DOWNLOAD: Anji Cheung - Ghosts of Dead Lords

Anji Cheung
Ghosts of Dead Lords
Download

Anji Cheung is a name you should be getting used to seeing on this blog; not too long ago I posted up a review and sample track of the aquatic-oriented concept album she recorded as Island of Raiell with Lou Keech; then Vessel of the Earth, a bleak and turbulent dronescape with the Belgium based dark ambient artist Sequences. Ghosts of Dead Lords is Anji's second solo album and it's been self-released as a free download.
Tracklist:
01 – Rejoice
02 - Hall of the Mountain King
03 - Caer Caradoc
04 - Argument of Periastron
05 - Hava Ag Puja
06 – Alvajocanto
07 – Zhang

Anji played and produced all instruments and sounds on the album, except for the vokkils on the opening track Rejoice. Contacting her friend Ghaith, aka Grief, from Art of Burning Water to throw down a range of screeching, hissing and growling was an inspired decision as the steadily intensifying layers encroach on the light of the track, twisting it from it's refined beginnings as a piano note studded atmospheric doom piece, towards a raging deranged finish. It's an arresting opener, setting the scene for an album that shifts gracefully through styles on the heavy side of ambient; Hall of the Muntain King features gently cooing vocals and a singing bowl-like ringing that sounds like early early Pocahaunted, Argument of Periastron returns the sound to a dense caustic buzz as a pealing chime slowly swirls around the advancing swell of doom riffing that rises out of the murk at a geological pace.  The steady progression of the tracks teases out an absorbing the interplay between obfuscated vocals, modulated frequencies and seismic riffing in a very West Coast fashion, with maybe tainted more true Metallic than the Bay Area psych scene but this comes highly recommended for people who dig the murkiest Not Not Fun jams.

New Pocahaunted Album & Preview Track

The first full record from 5-piece Pocahaunted is almost upon us - the album is called Make It Real and will be released on Not Not Fun in the near future - and they've put out Save Yourself (It's Nice) as a jungle dream trip teaser of a free track to download.

We've been waiting for any kind of recorded output from this new incarnation since last July, which in Pocahaunted release months is about 7 years! Too long in other words. Understandable though, as jamming stuff out as a duo is a different thing entirely to 5 members getting tight - especially when you are including the wild buzz baked organ psych king Cameron Stallone aka Sun Araw in your ranks.

Immediately in stark contrast to the languid murky throbbing of old, this preview track immediately jumps into life as a twitchy groove with flailing guitars and ripping organ flourishes, winding down over its 8 minutes into an ethereal cosmic stew of drum flurries and organ pulses.

As you can see for yourselves, the album art is an ultra fried headfuck.


DOWNLOAD - Save Yourself (It's Nice)


And for all our our readers lucky enough to be hitchin' over to SXSW this year, the NOT NOT FUN showcase show is Friday 19th March at The Hideout, with these bands.



Yeah, our third eye popped out it's socket seeing that line up too.

REVIEW: Island of Raiell - Ab Initio

We’ve been tipped off about this band by good friend of NFR, Nick Keech from kraut - gaze - noise - drone outfit One Unique Signal - His sister Louise is half of the enigmatically named duo Island Of Raiell along with Angie Cheung. The pair have been in a multitude of London based post-punk, indie rock outfits (and Angie even helped pen a Brand New Heavies chart topper!) With indie credentials and bonus real life Success established, the duo are heading out into less predictable waters with their new audio-visual experimental project Island of Raiell. They have just released Ab Initio; their debut album through indie label/distributors Genepool Records as a 42 minute long single track available through iTunes for the bargain sum of £3.49.

The band insist that the album should be heard comfortably reclined, immersed in low mood lighting - but that's implicit from the opening hum; the eerie atmosphere this album exudes makes it sound like it was recorded in halflight and shadow. Anyone familiar with the kinds of resonance heavy ambient soundscapes that Deleted Scenes, Forgotten Dreams regularly throw out will find a lot to engage with during this album. Although it certainly begins with them, across it's nine individually titled movements the album quickly progresses beyond the murky abstract aquatics suggested by the cover into movements similar to the rhythmic chanting of Pocahaunted; spectral churn of Religious Knives and forlorn anthems of Kate Bush. Distant drums echo, voices surface and fade like the suggestions of ripples over heavy water. There's a dread sentiment to this story of a drowned sailor and it's sung by two sirens beckoning a wider audience toward their aquatic embrace.

