Sunday 31 July 2011

last.fm

stats are back! think I've had a couple of weeks off.

DiS vs NFR Vs. Last.fm

FACEPALM!
 
01.Gkfoes Vjgoaf - 32
02. Sad Souls - 29
03. Hateful Abandon - 27
04. Washed Out - 24
05. Low - 21
06. Monsters Build Mean Robots - 19
06. Blackbird Blackbird - 19
08. The Caretaker - 15
08. Peaking Lights - 15
10. Honeydrum - 14


1 – new album from Sean Conrad. Heavy influence from Water this time round in the deeply transfixing hallucinogenic trance.

2 – a couple of free d/l albums of folky drone – laptop & loops. Has a lovely cover of Nico's These days on it: www.sadsouls.bandcamp.com

3 – Just one of the best bands around the UK at the moment. |Totally ditched the BlackMetal – almost all metal – for new album Move. Lots of 80s influence and very aggressive. Sounds like the Horrors if the discovered Swans, meant in the absolute greatest way possible,

6 – New album out to pre-order now. I've been waiting for this for about 5 years or something! Fantastic post-rock band from Chichester, sounding like Sigur Ros and arcade Fire on this new one. Good.

8b – I've also been greatly enjoying Faceplant – solo project of Aaron Coynes. Alien synth psych, just as dubby as Peaking Lights but leans even harder on the dancefloor groove

10 – Great occulty cold-wave guitar band just released a new ep on AMDISCS.

Friday 29 July 2011

DOWNLOAD: The Outer Church - The Dark Earth Mixtape Vol. I

Here's a euphorically creepy mix from the third eye of the psychotropic ghost-haunt-God-head over at The Outer Church . This is going to kick your Friday into party times, no mistake.  Any mix that starts of with Velvet Cacoon knows what it's doing with itself - then when it goes on to include the likes of Haxan Cloak, Paavoharju, Demons and Old Apparatus you know you're in for a trip that will loose your conscious from its fluffy moorings out into the ravening wilds of...THE OUTER CHURCH, Bwah ha ha haaaaaaarrrgghhhh!!!




The Outer Church 
Presents
The Dark Earth Mixtape Vol. I
Velvet Cacoon Earth And Dark Petals
Idaho Forever
Coil Journey To Avebury
Current 93 & Thomas Ligotti Nobody Is Anybody
Buffy Sainte-Marie Dyed, Dead, Red
The Haxan Cloak Raven's Lament
The Contrarian Crimson Village
Demons Firewalk
Paavoharju Mistä Hän Oli Tullut
Kraken Duumvirate I Channel
Old Apparatus Zebulon
Hexentanz Profane The Twelve

DOWNLOAD: Gorgons - four demo tracks



Four tracks from a mysterious US producer from Chicago uploaded to Soundcloud within the last two weeks and already picking up over a hundred plays each. Something very interesting happening here.  Gorgons makes wintery, claustrophobic snowstorm beat ambience.  Possibly like Burial would sound if he were from the Windy City, a soundtrack to a lost Guy Maddin film.  Four considerably different pieces of music; The mst recent, The Midnight Trail / A Dark Token, a huge swelling disturbingly creepy wall of consuming noise; elsewhere, icy enchanted vocals drift hazily through the shadowy groove of Red Cloud; a deep resonant bass tone thrums through the heart of Films at 11-02's dark nightscape, beset by muted explosions of beats that sound like shoes softly crunching through snow, evoking a lonely isolated vista that leads to the pure snow-storm white-out drone of Models.  All tracks are beautifully produced pieces with texture and detail.








