wind, fucked, and pessimistic, looking for a glimmer of hope, with all your personal demons kicking snow in your face."

Review: Spirit Spine - Glossolalia

Spirit Spine
Glossolalia

Spirit Spine is one Joseph Denney, who makes a form of gauzy shoegaze that is even more soporific and heat-warped than the likes of Wild Nothing and Minks who are playing with this similar kind of thing.  The deep saturation of echo and reverb bends the guitars like a desert mirage.  In his press-release Denney says "one may have to resort to pseudogenres like Desert Dub, Sandgaze, or Heatwave in order to describe the album" which I kind of like, because I'm all up for pseudogenres and Sandgaze sounds pretty cool, if somewhat uncomfortable.  There is an arid quality to these tracks that goes someway to deserving those genres, a parched finish to the tracks and an airlessness brought about by the dense layers and drum sounds, shifting like windblown dunes - and if you've ever seen that you'll know the impressive patterns it makes, much like this record does. Continuing the analogy there's no real standout tracks here, nothing like a rocky peak jutting out above the rest, instead they make up a whole experience, a freeflowing continuous melding of tracks each contributing it's own shape and shade to the overall landscape and it's one that you're sure has altered each time you revisit it.

The album can be streamed in full/purchased right now at the Bandcamp page.  Download the track Ocean of Sand for free HERE.  CDs are available in a limited edition run of 100, all handmade and comes with a thank-you note written on burlap.






There's also an unofficial video to Ocean of Sand featuring footage from the 1966 film Lapis by visual artist James Whitney, which you can watch here:

DOWNLOAD: Hunter Gatherer - Fingerprint Series

Hunter-Gatherer
Fingerprint Series
DOWNLOAD



A series of 10 tracks originally recorded and released between May and December 2010 from this intriguing electronic artist.  Futuristic with that warm analgue retroism that travels through Drexciya and Autechre to land it in the same curious cosmic space as fellow Irishmen, (and all fellow Dubliners too I think) Moths, Vision Air and Solar Bears - they say two is a coincidence and three is a movement, so dare we call out this New Wave of Irish Electronica as one of 2011's major happenings? NWIE anyone? This year's Skwee? Could be.


The album download includes individual photographic artworks for each track that go some way to illustrating the music in each track, from midnight helicopter chases to moody landscapes to church burnings.


Here's the opening jawdropper Serbia to convince you to get this. The rhythm keeps snaking over itself with a never ending supply of chrome hooks and silvery sounds, a loosely pulsing beat.

DOWNLOAD: Endless Endless Endless - I.S.S

Endless Endless Endless
I.S.S.
DOWNLOAD

This is the first in an ongoing series of tracks to be released under the I.S.S. title - Indefinite Single Series. For a band named Endless Endless Endless, Indefinite is the least they could offer.  They'll be releasing a number of tracks every week, all recently recording.  This first episode was all, bar the first track, taped within the last fortnight. So this looks like it will be a rolling document of the band, and if this first missive is anything to go by (plus their previous releases), listening in to each new updfate should become an addictively rewarding experience.

I've posted about these guys before on the release of the Tired Trails tape- a Brooklyn based duo of semi-improvised cosmic droners, building a solar bridge between Emeralds and its constituant parts back to the forefathers like Popul Vuh and Tangerine Dream. Deep meditations on tone themes, unravelled slowly across a firmament studded with beats and bit of vocal fragment, comets tails of samples swishing through the mix.  All exactly my kind of thing, every trance inducing head shaking second of it.

These recrdings are all headed for physical releases of differnet forms - the first related cassingle will be out fairly soon with Temple South out of Brooklyn and the band are working on an longer tape as well, but no format or label has been determined as yet, but keep your antennea aimed in this direction and I'll be sure to pass on the next set of incoming transmissions.

VIDEO: Ghost Animal - Young And In Love

This is a video to the track Young and In Love by the LA based harmonic noise pop band (nee Shitgaze, circa 2008) Ghost Animal.   The video is directed by someone called The Tearist (not Tearist) using scenes from the '67 French musical Anna - written and starring Serge Gainsbourg along with Marianne Faithful and Anna Karina. Painfully hip and sexy then, likewise and thensome now with the ultra-blown out gratuitousness of this fierce little West Coast number. Video and track synch so well together.

Taken from their Youth tape out on Kill/Hurts, still available for streaming - but only just!

DOWNLOAD: GuMMy†Be▲R! - King Colour

Double lock your mind to receive a state of maximum swagger when a new  GuMMy†Be▲R! track drops - which it just did.

Proper witch house hexxxed R&B. 

BOOM!  

VIDEO: Black Rose - Anthem

Berlin based DJ and label boss Jesse Rose and House producer Henrik Schwarz release this track Anthem on Made To Play under their Black Rose moniker.  Anthem is damn right. BoaBoa at Dark Party pegged this as the track of the summer - can't really argue with that at all, this sounds huge, the Barrington Levy vocal hook gives it instant classic sounding status, and is boosted all the more for it's psychedelic tribal animation video by Casper Heijkenskjold.  You can already feel the pressure drops of a hundred remixes swelling on the horizon.

