VIDEO: High Wolf - Étoile Star

Here's a recently produced video clip for Étoile Star,  poured forth from the third eye of wandering voodoo tribal drone priest High Wolf, set to meditative visions conjured by Lautreamont RA studios. The track is taken from this year's Not Not Fun released cassette Étoile 3030.

The recently released Guide To Healing 7" on Bathetic and the split 12" on Group Tightener with his own side-project Annapurna Illusion are getting heavy plays in my place. Quietly, but insistently one of the most involving and engrossing artists around at the moment

Check out more stuff on Bandcamp and his own label Winged Sun

VIDEO: Peaking Lights - Amazing & Wonderful

This should need no introduction for you: The greatest track from the album of the year.

VIDEO: Maria Minerva - California Scheming

Here's the official - debut I think - video for lo-fi Estonian gauze-pop artist Maria Minerva's track California Scheming, from her Not Not Fun released 12" Noble Savage. NNF also put out her debut cassette Tallinn At Dawn in February too - both still available. The amount of swooshiness floating across the slowly crumbling pop centre is enough to give you the vapours. I also sense that if you weren;t told, you could detect a definite sense of Eastern European pop-scene to it.  File alongside but even further to the left-field of Laurel Halo and LA Vampires.

Here's a couple more tracks to check out from the No Fear of Pop Soundcloud:

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

DOWNLOAD: High Wolf - Japan Tour 2010 CDR

If you saw my top 50 of the year, you would have read how good last year's Shangri L.A. is, and know how high a regard I hold French one-man jungle groove machine High Wolf.  He's all sold out of his special Japanese Tour released CDr, and it's up for downloading from his own label Winged Sun's Bandcamp at a fee of  name-your-price.  Jump on that HERE. 

He's off to the US for a Not Not Fun-related tour that started last night in Seattle and heads into the depths of SXSW for an NNF showcase, alongside other psychedelic luminaries such as Plankton Wat, Pete Swanson, Starving Weirdos, Sun Araw, Robedoor and more - check out the poster on their site for more dates and details:  ▲▲▲

Relatedly, I also strongly recommend you get the L'Amazon Ram Arkestra album from HERE for similar kind of steamy percussive thrust.That name should tune you in to the right plane of mental being.

STREAM: C V L T S - ANGEL CHROMOSOME (Time Wharp rmx)

C V L T S will be releasing a split ep  on Collective Crowd Records, with italo-horror influenced electro artist Umberto in February - whose Prophecy of the Black Widow album gets a lot of plays around here, and whose main band; metallicised kraut-psych-drone combo Expo 70 gets even more.   

C V L T S have have thrown up this remix off the forthcoming record as a preview track. It's pretty brief, but manages to squeeze in atmoshphere and release into its two minutes - a nice gauzy intro that pops out into a slightly sunnier softly whipcracking bounce that gets garbled into an ending. You can hear all that for yourself:

STREAM: Heavy Winged - Sunspotted

Type Records have put up the two monlithic tracks that make up Heavy Winged's new 12" on their Soundcloud and you can stream them here. Heavy Winged are a sprawling North American trio made up of drummer Jed Bindeman, bassist Brady Sansone and guitarist Ryan Hebert, and easily one of my favourite ever bands - I've been hooked and a complete fan boy ever since I heard the first opening bars of Through The Shimmer, and I own ever single album they have ever released, which is about 30. A band to truly believe in.  This new record is like a full realisation of what they have been working towards, blurring the capabilities and definitions of bass and guitar, combinining that interaction with the punctuation and propulsion of the percussion creating a audible dialogue between the trio incorporating dynamic, momentum and sheer noise. So relentlessly intense it's psychedelic.


This, from Type:

Over the last few years the band have released a cacophonous splatter of cassettes, vinyl and cdrs for Not Not Fun, Blackest Rainbow, Aurora Borealis, Students of Decay, ThreeLobed and a handful of other esteemed imprints. Most of these have been mercilessly grimy signifiers of their buzzing free-rock style, and were recorded poorly to almost accentuate the harsh guitar tones and double-time blast beats. This latest jagged offering however is a rare beast in the Heavy Winged canon, offering a higher fidelity peek into their muddled world.

This time around the band escaped to a ‘real’ studio to record two slices of extended sludge rock, which come across as wider than ever thanks to some fresh recording techniques. Something like an unholy union between the sheet-noise of Yellow Swans and the blissful sub-harmonic transcendence of early Mogwai or Sonic Youth, Sunspotted is an album that takes tried and tested sounds and bends them beyond recognition. Sure plenty of bands have made distorted, blurred, guitar noise before, but rarely with the conviction and wit of Heavy Winged. With their early explorations into doom and metal we find the band on a high, framing their high-octane jitter into something that could almost be mistaken for beautiful. Just as the aforementioned Yellow Swans took their sound from the outer reaches of noise to something, dare I say it, pretty, Heavy Winged have focused their three individual powers to come up with an album that revels in its depth and shimmering beauty.

It might take a few listens to reveal its layers but Sunspotted is a challenging and rewarding listening experience. Standing at the top of the band’s already estimable catalogue of albums and EPs, this album finds them at a key moment, a moment where they have found a balance between fidelity and grit, harmony and discord. Step in, turn it up and let yourself descend.

VIDEO: LA Vampires feat. Matrix Metals - How Would U Know

Following up Make Me Over from their collaborative album on Not Not Fun, LA Vampires and Matrix Metals have another video for you in the form of How Would U Know. Sam Meringue again, addictively sludges down what remains of Amanda Brown's Pocahaunted vibe on this potent blend of hi-gloss 80's pop-rap video stylings (hands to the face gestures CHECK, split screen CHECK, glitter glasses CHECK YO' HEAD!) with very lo-fi scuzzed up VHS quality finish to the music. The 80's theme is high up in this track, but refracted through a funhouse mirror maze of warping momentum as Brown's vocals wobble in and out of focus, both in unison and against the grain of the pulsing loops that Matrix Metals sets up and rides the distance.  This is really setting me up for the album now, in no uncertain terms.

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

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

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.

Matrix Metals - Ray Ban Meltdown

Since the Pocahaunted album came out last Friday I've been having a bit of a Not Not Fun rinse out. Matrix Metals has mached my head the hardest so far - The tropical shimmertone chillwave of Washed Out / Small Black / Memory Tapes et al blown out a bit harder and stretched out even longer, tweaking the samples just at inch at a time, slowly teasign the tension and release out of you. Boomkat described it as "LIKE ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER CROSSED WITH ARIEL PINK".

Yes.

Flamingo Breeze is the track people are caning, but it's 12 minutes with no full videos online, so you'll just have to overdose on the equally awesome Ray Ban Meltdown:

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.

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.