Thursday 28 July 2011

DOWNLOAD: Daterape - Empress



Daterape
Empress
DOWNLOAD

Free download 5 track ep from Australian group Daterape. Don't be put off by the name. We've been through this once before.  Industrial undertones dancing over the witch house burial ground seance reflux.  Broken ribs for drum sticks, hollowed out skulls for toms, deep beats carved from flesh and smashed upon the altars of darkness. They're an increasingly potent entity and these five tracks offer more in the same cold vein as previously, with both the title track and Arctic Gesture with 80's laying down cool slabs of 80's club beats and ominous synth backing that occupy a space between Ford & Lopatin and Light Asylum, a dry ice choked dancefloor lead by hypnogogic robotic singers.  Behold is a flashback to the heady days of yesterday when the world was out-spooked by drag and Witch House Mk 1, Atmofukk is another crude title that doesn't do it;s cosmic trance any favours, the cold romanticism of it being far more subtle that fukking would imply.  The final track, Risk It, it a dirty bass/clap stomping double hitter, using it's nostalgic 8-bit blips to populate a landscape of eerie  minimal, spacious and creepy synth tones.


Wednesday 27 July 2011

VIDEO: Holy Other - Know Where





Paranormal VHS feedback clip for Holy Other's Know Where, directed by MFKWorld.  Watch.

VIDEO: Felt Drawings - Barriers



Lovely grainy super8 clip directed by Julieta Triangular to illustrate the wonderful Felt Drawings' grainy super8 darkened electro pop.  Taken from April's self-released Body ep (which I wrote up here), Barriers is just one of the many glittering industrial jewels in Dominic Tiberio canon.

Find him on Soundcloud and Bandcamp.  

Tuesday 26 July 2011

DOWNLOAD: Sparkling Wide Pressure - Fragments of a Sound I Can Not Erase



Sparkling Wide Pressure
Fragments of a Sound I Can Not Erase

DOWNLOAD

Frank Baugh has uploaded all his recordings under his Sparkling Wide Pressure guise to Bandcamp.  That's a helluva lot of abstract drone to sink your frontal lobe into.  Nothing he produces may ever quite better the ethereally magnificent Tearing Rippling from 2008's Touching Pasture on Students of Decay...:



...but Baugh has a very evocative way with conjuring drone that always hooks into somewhere deep inside you. From the opening bars of The Time That Is Right - complete with buried vocal and suddering background rumble - there's a resonance at work that can only envelop the listener (prediliction for Drone not withstanding). The intro is concluded with an even noiser version at the end, titled When The Time Is Right; it;s a thicker, gnarlier fuzzier sister piece the the start and close sout the album nicely offering a real finish that doesn't always happen with ambient works such as this that kind of just disappear off - but this one leaves its mak and echoes its start which is a nicely considered flourish. 

The tracks are between 4 and 17 minutes long; meaning some drop straight into their peak soundspace, work it briefly then depart whilst others gently nudge at ideas before locking onto a definite course and picking out the ensuing details - if there was any one word to describe his sound it could easily be Pretty. Heard Through Window's drifting central tone is embellished by cleaner guitar lines sparking into life, whirling out in eddies of notes offset by glittering piano: The effect is efferfescent, like the neon shimmer in tropical seas.  Opposite to the gentility of that, the penultimate track Journey of Forgiveness involves an almost chugging tumultuous turn on the bass end of the guitar, slashing tones and sharp licks of the headstock strings piercing through the dense channel of sound churning along, many moments of which bob up with a splendour that doesn't contradict the claim to Prettiness, but does provide a glimpse into the darker, uglier underbelly of which Prettiness requires to exist in contrast to.

He's a pretty prolific artist which a trip to his Bandcamp will quickly enlighten you. Start here though and you will only want to dig deeper.