DOWNLOAD: Simple Eyes

Simple Eyes has the most minimal web presence I've come across for a long time - not even a Last.fm, and I can't tag the wav's out of Soundcloud, so I can't make one (I find the need to do that strangely compelling).  The six tracks in his set are lush, detailed and resonant pieces involving acoustic and electronics to produce intimate dronescapes and floating song structures.

Simple Eyes' name is Thomas, he found me on Soundcloud and I checked his stuff out and was so immediately impressed I had to press him for more info.

He has only been making this kind of music for two months, uploading his music to Soundcloud about two weeks ago. It's a quite staggering achievement to have conjured such an intriguing cocktail of electronics and low-key guitars so quickly - less folktronica, more similar to the nostalgia imbued daydream hum of Vondelpark.  I asked about the speed in producing this music, to which he says "I have been developing an idea for my own project for a while now - I guess i wanted to wait until i found a unique sound before I shared it with people."


Thomas does have previous, and continuous- he is the drummer in Calories- they're playing with Les Savy Fav at the Sound Bar, Birmingham on the 25th.  But they're a world away from his solo stuff - Like Bjork, Thomas says he is "working on another song which is made up entirely of vocal samples."  His solo music will be featured on a compilation on Tough Love Records, due out in March, and has designs on releasing these tracks as a full length in the future - and creating a Last.fm!


  

Download: White Rainbow - Lays The Boogie Down

White Rainbow
...Lays The Boogie Down
DOWNLOAD

3 track of slowly uncoiling cosmic trance to sink yourself into, for free (name your price).  A brain-obliterating psychedelic disco pulse and phaser strafed audio psych-out session with the mystic pizza man himself Adam Forkner - and when he lays the boogie down he lays it down hard. 

VIDEO: Star Slinger – Mornin

Here's a new video for Star Slinger's Mornin, taken from the 2010 debut Volume 1.  The video is directed by Alan Jensen who has produced visuals for the defining artists of chillwave including Blackbird Blackbird, Toro Y Moi, Washed Out, and Neon Indian - past artists of Mexican Summer, the New York based label that Star Slinger have now signed up to for their next release.  As a result, Jensen has now worked his nostalgic charm on the UK's sensual electronic outfit and has created this impassioned and wholly fitting video.

Get more Star Slinger from their website and Soundcloud

The King of Last.fms (Radio Thread)

This weeks listening stats

This one goes up to eleven

iTunes still insisting it can't recognise my ipod when I plug it in, restoring it to factory default, so this is only plays while I'm at home, nothing from on the move or at work. I HATE YOU ITUNES I HATE YOU I DO!!!

01. Peaking Lights - 101
02. Gruff Rhys - 28
03. Twin Shadow - 27
04. Guards - 23
05. Tim Hecker - 22
06. Vondelpark - 21
07. PJ Harvey - 20
07. Heathens - 20
09. Spirit Spine - 18
10. Radiohead - 16
11. Fen - 15
11. The Soft Moon - 15
11. Star Slinger – 15

1 – Album of the year for me so far. Imaginary Falcons updated with the new wave of NNF dub sounds - heat soaked basslines – an alternative dub album way more convincing than Pocahaunted's swansong, combined with Peaking Lights uniquely intimate circuit bent noise – adds up to one long sustained eargasm. If your whole being doesn't melt into Amazing and Wonderful then you are stone cold.

2 – Been rinsing Hotel Shampoo and enjoying it thoroughly.

3 – Almost did a little cry at missing his show in Brighton.

4 – New free dnld ep of covers – Metallica, Vampire Weekend & M.I.A. All distinctly better than the originals.

5 – Stops the world spinning, creates it's own entire geology and ecosystem in it's place. Incredible, but still not as incredible as Peaking Lights – though both render me immobile.

7a – Maybe I haven't heard this properly but I don't like this very much at all. Vocals like Newsome/Bjork rips, graceless lyrics – I mean, if we want an album glorifying England this is the wrong time to do it if you're not going to go for the jugular properly. After the nation voted all wrongly dropping us in to those two arseholes we need some sterner, fiercer stuff. Certainly not fucking bugle calls. I'm not proud of this country right at this time.

7b – South African black metal straddles Cascadian post and Finnish black'n'roll. 3 demos up on their bandcamp.

9 – Still haven't got around to the blog review of this, but still can't stop listening to it.

10 – King of Limbs is alright, I haven't noticed anything especially risky – the electronics haven't developed much past their trademark skittery beat and loping bassline combo. It's easily listenable though, and I'm sure there's more to it than that. I'm hoping – I like how Separator reminds me of Adamski's Killer, and I like the video; Thom cutting loose for a full 5 minutes is well worth watching.

11a – Now this is how you make ambitious, experimental music. Epoch is significantly different to their past albums, retains their character but adds so many new ideas that complement it so well - production is huge, melody lines slide around the rhythms on epic scales, seamlessly shifting between Black Metal subgenres and throwing in new influences like it ain't no thang. Has the potential to make a bigger mark than Winterfylleth's album last year.

11b Still immense.

