Sunday 13 May 2012

|_ /-\ 5 7 . |= /\/\

weekly listening for the week.

Here's me bringing the witchy woos for you

Neither my ipod nor my iphone are scrobbling. stupid itunes is having a mare coping with two pods at once. it was fine for a while, but is not fine now. whtvrs. Anyway >>>


01. Beach House - 36
02. Nudity - 35
03. Magic Wands - 31
04. Daywand - 27
05. Ty Segall - 21
06. A$AP Rocky - 18
06. Ty Segall & White Fence - 18
08. The Advisory Circle - 17
09. Cloud Nothings - 16
10. Black Bug - 15

1 – Never really got into Beach House before. I hear people say that Bloom is not as good as Teen Dream but I am liking Bloom and I never much felt like listening to Teen Dream. But that probably says more about me now than it does about Teen Dream then.

2 – Heavy Petting is the album. It's 8 tracks of heavy garage electronics and swooshy blurs and it hits hard. It's all nubile and exciteable and just like exciteable nubiles it's totally ephemeral so get it now while it's hot. Released on AMDISCS on cassette, but also name your price on their Bandcamp: http://nudity.bandcamp.com/

3 – I loved the ep they put out a few years ago and this is the long-overdue album. All it does it pack out the great ep tracks with underwhelming sugary chillwavey pop stuff. Bit pointless really, but nice enough to have in the background.

4 – I went to the label Vwyrd Wurd's Bandcamp to get some mossy naturalistic black metal in the form of Nocht The Only Gouls (which I did and it's genuinely forest-is-coming-alive-to-take-you creeped out and buzzing) but I also got the only other releases they have – two albums by weirdo-electronic-avant-pop solo producer Daywand – and they're great. 0 plays / 0 listeners on last.fm. He's got 1 now and you should make it many more (7?) http://vwyrdwurd.bandcamp.com

5 – Had a Ty Segall frenzy off the back of the White Fence collab.

6a – itunes started playing itself, played through this and Advisory Circle. I wasn't there to hear them.

6b – Outta sight garage psych that's got everything from sweet pop to electrical storms in its eight tracks. A whole lotta harmony, a whole lotta groove, this is how rock music should sound.

9 – This is also how rock music should sound.

10 – Five plays of the three track ep that came out last year. The manage to roll out an atmosphere of threatening murk in just a single minute, stretching out the dystopian gloom to an industrial strength two minutes on the title track. Not the ear shredding speed of the album from a couple of years ago – which was amazing – but something arrestingly defined all the same. http://soundcloud.com/hozac-records/black-bug-police-helicopter


TOTW:

Camp Newton by the Van Allen Belt, which I got off a Beko/Andrea records split from last year: Free d/l as always. It's also got some great tracks from Tropic of Cancer, Candy Claws, FNU Ronnies, Rape Faction and more.

<iframe width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/track=4257354436/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"><a href="http://thevanallenbelt.bandcamp.com/track/camp-newton">Camp Newton by The Van Allen Belt</a></iframe>
 


Wednesday 9 May 2012

DOWNLOAD: Tree of Sores - A Cry of Despair




Leeds based three-piece doom band Tree of Sores have their third release up on Bandcamp for name your price downloads or CD from Witch Hunter records. This one is a huge 28 minute piece with several sections that will hold your attention all the way. It has that epic feel of post-BM doomy bands like Ash Borer, Fell Voices, Agalloch and Conan, bringing sheet-noise walls of guitars with a bleakness befitting of their Northern locale. I was trying not to say Epic, but fuck it, it's impossible not to - the section from around 20 minutes builds up a wall of distortion over a pounding beat that pushes itself to collapse. Then you remember how you got there.  Like I said: Epic.  Most segments roll into each other - The bit around 6 minute sounds like rolling church bells, makes it feel as if you're in the presence of something. Which you are, and then they pull an awesomely heavy slow motion riff out of it. Other bits are introduced with a pause so I guess they could have cut it up into two or three tracks, but why break the momentum for tracklistings sake? 

I had their self-titled ep in my end of year list last year and this is probably better. The artwork is nice and they've got a cool logo too, designed by Black Uroborus 

Fetch, Doomhounds