Monday 25 July 2011

DOWNLOAD: Kunlun - II (Winged Sun)



Kunlun
II

(Winged Sun)
DOWNLOAD

More delirious voodoo trance drone from France's globe-wandering psych shamen Max, aka High Wolf, Annapurna Illusion, one half of Iibiis Rooge and fully in control of the hallucinatory voyage he takes his listenes on.  Kunlun is another project that bears all the prints of his fingers on the burbling synths and sparsely propulsive slo-mo congotronic beats. This is the second release after I that was reelase din November.  It;s Max's most minimal project in all ways, with the album name II and tracks simply called A and B and a music that is equally minimal in its sense of single mindedness and unhurried development. There's a coolness to the way both 14 minute tracks open out from brittle beginnings into a more dynamic range of sounds, effected loops twittering away, synth lines moving steadily through an increasingly diverse range of hums that echo the strange biological starburst of the cover art.

Catch High Wolf playing at August's Outer Church at Brighton Komedia on the 11th.

Friday 22 July 2011

LIVE VIDEO: Ash Borer @ The Acheron, NYC



From the Gilead Media blog: Ash Borer @ The Acheron, NYC, 16th July 2011 via (((unartig)))

VIDEO: Cults - Go Outside



My Cults single d/l post from last year is one of the most read things of the last few weeks - is that all you naughty scamps looking for the album link? This is the song that hooked me into a state of obsession for a brief period back there. Turns out it's really the only song they have, but it's a killer and now it's got a proper video to go with it.

DOWNLOAD: Jef Barbara | DannielRadall - Cocaine Love (AMDISCS)



Jef Barbara | DannielRadall
Cocaine Love
(AMDISCS)

DOWNLOAD

The hotly anticipated Cocaine Love EP from luxuriously talented 80's synthpop producer Danniel Radall and equally deliriously talented cohort Jef Barbara has arrived! Four tracks of heat saturated, narcotically intoxicating voyeuristic vicewave (don't worry, no one will ever say that again, promise...guaranteed!). Each one a soon-to-be-BBQ-hit;  Crack Smoking Kids, Sexaphone Love , On Mirror and of course, Cocaine Love.

So loaded with drugs the LP's should get sent by mule, as sleazy as a tankini and hot enough to roll it's suit sleeves up, these are perfect summer party jams that sweat dirty street-level pheromones and high-life decadence in equal measure.

Download the ep free from Radall's Bandcamp, stream from the AMDISCS Soundcloud.

DOWNLOAD: Adolescent - Run Away From Bad People


Adolescent
Run Away From Bad People

DOWNLOAD

Another excellent Brighton based electronics artist producing blurred head and heart music. Alex Parish is Adolescent, and although it's not the greatest of names to get started with don't let that deter you at all because the music inside it is of as high a calibre as that fuck-off massive rifle on the cover art.  It's rare to find artists transposing a tangible mental and physical state into their own music, and sharing such personal problems in as subtle a fashion as Alex does - he suffers from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and takes the distortions of "mood, memory, time perception" which affect him through his condition and replays his experiences through synth and computers to produce a sound  that shimmers with a deeper resonance that merely artfully placed sound can convey alone.

As the EP progresses, whether by design or happy accident, the tracks seem to get denser in their cloudbursting sense of euphoric harmonic detail - the double ambient sucker punch drift implosion of KNEKT and The Source is an equal to the hallucinatory bliss produced by artists such as Vondelpark, Moths, and Holy Other.

Follow him on Soundcloud, then watch this:  The haunting docu-music-video to the opening track TLE (Temporal Lobe Epliepsy), which records Alex's visit to a hospital for a brain scan for the condition which he suffers from. His backstory is copied below.




BACKSTORY:

Since I was very young I've had Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. In my case, seizures are quite infrequent, usually occurring in batches over a few days, every 4-6 weeks.

The seizures are not so physical, instead they affect my mood, memory, time perception, and create massive confusion.


For the past 5 years I have been attending frequent brain scans such as EEGs and had an MRI, the reason for this being that my seizures are so infrequent it is almost impossible to catch one on record to analyse it.


This 72 hour brain scan was the last ever scheduled for me, and I was told that if I didn't have a seizure whilst staying there, then there wasn't much else they could do.