11c. Going to be huge too, if you hadn't already heard – everyone from Rob Da Bank to Jordan is bigging them up, so that covers the entire record buying country don't it.


Track of the week:

Lovely Italo-disco throb, free to download too: Gatto Fritto – Hex

FFFF: Aosoth - Angels Falling Down

Haven't done a Fast and Furious Friday Feature for a few weeks, but this one is going to hit them back into focus hard.  Pure Satanic French Black Metal from Aosoth. A nation well versed in the most ferocious forms of devotional ritual. Angels Falling Down is from split release with countrymen VI on Necroterror Records.

DOWNLOAD: Guards - Cover Songs 7"

The EP that Guards put out at the end of 2010 is still on heavy rotation in my house, good getting up music, good going out music, good music to work to. What is this music not good for?  They have a winning formula of 60's redressed through new-wave and out into hi-def/lo-fi post-milleniall/modern nostalgia/euphoria.  The fact they just put out a single covering Metallica and M.I.A. cements, melts and double-hardens that last stumbling dissection.  In short, they sound like Arcade Fire with all the fatty flaky self-conscious preciousness thrown to the winds.

I also just noticed that the Greenhorne/Willowz gig screenprint I have in my house is the same Willowz that Richie James Follin and Loren Shane Humphrey used to be in before this band. That's kind of tidy.


They have this three song ep up to download for free from their Bandcamp. Go get.

DOWNLOAD: Ourobonic Plague - Moon Worship

Ourobonic Plague
Moon Worship
Amdiscs
DOWNLOAD


New album from Ourobonic Plague and it's his first on a label that isn't his own Theosophical Nightmares - released a week or so ago through none other than this season's blacker than black label AMDISCS (never know if it's full caps or what).  Another stunning album to add to the darkened halls of the Czech tastemakers, another excellent release from this Australian atmospheric manipulator. 

Moon Worship is one malicious sounding album, a real evolution from the last album I wrote about and a villanous presence on the AMDISCS roster; no furtive attempts at conveying a scene here, this album owns the space as soon as it starts, developing tangible narratives and threads throughout with a world of rich and detailed sounds, a grim determination gnawing into the pit of each track.


What starts off burrowing out of a hive of claustrophobic tunnels soon opens out into airier, but no less foreboding terrain. Gnosis For Ellis uncoils with ominous portent, deep misty drones thrusting forward in slowly boiling waves, bursting thickly over the stuttering pulse of a beat, the rhythmic momentum following through into Wince, Speak where frazzled filters penetrate into the higher registers, leaping out of the murky mid-bass ranges that dominate proceedings. The closing track Mana is, suitably, the eeirest of the album, crawling off out of shot like a horror film's slimy epilogue - leaving that suspense and tension hanging long after the screen goes dark.

DOWNLOAD: The Steven Lasombras - They Poisoned Us All

Portland's The Steven Lasombras releases this new brief 2-track ep on BANDCAMP for name-your-price monies. After the A Diamond Eye Shines... album found it's way into my top 50 of 2010 I've been on the lookout for more TSL and here it is. Actually, he found me to ask how the hell I found him to have his album in my end of year list because he doesn't tell anyone about them - that's just how I do (A: Ribs Out).

Like an industrial TV On The Radio these two tracks grind off a parallel universe of soulful pop hooks, nimbly dodging the piston heavy stomp of martial drumming dropping around them, kicking up dust and filthy noise in their wake. The first track is a little more song-oriented, the second spreads itself into a more ambient and lopsely structured artifact. It's a nice two-sided double shot of this bands capabilities, underlines the two key features of last year's album.

A Diamond Eye Shines In Failing Light is still available for name-yr-price HERE, which you should invest your time and attention on immediately.

VIDEO: Ssaliva - Teenage Brain

Been seeing the name Ssalvia cropping up with increasing frequency on Twitter, but Monday was the first day I got to actually hear any, in the form of Teenage Brain's gauzy, romanticised retro-futuristic pulse and its accompanying warped CRT feedback addled video.  The debut LP Thought Has Wings will be available on February 28th from Leaving Records. This little sub 50-second micro-dream of a track, Best Lose The Dream appeared on Altered Zones yesterday, courtesy of Visitation Rites & Get Off The Coast

MP3: Ssalvia - Best Lose The Dream

STREAM: Pale Sketcher - Wash It All Away (King Midas Sound Remix)

Wonderful new track from the Seventh Heaven ep, from  Justin Broadrick's Pale Sketcher incarnation, remixed by long time collaborator Kevin Martin, aka King Midas Sound aka The Bug - the other half of Techno Animal with Broadrick).  The original instrumental has been bassed out as far as it can reach and Martin has added the vocal soul of KMS contributor Hitomi to the track - which is exactly what ambient doom needs but never gets enough; some genuinely deep (and I don't mean pitshifted deep) vocal talent.

The 12" version of this EP is limited to 500 copies, out now on Ghostly International.