We have the third section, Rock & Wave for you to download as a teaser. It features an unsettlingly slow and doomy piano lead that literally does come back later to haunt you.

DOWNLOAD: Rock & Wave

The most strikingly dramatic section to the piece arrives with Black Wave in the form of a blast of Middle Eastern horns, a crashing torrent of noise and a harsh shriek - it's a peak in violence that represents the last gasp of the central character before he slips under the waves; an event that leads towards the next highlight of the album - a choral passage titled Lie Beneath that rises from whispering ambience at around 30 minutes, then that slow, heavy-lidded grim-robed piano refrain comes back in accompanied by a backwards sounding buzzing and faint traces of reappearing choir.

It's a record designed to disturb and enchant all at once, and it succeeds with absorbingly fine attention to detail and involving yet unforced narrative structure.





Lynx:

DOWNLOAD: Ab Initio Part III: Rock & Wave

www.myspace.com/islandofraiell
www.last.fm/music/Island+of+Raiell
www.islandofraiell.co.uk

www.thegenepool.co.uk/genepoolrecords/

Best Coast & Pocahaunted

One of our favourite bands just split up, divided into two mitotic super cells of West Coast sun saturated summer sensuality. Pocahaunted is no longer the duo of Amanda Brown and Bethany Cosentino. Amanda is taking Pocahaunted further out into the cosmic wilderness with a fuller band, essentially a supergroup of artists from the Not Not Fun records roster - Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw; organ), Diva Dompe (BlackBlack; bass/vocals), Ged Gengrass (Antique Brothers; drums), and husband/co-NNF label owener Britt Brown (Robedoor; guitar). Phew. Mega band.

NNF put out the final Bethany & Amanda Pocahaunted cassette before they split, 'Live From The New Age', which hints heavily towards this new sound with intensely heaving waves of drone lifting higher out of the vocal fog, hitting sharper peaks and rocking wider ripples as they splash back into the mix. Here's a video of the new incarnation playing eariler this monthon the European Tour at the Galeria Zé dos Bois in Lisbon, Portugal (04.07.2009)




Pocahuanted

New horizons in two directions. So where to now?


Bethany has sailed out onto a hazy washed-out technicolour sun-kissed beach front sound with Bob Bruno (Goliath Bird Eater; drums). Together they are the fantastic Best Coast. There's been a lot of positive vibrations buzzing around blogs heralding the Song of The Summer - The Sun Was High (So Was I). Suitably, beautifully justified hype that might well see this band get wider recognition that Pocahaunted - it's certainly a more populist sound with the modern lo-fi harmony buried in overdrive feel of bands from everyone beween My Bloody Valentine and Times New Viking - but this is far prettier, joyful, happier and above all more in thrall to the Beach Boys sense of of the psychedelic 60's West Coast.

Found this video on YouTube which is Sun Was High set to excerpts from Un Homme Et Une Femme by Claude Lelouche (1966). It kind of works really nicely, kind of doesn't but it's here for you anyways. I think it's probably better to jus thear it and conjour your own imagery.





In Bethany's words on her MySpace she says:

"allow me to reintroduce myself
so i am back in california, and i thought what could be more fitting than to record a bunch of songs about summer and the sun and the ocean and being a lazy creep? so this is what i'm doing.

originally this project was called "sun dried" but then i realized that reminded me too much of old ladies with bad sunburns so i changed it to best coast. meaningful for two reasons, one is that obviously the west coast is the best coast, and two, BC are my initials.

the songs that are up here are just "demo" versions of the songs i have been writing, but my bff bobb bruno has been crazy at work adding drums, beach boys bass lines, and other amazing things. we are insanly trying to get this shit recorded and once we have at least one song fully recorded, i will put that shit up. i'm really fucking excited about this and i hope that every11111 likes it and can make out to it on a beach blanket this summer.

PEACE,
bethany"




The debut Best Coast cassette Where The Boys Are is out now on Blackest Rainbow and a self-titled 7" featuring "Sun Was High (So Was I)", "So Gone" and "That's the Way Boys Are" will be out very soon on Art Fag Recordings.