I decided that I would document the first day of the brain scan to accompany a piece of music I had been working on, that was supposed to mimic my seizures in both the sounds used and the mood created.
This was the second time I had produced and edited a video, so I hope you like it!


In the end I DID have a seizure whilst there which was a miracle and am waiting on the results of the test.

Thursday 21 July 2011

VIDEO: Leatherette - Maybe





If you haven't had enough videos from me recently then have another - a romantic visual aid to Leatherette's sesual and soulful house number Maybe. Another excellent Synesthesiae Films produced clip with footage taken from the 1960 Japanese film Cruel Story of Youth. Particularly love how the track's chorus vocal is synched with the image of the woman walking mouthing words, works wonderfully well, like a real lip-synched pop song.

DOWNLOAD: Ghibli - Pythia


Ghibli
Pythia
DOWNLOAD


Thomas Michael of Jaded Hipster Choir has a new outfit with a recently released full album for free download. As much as I saw JHC lauded across a load of blogs I never really felt much from it or got in to it in a way that i felt justified any of the praise lavished upon it. From the name on something didn't sit right. Ghibli is a totally different entity entirely.

Firstly, the name references something genuinely cool, not by trying to be clever-clever sarky, snidey - a realignment of aesthetic which successfully extends to the music. Secondly, well, I just said - all the pretence and over-earnest trying has been shed and what's left is sublime, effortless sounding massively complex sample heavy House music experimentation that keeps on blooming over many repeated listens

Thirteen tracks of varying length, but none too long, means few ideas outstay their welcome though each is given enough space to develop into something coherent in a succinct amount of time.  Cosmic pulses and earthy beats meet to position the listener somewhere between the two realms - take the second track Mountain Time for sublime example: a heavenly soul vocal is chopped into so chaotically it's rendered disfigured to the point of ugliness, but the track persists until your tolerance is subverted and its flaws are reconfigured as perfection in a crystallising moment that immediately yields to a piano refrain breaking open the next track. Further towards the end off the epic trip  is Brahman, followed by Suicide, both two tracks that have choral, operatic vocal samples that boost the euphoric elements of the house sound to maxxxed out pupil-size dance-floor filling random partner groping levels of unsustainable peaking; in the classiest most dignified ways possible.

Download for free from Bandcamp and order the cassette from Wonder Beard Tapes


Wednesday 20 July 2011

VIDEO: Vondelpark - TV



Premiered over on FACT, this is the new video for TV from Vondelpark's nyc stuff and nyc bags ep, out to order on R&S now.  I seem to have had it on pre-order for ages!  Long time waiting for new material  from this outfit, though both this and Camels are slightly removed from the languorous sun baked hypnogogic dreambeats of the Sauna ep so it remains ot be seen if the new record will be as insistently addictive as that has been.

DOWNLOAD: Robel Synthesia - Indica Float


Robel Synthesia
Indica Float

DOWNLOAD


"My music will always be be free for download as it is my belief that if you can't share your music with those who appreciate it, then why make it all? "

So says Robel Synthesia's Soundcloud profile, so here it is for you.

A psychotropic mix of acoustic and synthetic electrified sound, lashed together in some kind of loose harmony around the sole aim of getting high - which you might never guess from the clear-eyed production of this record. It has drugginess by the bong-load but it's not all masked under foggy veils of tape hiss and occluding layers of reverb. It's refreshing to get hit with something so  psychoactive and well defined - Animal Collective do it, and this owes them a debt, but it separates itself too and is for the most part way more chilled, picking up from where chillwave left off rather than where it started.


Half way through Cloud Boats the track bursts into life - rays of sun through parting clouds, yes - shamelessly evocative and effectively so. Amazon Sun reminds me of that bit on GR†LLGR†LL's mYsWeetcomy wOrLd where they annihilate some African chant, only considerably more respectful and joyous, humming off the earthy rhythm and looping it over to a peak - the African vocal harmonies make a reappearance on City Kids too giving the whole album a tropical feel that isn't forced.  Elsewhere, the city really is represented in Lipstick Lounge which deploys the briefest of vocal trills to enhance its buoyant conga beat and background burbles before laying down a classic gin & juice soaked g-funk 808 squiggle. 