DOWNLOAD: Heathens - Morning ep

Just when I was wondering where all the Black Metal is on Bandcamp this pops up.  A one track release from South African four-piece black metal band Heathens.  They describe their own three ep trajectory thusly:   "The band began playing a groove oriented form of black 'n roll. With the addition of a second guitarist, they have begun producing more atmospheric black metal."

This is a pretty neat track, a feral urgency to the scrabbly tremolo, a great drop around the 2 minute mark that heralds some of that aforemetioned rock and roll referencing looseness. The drums have a nice leathery sound, less cardboardy but still boxy - which in this game is a good thing.  For an atmospheric post-BM band they don't sound that much like Wolves In The Throne Room, which is pretty refreshing, though their sound bears all the hallmarks and signifiers of it it comes off more as a cross-pollination between gnarly Finnish shops and Cascadian structures.

They have two more multiple track eps over on their Bandcamp, with less ephemeral and more Death-like gory artwork. Having only been around for a year, this is some very promising stuff indeed.

DOWNLOAD: Star Slinger - Bedroom Joints

UK instrumental hip-hop sampladelic sex-beat producer Star Slinger has dropped new track Casanova Jump Off on to his Soundcloud page into a set titled Bedroom Joints, along with two other older tracks including his 'hit' Slow 'N' Wet that gets about as sexy as it's possible to - the electro-hip-house version of J'taime (not countign the hundred hosue remixes that already exist of that, of course).

Pretty hard to see how his ascent is going to slow over the next 12 months, with everyone from Rob da Bank to Jordan singing his praises - and they're about the only two references you need on a CV to get the whole nation hooked.

Previous ep Rogue Cho Pa is available as a free download HERE from his site.

He's playing Concorde 2, Brighton tonight - Wednesday 16th - supporting The Go! Team & Banjo Or
Freakout. Go see him in the flesh!

VIDEO: Moths - Hearts

Beautiful new track from Newbridge, Ireland based solo artist Moths (aka Jack Colleran) who joins the likes of Worriedaboutsatan, Vision Air, Solar Bears, and Hunter Gatherer in the rapidly swelling pantheon of luxuriously haunting ambient electronic producers. His Last.fm bio says he is 17 - Seventeen! Incredibly subtle and nuanced stuff from such a young artist - teenagers not being reknowned for either of those qualities.

New track <3 has a suitably evocative video - all burning blue sky, lens flare, sexualised whimsy - from Synaethesiae Films, who produced one of my favourite clips from last year in the form of Solar Bears' Dolls No idea where the footage is from, and I'm not so sure I'd be up for a roll in the sand, but they look so happy who could take anything from them? Not even me.

Moths has a SOUNDCLOUD and a BANDCAMP, whichever you prefer for keeping your ears tuned in, with four tracks available to download for free from either:

<3Derek Piotr - Focus (Moths Remix)
Slow/Down

Blisters

STREAM: I†† - Violent Beasts

Some more graven occult brainscrape from I††, uploaded to Soundcloud yesterday. A slow, treacly crawl through a very dark, airless space, this is about as suffocating as twine bound grim atmospherics gets. Lovely stuff.

DOWNLOAD: Asobi Seksu - Trails (Holy Other Remix)

US shoegaze duo Asobi Seksu release their fourth album Flourescence this week on Polyvinyl. They have a video for the lead single Trails that played out on Pitchfork TV yesterday. Somewhat more interestingly is this remix from German cosmic drag producer Holy Other, whose two tracks, We Over and Yr Love were some of the most entrancing tracks to emerge from some umbral constellation of witchhouse, dubstep and other ephemeral genre sound signifiers. Drifting distinct from the rest in a year that went very far out indeed, he has been enlisted here to add his aura to a band that have always shown a lot of promise but never really delivered quite what I always anticipate them to and the glassy-eyed spin he rolls onto this remix adds just the kind of thing I need from them; less jangle, more star spangle.


Right click, save as:

DOWNLOAD via MOKB: Asobi Seksu – Trails (Holy Other Remix)


There's also a remix from a similarly out-there duo Painted Palms and Deerhoof. The latter, you're already familiar with, the former maybe not so much - they have an album of joyously radiant neon ~wave for free download from their BANDCAMP - worth a whole post in itself.




DOWNLOAD via MOKB: Asobi Seksu – Trails (Painted Palms Remix)
DOWNLOAD via P4K: Asobi Seksu – Trails (Deerhoof Remix)

LIVE VIDEO: Horseback - Invokation and Tyrant Symmetry

Horseback, at the Bull City Metal Fest at the Casbah in Durham, N.C., February 5th, 2011. Released one of my albums of the year - black/doom/ambient the like of which I never heard before. This was the first show with this lineup: Jenks Miller, guitar/vocals; John Crouch, drums; Richard James of Hog, guitar; Nick Petersen, bass.

VIDEO: Mogwai - Mexican Grand Prix

I do really like the new Mogwai album; hopefully there will be soem depths to it that will take soem time to reveal themselves and the motorik rock of the tracks like this, George Square Thatcher Death Party and San Pedro will not only be briefly enjoyably then wither away. This slight tweak to their sound is good; it's subtle, it's a band travelling untrammelled along their own path experimenting in their own godo time. Seen a few posts around ther web on the idea of bands not being allowed to take time to develop - luckily this one are.

Last.fm thread anyone?

Weekly stats f'y'all

MVLDE is only the one guy
Glad to hear it's gone down so well with you. Definitely got a winning formula nicely weighted between genres.

On holiday this week, so numbers are low. Also, again, ipod scrobbling is broken.

01. Suuns - 35
02. Spirit Spine - 16
03. Gkfoes Vjgoaf - 15
04. Karkwa - 12
04. Hunter-Gatherer - 12
04. Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx - 12
07. The Soft Moon - 11
08. Black Swan - 9
09. Burzum - 7
09. Thrash Infinity - 7


1 - quite liking this album, especially Armed For Peace, Pie IX and PVC. The video for Pie works so well with the music, like a Gaspar Noe short.

2 - got emailed this album in the week - self anointed "sand gaze". I'm not buying that, but the music is pretty interesting.

3 – new album out on new label – all awesome CA hippiefied folk-drone transcendence

4a – Playing this a lot, regularly. French Canadians sound like Elbow, Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear – and a lot better than that combo sounds.

4b – Irish electronic artist put up a whole bandcamp full of free tracks. The first track is epic. Amazing name too. - www.hunter-gatherer.bandcamp.com/album/fingerprint-series

4c – Not played this enough yet, don't know if I can be bothered to

7 – LastAstronaut up there is right – addictive. Just played it loud in the car down a rainy motorway, in the dark. Perfect.

8 – Stunning time-stopping jaw-dropping album of orchestral noise/drone. Reminds me of the Caretaker's repetition of Phrases album.

9 - Svært godt

9 – getting though all 8 albums of this project. Well worth the time, some great ideas,


Track of the week:

This, absolutely. Play as loud as possible with the lights off.

VIDEO: CVLTS - Angel Chromosome

I'll hand you over to my boy for this one; take it away Syd Hauk:

".....Wow, this is good. Weird. Bit scary, but really good"

Not much to add to the wisdom of a two-year old.

STREAM: Mi Ami - Dolphins ep & Hard-Up VIDEO

First new material from Mi Ami after losing Jacob Long. Now playing as a more streamlinmed but no less chaotic duo Damon Palermo and Daniel Martin-McCormick drop their 6th set of killer grooves in the upcoming 12" Dolphins out March 15th on Thrill Jockey. Hard Up, directed by Amanda Brown and Ben Shearn (who made the new Peaking Lights video).  Stream the other three songs on the record off their Soundcloud.

DOWNLOAD: Vulpiano Records Sampler EP: Vol. 2

Vulpiano Records
Sampler EP: Vol. 2
DOWNLOAD

The sequel to their first EP sampler, succinctly named Vulpiano Records Sampler EP: Vol. 2, is another great intro to this eclectic label, showcasing the growing variety of artists they are signing up and offering a diverse range of sounds from the electronic to the acoustic to the outsider. 

The big artist for me here is Natural Snow Buildings - the hauntingly epic and intimate French drone duo who build the most elegant and delicate of soundscapes.

—Tracklisting—

1. Ricky Lynn - “Loops”
2. Natural Snow Buildings - “Solar flares”
3. Year of the Tiger - “Electric”
4. Richey Hackett - “Coming Home”
5. Richey Hackett - “Softly, Slowly”
6. Microscopes - “Those Summer Days”
7. Tiny Tide - “Right Now”
8. Richey Hackett - “Face”
9. Vladee Divacc - “Expansion Teams”
10. Snail Quail - “Phoenix, AZ”

Download: Asian Women on the Telephone - Concerto Grosso D^9l ^blcoro c 6e^blM naykoM Oganian minor

Lots of Russian characters in that name that I can't easily replace.  Moscow's Asian Women on the Telephone have another new track to stream or download. More inspired dadaist industrial rumblings - this one slung real low to the ground, supple flexing, figure hugging subtle curves, few explosions, few fireworks just one simmering hot stew with lots of flavour.

Review: Gkfoes Vjgoaf - The Joy of Awakening / River Spirit Dragon - C45

Here is a joint post about two new deep and out there psych-folk releases on the recently formed label Inner Islands. Their first release was a Stag Hare / WYLD WYZRDZ split 7" last summer and now this lp and cassette make it three releases in total. The label's emphasis is "on a connection to nature and the inner journey", which is lushly manifest in these releases so far.  Their release schedule for the year looks pretty tasty, and goes a little something like this:

WYLD WYZRDZ - Free Magick 12"LP (March)
Stag Hare - Spirit Canoes 12"LP (Spring)
Gkfoes Vjgoaf - Nature Eternal Striving 2xLP (Summer)
Nearone (another project from Sean Gkfoes)- Presents c44 (Summer)



Download releases from the label's BANDCAMP or order the physical copies from the WEBSITE

Are you ready to trip? Here we go.