There's nine tracks of this kind of summery sugary buzz to sink deep into, smoke or no smoke. 

Find him on tumblr too.

GIG PREVIEW: Ghostlimb, Dopefight and more @ The Albert, 3rd August


One of Brighton's best bands of all kinds, let alone metal are back from gigs with Eyehategod to support US hardcore band Ghostlimb at the Prince Albert on Wednesday 3rd August.

From the This One For The Crew Facebook

THIS ONE'S FOR THE CREW PRESENTS...

GHOSTLIMB
Intensely aggressive melodic hardcore from Los Angeles. Releases on Level Plane / Adagio 830

BLACK KITES
Discordant chaotic hardcore from New Jersey. Ex-You And I / The Assistant.

DOPEFIGHT
The best band in Brighton right now. Ridiculously heavy stoner doom back home after their shows with Eyehategod + Hang The Bastard.

RESURRECTIONISTS
Power Violence / screamo from Munster, Germany. Ex-Apoplexy Twist Orchestra. They totally destroyed The Hobgoblin last time they were over.

LENTIC WATERS
Ferocious, bleak hardcore from Germany. Ex-Ding Dong Dead. New LP out on Moment of Collapse / React With Protest.

BATTLE OF WOLF 359 -
Chaotic, metallic hardcore / screamo from Kent. Totally destructive. Catch them on this rare venture out of living room.

7pm [sharp!]
Wed 3rd Aug 2011
The Prince Albert
Brighton

£6

Tuesday 19 July 2011

o F F / GR†LLGR†LL Part 2 - Emodancers / Happy Face



First official release from the witch house fallout project of o F F and GR†LLGR†LL. After meeting a a club in Paris and hooking their musical minds into each other they released videos of them playing live sets in a car, in bed together then released the properly recorded Emodancers Never Stop at the end of 2010; now Recorder are releasing the double sided Emodancers / Happy Face tracks for just €2 on their Bandcamp.

These two tracks are the first salvo in a series of releases lined up for the coming months. Good news for those that like their summers disturbed by slowly screwed wyrd emotive electro.


DOWNLOAD: Barad-Dur - I Descend




Barad-Dur
I Descend
DOWNLOAD


The new cassette ep from the Tolkein-inspired one man black metal troupe Barad-Dur was released at the end of May on French Chanteloup Creations/Oaken Shield offshoot Wulfrune Worxxx, limited to 100 copies. Buy it for a ridiculously cheap £1.90 HERE, or free download from the Bandcamp.  Across the three tracks expect hoarse-throated, rugged mountain-like vocals and fizzing serpentine riffs that will worm their way under your skin. Opener The Self-Destruct Mindset not only introduces new lyrical themes (not that you'll be able to make them out), but presents itself with a rippling, haunting piano then goes on to echo it through plaintive sky-watching guitar then slowly drops in that feral buzz-saw and dry snare battery.  Alcoholic Mess continues the personal subject matter, taking a clean break from the fantasy of yore whilst replicating its tortured existentialism through acres of swampy spaciously paced sludge. The final track, titled Final, is seven minutes of  Burzum-esque ethereal ambiance played on synth and guitar, beautifully serene shimmer to clear your mind to after the harshness leading to it.

I interviewed fell-wanderer Nathan Watson for my UKBM week in December which you can revisit HERE. The excellent Regulus mini album which inspired me to get in touch with Nathan for the feature is also up for  name-your-price d/l.