Gkfoes Vjgoaf
The Joy of Awakening

Last year's Light Weaving from the California-based Sean Conrad made number 18 in my top 50 of the year, so no surprise that my third eye lit up when The Joy of Awakening dropped into my inbox.  A series of seven spontaneously recorded episodes riffing on different senses and peaks in the fluctuations of energy, this album sounds quite different to the tape of last year which was a more contemplative beast, slumbering gently, rousing slowly across it course. On Joy of Awakening there's a slightly more restless spirit at work, the album moves in a slightly more searching direction, less instinctively driven; as Conrad puts it the arc of this celestial voyage is like "being taken by an unseeable tribe of spirits that are trying to help you see the true nature of things", so it is perhaps symptomatic of both being led, and being led into the new.  There's are still acres of beautiful space shimmering across the album, spiking into heavy rolling folk with rattling, chugging and chiming acoustic guitars pulling shapes out of the misty climbes, mostly backing up the surroundign tones with an earthy core, but on Samantha some full Appalachian picking takes the fore backed by twittering birds and rays of sun on the face. Elsewhere there is some wonderfully dense Animal Collective echoic vocal-loop harmonising buried within the sheets of vibrating drone, and across the whole thing, your passage is kept within the constant presence of a layering of fauna calling out from somewhere within the mix.  Singularly the embodiment of the label's ethos, and possibly only from California.

  

River Spirit Dragon
C45

The third release from the label is the debut album from River Spirit Dragon on cassette. It's a collaborative channeling from Stag Hare, Gkfoes Vjgoaf, and WYLD WYZRDZ. Fully improvised and recorded in thrall to the moment of time in which it was captured; Two tracks, taking up a side each of contemplative, slow moving, communicative, meditative percussive trance and long spacious loops of beautiful drone, always involving, evolving, building towards a renewed moment of communion, reaching one peak, grounding themselves within it then reaching up and out to the next, exploring with each other and expanding to within sight of that higher state these three astral navigators hope to achieve. The artwork is an fine indicator of where things are at here - glowing.

VIDEO: Suuns - Pie IX

Why is it every other video made these days come with an NSFW sticker on it?  Is it because there's no music videos on tv any more so it doesn't matter?  Whatever the reason it's creating some pretty inspired clips outt here, these are good times for the pop promo. Combined with the music this is off the scale, disorienting like a Gaspar Noe short. Blinding.

Suuns - Pie IX

DOWNLOAD: The Ravonettes - Forget That You're Young

You might not have seen this coming from me, but I do absolutely love me a bit of Ravonettes, so I'm posting this up for posterity on the blog.  In anticipation of the album Raven In The Grave, released on 5th April through Vice records, they have made Forget That You're Young available as a free download.  It's another really lovely piece of drifting wintery doo-wop Spector rock from the Danish two-piece. Looking forward to the full album.

DOWNLOAD: The Ravonettes - Forget That You're Young

STREAM: Moon Duo - Mazes

From the Sacred Bones Soundcloudcomes a preview of Moon Duo's new 7 track 12" due out on 29th March. Really poppy compared to the agitated electro-blues roar of their Escape album and the Killing Time ep - though their trajectory has seen them loosen up, get a little chiller and less aggressive with each release, so this isn't too much of a surprise - they can always add the street-level feral snarl when they hit the stage. Sounds like there's live drums replacing the machine on this record which would be nice, and goes some way to explaining the freer feel of the sound - no more getting pinned to the wall by the restrictive beat. I could be wrong, they may have got better at programming a bit of space into the movement, but that snare/hi-hat/tambourine sounds pretty real.

Still never going to get played on daytime radio, but it's got a floating melody and summery swing that should really make it a top down open road FM hit of solid gold - but then I'd say that about Sister Ray.

STREAM: Total Victory - North Of Here

Another track from the Drowned in Sound users' bands thread. This track, from their label - The Evening Economies's Soundcloud, is called North of Here.  This band, Total Victory, sound just like The Fall, and are really good and getting that dirty street-level gnarly bucked off rockabilly groove on, so if you really like the Fall and don't mind another band taking a piece of The Fall (which happens so rarely it seems suspiciously unlikely, chillingly so. You know what I'm saying), the listen to  The F  TOTAL VICTORY.

VIDEO: Trumpets of Death - Jason

Trumpets of Death are a Leeds-based gothic chamber folk/noise trio featuring Karl D'Silva  and brother/sister Ben and Laura Wetherill, along with Alistair Neilson who provides occasional drumming services on the album. Yeah, that's what I did say - folk noise.  The two tracks here indicate a band with a darkness at it's core - if their name didn't quite give that away.  In this album track Jason, (the video of which which the band directed and starred in) you can hear a band at the frings of certain styles, maybe sharing a certain shadowy space with Esben and the Witch - dimly lit torch songs that begin faintly, tremulously, welling up, bursting open wider and wider. In Esben's case there's a distinct post-rock influence, whereas Trumpets of Death pile on the overdriven jazz and reach their cacophanous peaks that way.

Their five-track debut EP titled Teeth + Teeth = Teeths is due out on 7th March on Tin Angel Records.

Tracklist: 

1. The Press Gang
2. The Paper Plough
3. Jason
4. Woodrows Lament
5. Cruel Ships Captain

You can also stream an exclusive non-album track, Lyke Wake Dirge / Pornoshocker, via their Soundcloud.

 

DOWNLOAD: Beko / Clandestine Records Compilation

Beko DSL/Clandestine Records
DOWNLOAD

Another awesome team-up with BekoDSL, the French free netlabel, after their split with La Station Radar at the end of last year, here comes another, even more intimidating set of tracks. This is Beko / Clan Destine Records collaboration of dark and sinister tracks from both label's eeriest artists. If you're not already familiar with most of these artists then there's every chance there's something in here for you; these labels overlap in the shadowy recesses of dark ambient, drone and witch house; Beko providing the whiter light to Clandestine's pulsing black strobe tracks.

When the clap beats really connect and twist with the trance you get GuMMy†Be▲R!; when the vocals come in all mournful and windswept against a craggy grey backdrop you get GHXST; then the camera pulls out and you get the widescreen panoramic treatments of Among the Bones and Malibu Wands; dark ugliness erupts from the bowels of the earth under the influence of Mater Suspiria Vision and all hell blows out through the amps of Sealings, garbled up into the last-signal-on-Earth radio transmissions of Fostercare and Modern Witch. Pop music as you knew it, once – in a memory or a dream, buried, rotten, exhumed, reanimated.

Lots of ground covered in a parallel to the Mishka Grave Wave Comp, lots of new uncovered little nooks and crannies of this nebulous and loosely knit genre uncovered here.

In their own words, this compilation is:

“†HE SOUNDTRACK †O ¥R ORGASMIC DEMISE, NO†HING IS †RUE, EVER¥†HING IS PERMI††ED.”
Links to all the artists sites are included in the download

Tracklist

a1-Petra Schelm - Channel The Body
a2-oFF/Gr†LL Gr†LL - Crackedemo
a3-Among The Bone - Tunguska
a4-Gray Things - Fortune Teller
a5-Ela Orleans - Light At Dawn
a6-Skylines - @ Dawn
a7-oFF - Makeupworz
a8-Drugs For Drunks - DZLIGHT (intstrumental)
a9-GHXST - IXNYC
a10-Sealings - Two Cups
a11-King Dude - Never Let You Go

b1-Central Asian Nervous Systems - Almost Dead
b2-GuMMy†Be∆R! - False Prophets
b3-F8STERCARE - Snowdragon
b4-Mater Suspiria Vision - The Trip Graden Of El Diablo
b5-Gr†LL Gr†LL - Organ Sunday
b6-Meddicine - Some Thing You Knew Before
b7-Modern Witch - Running
b8-I†† - Chambre Ardente Affair†
b9-Party Trash - Alone
b10-Nattymari - K1LL K1LL
b11-Malibu Wands - Sleep With Demons

PREVIEW: NWFA Presents - Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea & Remember Remember

Two great sounding gigs coming up this week for my home town Brighton readers, put on by the excellent promotions and label collective Nice Weather For Airstrikes.

The first of this weks shows is tonight at The Hydrant, headlined by Brighton's own Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea - a noisy post-punk/rock combo signed to SmallTownAmerica - home of And So I Watch You From Afar among others. They're joined by Axis Of - an Irish band playing similarly intense sounds of mountain razing magnitudes - and Tourist Killed In Shark Attack. The slightly less ridiculous name of new Brighton jazzist rockers who used to be called BYGRAYVPARTYNMYRYTARM.


  Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea - That Drums Discordant Sound by Music Liberation

g

THEN on Thursday, there is another stellar line up culminating in a DJ set from Stuart Braithwaite, aka Plasmatron, of Mogwai fame and infamy.  This is on the same day as Demdike Stare, but there's nothing any of us can do about that, you'll just have to make a very tough decision.  The headlining band, Remember Remember are signed to Rock Action - they're a seven-piece orchestral kosmiche outfit playing simmering minimal(maximal)-epics that will make for some huge spectacle on stage.




Support comes fom two Brighton bands; Plurals - a collective collagist drone band including members of Ecka Liena, The Psyche Out Musikland Big Band, Me With Others and more - and cinematic soundtrack band Nordic Giants, who collaborate with filmakers to provide sonic backdrops to their artwork, along with interesting twists to their stage presence; part performance art, part film, part live band.

DOWNLOAD: Greys - In Fades

Greys
In Fades
DOWNLOAD

Scarborough based artist Greys has just this one release to his name so far. The two-track In Fades which was available as a super-limited cassette release on Music Ruins Lives is now sold out, but you can get for just One English Pound from the label's Bandcamp, or cut out the free download from the band up there, or stream from Soundcloud.  This is some pretty sweet, murky drone - a heady soup with loads of flavours to let stew over your taste buds - strands of tone decay and collapse into the burning rubble of overheated pedals, crackling balls of white hot debris disintegrating into the mix. The spoken word, vocal samples and field recordings work really well throughout their courses, sneaking out of gaps in the sound and being swallowed by the noiser build-ups, but occasionally fall out of harmony with the music, though that's small complaint when the pieces here show so much promise.

Greys is currently working on new material, aiming for an album release around April time.