DOWNLOAD: Yith - Demo (Self-Released)


Yith
Demo
DOWNLOAD


Essential self-distributed free d/l demo of sludgy hi-tempo US black metal that opens with a maelstrom of killer weighted riffs that drop like piledrivers down from a track titled Dwelling in Eternal Solitude. Home studio sounding production still can't disguise the amount of weight this is trying to convey - you will feel it.  The Metal Archives entry lists the number of members as none but my guess is this is a one man entity.  The tempo shift in Return from subterranean crawl to Link Wray-ramalama two-two kick with tremelo guitar tones screeching over it is just one of several deadly moments of coldly executed black metal strewn across these four tracks; the whole churning introduction to Dark Mysteries sounds like classic Immortal with the rhythm of the vocal delivery echoing that influence further and stirring up some genuine flutters of power in your belly as the potential to overwhelming epicness becomes clearly audible. By the final track Haunting Grief the funeral doom influences in their sound start to make their shadowy presences felt; the sombre dirt throwing off dust in surges of tempo, every shift a definably addictive riff accompanied by savage and poignantly phrased vocals.

Trust me; this one's a keeper.

DOWNLOAD: Illness - Break​-​Up Tape



Illness
Break Up Tape

DOWNLOAD

Spencer and Emilio's guitar/drum instrumentalism is calling it a day; Illness will be no more after a series of gigs in August.  Lament Brighton, lament all rock fans, but fret not too hard for they are also leaving this Break Up Tape in their wake; a rollicking, guttural, groove-heavy four track swansong that finishes with a rare vocal appearance. Furiously intense noise rock on form.

Monday 18 July 2011

DOWNLOAD & VIDEO: Regal Safari - Only, Triumph and Light




Here's one of the most intriguing and exciting propositions to have emerged from my Brighton city in a while: Regal Safari.  One pay through the three tracks on their Bandcamp will have you besieged by contemporary comparisons; the first ones that struck me were Balam Acab (or indeed, one side to the TriAngle sound that isn't shaded the colour of Witch House), Solar Bears, Caribou, Blondes, Worriedaboutsatan - lot's of dreamy and spacey artists who evoke elusive and somewhat intangible landscapes built of disembodied vocals, drifting cosmic ambience; sensuality, euphoria.

They're playing the Green Door Store in October and supporting Gazelle Twin in November. Stalk them on Facebook too.

Here's a brand new synapse frazzling remix of similarly awesome category-evading artist Seams' Hung Markets from their Soundcloud, stream three of their own tracks - Only, Triumph and Light - and/or download them all from Bandcamp.

Monday 11 July 2011

VIDEO: V‡S kULt : Small In Number But Greater In Mind



V‡S kULt

VIDEO: Vondelpark - Camels



Vondelpark

VIDEO: Clams Casino - Natural



Clams Casino

VIDEO: Active Child (Feat. How To Dress Well) - Playing House

VIDEO: Grouper - I Saw A Ray

Holiday Video Extravabonanza!

No, not those kinds of holiday videos. The kind that stand in for words while I am away on the English Riviera for a week. Cornwall actually. Blood has been spilt for lesser transgressions than that. Anyway; all week I am throwing up recentish videos that I haven't posted to the blog that are either good musics or good video or a combination of both - and sometimes that little bit extra too.

First things first:

Thursday 7 July 2011

DOWNLOAD: Deekie - Brickenden EP



Deekie
Brickenden EP

DOWNLOAD

This London based duo have produced four releases in the last six months, pouring music from their third eye of creativity at healthy rate - all available to download from their Bandcamp, as well as real world formats. As they say themselves "Deekie make music fast." 

Fast, but unhurried.

This new one is four tracks, opening with a softly looping misty-eyed glacially toned vocal drone and finishing with a heavy lidded twilight male vocal piece with quiet melodica there's a sweetly dreamy innocence pervasive through the music.  Combined with the childish font of their name and the sparse cover you could mistake the minimalism for amateur simplicity, but there's a sophisticated and complex understanding of their musical craft, the simple ideas of the songs reproduce until they are complex organisms by the time the tracks conclude; a see-saw hum and swaying melody echoing elegantly into intensifying infinity, galloping beats spreading out through tracks like ripples exacerbating the momentum of their own patterns.

Lovely stuff.

They've got a full complement of sites for you to stalk them over:

Bandcamp
tumblr
Last.FM
Twitter

Wednesday 6 July 2011

DOWNLOAD: Impia - Impia EP


Impia
Impia EP
DOWNLOAD

Two treack debut ep from this pitch black death heavy drone doom band from Cincinnati.  The first incongruously ringing in with a Mario coin ker-ching then smashes straight into the buzziest retake of SunnO))) and Moss style forest floor mud shovelling dirt.  The second track is twice as long, over ten minutes of swirling creeped out feedback atmosphere and crushing ten-foot high soundwaves of imperious darkness.  It's a promising start.

The band's own words:

"We have been striving to create something that evokes and emits the strongest feelings of negativity and resentment for everything living. Low tuned guitars,looming synth's and droning drums, distortion washes over you like waves of sludge in a sea of misanthropy. A new era of depression is upon us, an age of falling short and not living up to expectations, Impia, we feel embodies this hatred and deep seated anquish that we're forced to live everyday.'

Tuesday 5 July 2011

DOWNLOAD: Gem Club - Breakers



  

Here's the beautiful little self-titled teaser track for the debut full length album Breakers, from the beguilingly sweet Boston duo Gem Club, out September 27th, on Hardly Art.  This track is also available from their Bandcamp site, along with new editions of their excellent debut ep from last summer Acid and Everything.  You can order copies with a pillowcase! Told you they were sweethearts.

I wrote about their ep in November and posted a few videos they made which you can jump to here

Monday 4 July 2011

Radio Black Forest Woodland Gathering

Beautiful poster for an awesome gig coming up in Cumbria, the Radio Black Forest Woodland Gathering. Facebook page HERE

DOWNLOAD ALBUM PREVIEW: Iron Pirate - Vortex



DOWNLOAD: Iron Pirate - Vortex

Iron Pirate is back from the dead!

After delivering a perverse and insanely brilliant self-titled 8-bit thrash metal album in 2008 (which you can download HERE with the full booklet artwork), a couple of squat party gigs and a show for  NFR Live! he abruptly disappeared, leaving (or not) a deleted MySpace page and much speculation.  Now, after years of silence the cosmic wanderer has returned with news of a follow up album titled Death of 7 Planets, a galactic saga on a grand scale involving the attacking and ultimate demise of the planets of the album title.  Iron Pirate has given us a  preview track from the album to offer up to you, titled Vortex. Stream or download from my own Soundcloud, Iron Pirate should have one and/or a Bandcamp himself closer to the album release.

The track enriches the sound from his previous album, still retaining the feel of the old-school chiptune but fattening it up for greater impact.  Where the previous tracks were all quite hefty 6 - 8 minute epics, for his new material he has cut them down, again to increase the impact but losing none of their sense of scale. The riffs in it are huge! There is an immense groove pulsing through the chaos that locks this track down, throwing up some exhilarating moments of classic Metal abandon, though it's kinetic enough to go head to head with real life thrash guitar fretwork. Foot on the monitor midi mayhem. Well worth the wait.

You'll have noticed the artwork. Along with the album concept the artwork concept for the album will follow a similar theme to the first, with each track being illustrated, this time their images will be based on classic arcade shooters such as R Type and Gradius. The Vortex image is based on Hellfire, an old Megadrive game.

I'll keep you posted on developments as the album draws nearer. Until then, press play and let battle commence!

Sunday 3 July 2011

lastfm summer

THIS WEEK I HAZ LISTEN MOSTLY TO

Chillwave is back then

01. Washed Out - 72
02. Memory Tapes - 55
03. Robel Synthesia - 27
04. Goodwill Tapes From Outer Space - 26
05. Wild Nothing - 23
06. Inch-Time - 20
07. Deekie - 16
08. Andy Stott - 15
09. Marilyn Manson - 14
09. Shabazz Palaces - 14


1 – o.k., yes, I'm sold. Within Without is very likeable and easily listenable. Not sure I would be as obsessed with him if it was his first release though.

2 – kind of partners in chillwave aren't they? There's no Bicycle on here but there is a lot of cool stuff that pops up out of the songs, so...good songwriting.

3 – Still can't adequately describe this. It's very excellent psychedelic synth pop, for free

4 – Dutch bedroom guitar pop with nice organ sounds. Free d/l: http://goodwilltapesfromouterspace.bandcamp.com/

5 – every now and then I need a top up.

6 – dreamy/hypnagogic electronic producer. Sounds like Four Tet or Mount Kimbie in that it doesn't really sound that definable.

7 – some nice psych folk drone from London

8 – atmospheric doomy techno. Urban psychedelida.

9a – Had an overwhelming urge to listen to Mechanical Animals. Wasn't disappointed.

9b – Summery lushness. Lovely. Listened to it through headphones of the first time this week, sounds huge and came into its own.

TOTW:

that new HTRK track. Really good, they should be huge., Saw them support Liars and they were far more intense.







Friday 1 July 2011

STREAM: Paavoharju - Ikkunat Näkevät


Fonal Records have announced the release of a new Paavoharju release, titled Ikkunat Näkevät.  The band's 2008 album Laulu Laakson Kukista was my number one of the year when it came out and they're still unmatched for luminous visionary music-making amongst the groups around the Finnish free-freak-folk scene, which is saying something if you've delved into it even briefly. The record will feature previously unreleased pieces and rare/long out of print/demo tracks.  Order the album and t-shirt HERE.

DOWNLOAD: Embers - Shadows


Embers
Shadows
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Oakland, CA based Embers release their debut full length album for name your price on Bandcamp.  The tracks range from five to over ten minutes in length with short drone intro and outros bookending, opening and sealing the portal into this black space of experimentalism.  There are all kinds of influences at work here, but the overall intent is to throw out a smoky cowl of atmospheric doom from you speakers. At the forefront is a lot of soaring melodic guitar work reminiscent of Black and Death metal but also more ambient styles of Isis-oriented post-metal shoegaze, complemented by passages of striding Doom heavy basslines that lurch down from the faster tempos towards crushing slow motion riffs. The momentum is carried across some phenomenal drum patterns; ominously booming tom progressions, rabid snare battery.  The vocals shift and between high pitched gothic black metal shrieking to guttural death grunting, melding everything together harmoniously (if not incredibly filthily).  This is a record you will find yourself lost inside like a rabbit hole following its twists and turns deeper and deeper until you are somewhere startlingly novel without realising how you got there.

Over ten tracks and around an hour in length the six band members take turns at holding the forefront to keep the atmosphere gloomy but never cheesy - including the appearance of viola player on Awakening that adds a subtle yet effective further layer of detail to the mix. Keyboards provide a lot of extra colour to the tracks, keeping drones locked down beneath this swiftly churning rhythm section and creating the symphonic harmonies that prevent the doom from becoming overbearing. The twin guitars play off each other with a glorious level of intuitive interplay;  one refracting the basslines, the other lashing out with counterpoint melody, tremolo-picking, solos and more riffs.  The first full track Eucharist provides an opening flourish of much of what will appear across the album, so if you like that expect all that you appreciate about it to be expanded on across the remaining 40 minutes all the way down to the final cyclical climax of Dreams, the peak and pinnacle of the way the band build through their influences towards something that transcends them all, reaching an overlapping tidal surge of a finale before collapsing in on itself to an exhausted conclusion.

An excellent deeply involving listen that should surely find itself getting re-released on a well deserved platter of black wax in the future.