STREAM: Mater Suspiria Vision - Crack Busting Angels

New demo from Mater Suspiria Vision, a gurgle vocalled industrial ghost drone trance track called Crack Busting Angels.  Similar to previous material, especially that rotating piston of a drum machine, steaming away underneath the noise - it features in pretty much all my favourite MSV tracks and here it gets flanked by that pitched down demon and an angelic counterpoint holding a melodic aria high above the filth. 

PREVIEW: DEMDIKE STARE @ THE OUTER CHURCH

Couldn't be more excited for a gig than this - Demdike Stare at The Outer Church, in Brighton, this Tursday!!!

Here's the preview post from the OC Blog. All their words, not mine:

 

 

For its February 2011 edition, The Outer Church is proud to present a live performance from Manchester's occult cratediggers Demdike Stare. Miles Whittaker (MLZ/Pendle Coven) and Sean Canty (Finders Keepers) alchemise elements of techno, dub, drone, early electronics, astral jazz and non-western musics into a haunting and elusive whole, shaded by the pair's profound appreciation of vintage horror cinema. In keeping with the air of supernatural intrigue surrounding the project, its name derives from the pseudonym of Elizabeth Southern, one of the individuals accused during the witch trials which took place at Pendle Hill, Lancashire in 1612.

Following their 2009 debut, Symbiosis, Demdike Stare's acclaimed 2010 trilogy of vinyl-only albums - Forest Of Evil, Liberation Through Hearing and Voices Of Dust - has recently been compiled by Modern Love Records into a covetable 3CD set with an extra 40 minutes of bonus material.

Supported by their own visuals, the duo are a formidable live proposition. As they told FACT magazine last year: “We like to incorporate all of our identity with the live set, so we have visuals that are chosen for each section of the show, and we use records to mix live over our own music to add another layer. We like to improvise as much as possible – this can also be dictated by the atmosphere of the venue and crowd too, which all becomes part of the show."

This edition of The Outer Church - and all editions henceforth - is dedicated to the memory of Trish Keenan.

DOWNLOAD: Sounding the Deep - A Union According To Energy

Sounding the Deep are a two piece drone outfit from Kansas. The band began in 2007 with just David Williams, releasing one DIY album then another on Justin 'Expo 70' Wright's Kansas-centric label Sonic Meditations. In the summer of 2010 Williams was joined by Mike Vera to create A Union According to Energy - an indelibly appropriate title for this powerful album of brewing tension and synchronised crescendo.  It begins as light as gossamer and ends up with the track Thunderheads - another accurate allusion to the the sounds beneath; drums are brought to the forefront, beating heavier and harder until the boiling mass starts splitting the sky in violent strokes of guitar and flashes of distortion.  For fans of Eluvium, Hammock, Earth and other slow moving romantic instrumental artists.

The album is available as pay-what-you-want fom the Bandcamp page, and streamable in full.

Last.FM Thread Sunday the 6th of February 2011.

It's Sunday; It's weekly listening stats time.

wocwoc

need to do something to fix the ipod/tunes, really annoys me that it doesn't scrobble at all.

01. Thrash Infinity - 44
02. Vondelpark - 41
03. Ride For Revenge - 36
04. The Soft Moon - 32
05. White Rainbow - 31
06. Chelsea Wolfe - 30
07. The Oscillation - 26
08. Burzum - 19
09. Vortex Rikers - 18
10. Cosmic Church - 17



1 – Todd Jordan of Nullifier / My Device/ OIB Records fame recorded an album a month for 8 months, sent me the d/l links on Friday been working my way through them all weekend – drone / noise /Pseudo Nippon hip-hop collab...and 5 more. Some great stuff in here. Will be hitting the blog with it...if he gives me the o.k.

2 – Lovely electronic/guitar stuff – similar to Forest Swords if his music was distorted by heat shimmer instead of misty fog. Controversial videos here: http://dlvr.it/FXY0d Well, I think they are slightly wrong anyway.

3 – Been having a bit of a Finnish black metal week this week – Ride For Revenge, Cosmic Church, Dead Reptile Shrine, Goatmoon, Horna, Oranssi Pazuzu, Satanic Warmaster, Sargeist...I can feel a mix coming on.

4 – no signs of loosening its stranglehold on my listening time

5 – new album of unreleased stuff from the last few years, Stag Hare collab, Bradford Cox doss about, Boring Guitar Music. A lot of good White Rainbow to be had of late:

6 – played all he eps quite a few times without properly connecting yet, might just fizzle out.

7 – Someone recommended me this off the back of Soft Moon. Their album from '07 doesn't sound much like them, but it does sound like Emperor Machine, which was an amazing surprise – krauty noisy drone, kind of like Expo 70

8 – new album has some great ideas in it, though not realised quite to their full potential I don't think. Good progress on from Belus, awesome vocals styles, great use of real drums and tribal beats, same frostbitten buzz. Seems like Varg is warming up pretty nicely.

9 – Another deep ep of cosmic darkness from this band. Free download: http://dlvr.it/FhjZl

10 – more Finnish BM, world eating riffs, slow motion aural holocaust - the kind of disgusting production values I love.

Track of the week: