Weed Temple

New Weed Temple

2012-01-08T12:56:00.001+01:00

2012 marks some changes, including probably the biggest change in Weed Temple since its inception in 2008, that is moving the blog to a new platform. From now on Weed Temple will be on Tumblr - as weedtemple.tumblr.com . This might be a controversial (and slightly unpopular decision), but I'm sure the readers will get over it. I find Tumblr easier to use and customize than Blogger, and while it may be missing a few options, like ability to comment (which I will fix as soon as possible by installing Disqus comment system on the site), it's generally more "forward" than Blogger.

This blog will stay here with all downloads and reviews intact. It's still up to me to decide whether I'll move Weed Temple operations to Tumblr permanently or it will be a disappointment and I'll go back to good ol' Blogger. Time will show. In the meantime, go to the new address and check out some hot new albums!

røb - røb

2012-01-01T17:57:00.003+01:00

Harsh and heavy drones from the former Christchurch, New Zealand resident Robert Martelli created as the aftermath of the 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch. The ghost of Roy Montgomery hovers above this mini-EP, albeit much more tectonic and palpatable, closer to Torlesse Super Group than his solo work. Here's the commentary from the e-mail about the event and the explanation of the track titles:

"A post-earthquake doom-heart thrums through the city’s caverns; the partially collapsed cathedrals and the empty roads at DAWN. Despite the openness, there is a kind of claustrophobia here, an asphyxiating feeling. It’s the swamp, it’ll suck you down.
The hard edges of the DAY push against the skin. All the airconditioner sweat and the black coffee vitriol and the coins across the counter. Hollowed out, sunken-eyed, desperation triggers a yearning to return to the tall grass and big sky of childhood.
Every part of this body groans slowly, feeling too old while still being young. This is a kind of DEATH. In need of revivification, follow the desire to sit still on a mountainside. Hear only the wind in the ears, become a receptacle for the sun’s silent rays. Be reverberant and reverent. Await the fade to white."

røb

Review: Köhn - Stay Away From the Towers (Sloow Tapes, 2011)

2011-12-31T15:48:00.001+01:00

Onething I was wrong about when reviewing M. Geddes Gengras’ massive The Empty Space was the assumption thatthe whole lot was recorded during one or two live performances. It was not, andas Ged Gengras himself jokingly noted on his Facebook, if that cassette was adocumentary of one performance, he probably wouldn’t have left the venue alive.The case is different with Belgium’s synthesist Jurgen de Blonge, who’s beencrafting electronic soundscapes since the 1990’s. Stay Away From the Towers is a documentary of two live performancesconducted in clubs in Belgium and the Netherlands. No edits, no overdubs, nopost-production. Final destination.

The comparison between MGG and Kohnis not accidental: both tapes are equally massive and stunning – both clock ataround 90 minutes and both take quite liberal cues at the previous eras ofelectronic music. While for Ged Gengras it was the raw, glitchy electronics ofMorton Subotnick, Fifty Foot Hose (minus the psych rock element) or evenKarlheinz Stockhausen, Jurgen de Blonde looks at the Berlin School era andprogressive electronic masters of the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Each side of thered, unlabeled tape is a lengthy, ever-changing jam of rhythmic electronics andsnakelike melodies treated with a pinch of outsider synth weirdness. De Blondecrafts intense cosmic voyages of the best kind: the ones in which the listenergets truly lost and loses the track of time, where seconds stretch into hoursand hours into seconds, where the change in the ever-flowing rhythm or melodycan be noticed only after several minutes, where one gets zoned out even withdeeply focused listening. Once one gets over the slightly abrasive drones thatde Blonde likes to put in certain places of the recordings, the world ofemotions, images and scenes unfolds as a reward.

One of the best elements of thiscassette (apart from its head-spinning length) is the perfect balance de Blondekeeps between the Berlin School worship and the more abrasive, abstractexperimentation. The melodic, progressive parts and the reverbed hiss, cracklesand drones are kept in equal proportions, serving as interludes or, in a greatprog fashion, “movements” of one track. I can almost imagine a projection screenbehind Jurgen while giving performances with various animations as he entersdifferent phases: abstract, psychedelic animations of non-defined shapes oroscilloscope going haywire during the non-melodic sonic bricolage and fragmentsof films like “Fantastic Planet” or “The Holy Mountain” during the melodic,proggy parts. A great record of two great performances by a somewhat overlookedEuropean synth wizard.

Copies still available at Sloow Tapes, but knowing their stuff is all killer no filler, they might be gone in no time. Be quick!

Review: Tharpa Jigme - Nada Tarangini (Rocket Machine, 2011)

2011-12-31T15:25:00.002+01:00

Until lately, Netherlands’ Robert Kroos has been moreknown to the noise aficionados for his “bleak ultra noise” project TortureCorpse, which served as a creative output for bone-shredding outbursts of sonicenergy. This extreme and brutal music, however, is just one side of Robert’swork as a musician. Tharpa Jigme is his another project, where he goes into theexactly opposite side of the spectrum, replacing nihilist noise with blissful,meditative synthesizer drones. Those are not your simple synth drones, however.What sets Tharpa Jigme apart from the countless other “floaty ambient” projectsis his fascination with classical Indian (Hindustani) music and traditionalIndian instruments. On the j-card of the cassette Robert lists Nada Tarangini,Sitar and Swarmandal and his voice apart from the usual suspects (synthesizers).

Side A’s “Nada Tarangini (Outward)” is the moreextroverted side, layering one exhilarating drone upon another while the sacredsitar strums tirelessly throughout the entire length of the track, resulting ina sort of droning mass of light reminiscent of Sitaar Tah! or the less loopingmoments of Kawabata Makoto. While the opening drone seems impossibly heavy, itmanages to get even heavier and more intense as the track progresses, becomingan immense monolith which somehow manages to stay incredibly light andmeditative instead of crushing with its heaviness. Towards the end of the side,the massive, massive theme gradually fades out, marking the end of the moreecstatic, louder meditation and preparing the listener for the moreintrospective, quieter side B, “Nada Tarangini (Inward)”. The second track hitsthe darker, more mysterious areas. The energy and intensity of side A is gone,being replaced instead with sparse sitar strumming and almost dark ambientsynthesizer swells, exploring the deeper, often more sinister sides of thepsyche, the ones we prefer to keep well hidden, pushed as far back as possible.And while the “Outward” side was loud and seemingly designed for listeningthrough loudspeakers at highest possible volume – so that the sound can comeout freely to bounce between the walls and even to stream outside, through theopen window and into the world; the quiet ambience of “Inward” is aspecifically headphone listening, especially the very last part of thecassette, where the music becomes a barely audible drone fadeout.

NadaTarangini is yet another indication that the musicians arelooking for more genres and inspirations to add to the basic drone. Theclassical Indian instruments are a wonderful addition, and even if theirpresence on side B is not very noticeable, they CREATE the sound of side A,without which maybe it wouldn’t be half as impressive. We can only hope formore sitar-infused immersive drones in the future. Great job, Robert Kroos.

The tape's still available at Rocket Machine. It's limited to 50 copies so it may be gone fast! Also, there's the entire side A available for stream from Soundcloud.

No Mind Meditation - Malaise 1 & 2

2011-12-31T13:00:00.003+01:00

Two soothing ambient soundscapes from No Mind Meditation, the entity behind the Chicago label Goldtimers Tapes. 20 minutes of layered, psychedelicized droning experimentation, which can work as a soundtrack to forming new year's resolution or simply as a cure for new year's hangover.

Malaise 1 & 2

East-Ra

2011-12-28T12:29:00.005+01:00

East-Ra are a self-proclaimed "psychedelic lo-fi rock" band from Croatia. Usually straying away from the "free form freak-out" territory to the more song-oriented, briefer format, the band creates rather toned down, quiet form of psych heavily inspired by 60's and early 70's songwriters such as Nick Drake or Syd Barrett, musical dadaists such as Captain Beefheart of free-flowing commune spirit of Germany's krautrockers like Amon Düül II or Agitation Free. The band retains a lovely garage/basement quality to their tracks, somewhat enhancing the authenticity of their music and intimacy with the listener. Two of their albums, Cold Summer and Substitute 3 are sung in English, while Sutra is written entirely in a local dialect. Recommended!

Cold Summer

Sutra

Substitute 3

Good Amount - Power

2011-12-28T11:42:00.003+01:00

Now that the Christmass laziness is officially over, it's about time to get back to posting. The first album after the break is Power, a cassette by Holy Page Records founder Christiano Filardo using the moniker Good Amount. I think the term "good amount" might mean the good amount of creative energy, because what we get here is quite a healthy, not-so-short collection of semi-lo-fi synthesizer dreamscapes created entirely during meditation. Might need a few repeated listens to finally click, but once it clicks, you just can't get enough. Reminds me of Lee Noble's early dusted drones, but without his penchant for downer atmospheres and melancholy and with a more New Age-y worldview. Also, totally digging the somewhat kitschy, rainbowy computer gfx aesthetic Holy Page have for many of their cassettes, including this one.

Power

Review: Nicoffeine - Lighthealer Stalking Flashplayer (bluNoise, 2011)

2011-12-20T20:24:00.000+01:00

LighthealerStalking Flashplayer, the newest LP from the German noise rock trioNicoffeine is a disorienting, amphetamine-fueled black mass followed by theworld’s hardest coming down. Any sort of gentle introduction is an alien conceptto these guys. There is no quiet guitar part, no gradual intensification or atleast a fade-in. The very first track, “Holy Hell of a Himmel” throws thelistener into the ultra-distorted, breakdown-filled mental breakdown of highestorder, changing pitches and shifts with mathematical precision, obscuring theguitar tones to the point it becomes a thunderous bass propelled, sludgyshoegaze. Free noise units such as Gravitar, Heavy Winged or pre-Boss era Magik Markers might be used aspoints of reference, but while for most of the time there were elements ofpost-rock, free improv or straight-down psychedelic beauty hidden under wallsof feedback and distortion those bands so abundantly use (or used), there isnone of that in Nicoffeine’s music. The Germans’ music is infused with a sortof nihilist, hardcore punk or maybe even grindcore negativity, which theycleverly deconstruct and re-shape for their needs.

Ittakes a few listens to notice that most of the tracks are actually constructedand well thought out compositions and not just carnage for the sake of carnage.Once we get over the incredibly overdriven, high-pitched guitar destruction, onecan notice how tight the bass is with the brutal, fast notes and the seeminglyanarchist drumming isn’t all that anarchist after all and the only thingkeeping the album from becoming a possible noise punk gem is the length of thetracks and the lack of vocals. The shorter, 3-4 minute tracks share space withthree monsters, each well over 10 minutes long, with the very last track, the16-minute noise/drone behemoth “I Always Shine When You Say Nein” devolvinginto a monstrous, cavernous amplifier hangover not far away from The Dead C’s “Bury(Refutatio Omnium Haeresium)” off their TrapdoorFucking Exit.

Thebrutal and chaotic music of Nicoffeine is accompanied with a simple, yeteffective packaging: what you see above is not the actual LP cover, but ratherone of two inserts containinginformation about the tracks, the record label and a few photos of the band.The cover itself is black on both sides, with a white vinyl inside. The pureblackness of the cover reflects the pure blackness of the sound and the whitevinyl signifies the amphetamine craze of the music on the format, echoingVelvet Underground’s White Light/WhiteHeat, which indeed was a hymn to the white powder. The possible VUinspirations are further reflected by the track titles, which often allude tothe darker/more twisted sides of the human sexual psyche, cleverly referencingfetishes (“Milf & Honey”, “Handjobs & Runaways”, or “Motocrossdress”off their Admiring Those ArtholesLP). Nicoffeine is something to be watched and heard – the ferocity of theirsound really puts them somewhere above most of their contemporaries in a scenewhere it’s hard to be harsher, louder and noisier.

Nicoffeine - Lighthealer Stalking Flashplayer (link via The Elementary Revolt)
Nicoffeine - Admiring Those Artholes

Buy Lighthealer Stalking Flashplayer

Nicoffeine on Facebook

Miles Dyson Spheres - Cosmic Schmuck Entries

2011-12-17T15:50:00.003+01:00

A MASSIVE collection of six-string madness by Paul Stella, proprietor of the Obsidian Obelisk blog. 19 compositions, with some reaching over 20 minutes. Endlessly soloing, soaring fuzzed-out electric guitar over maniacally looping, droning basslines. Reaching a point when psychedelic rock becomes ambient. Sublime. And by the way - I love the guy's moniker - Miles Dyson, one of the creators of SkyNet in Terminator 2 and Dyson Sphere, a hypothetical megastructure with solar power satellites encompassing a star in order to gain energy from it. There is also another album in the works, entitled Formless Forms, which will be just as massive and which will be available for download in February. So far it can only be streamed on Bandcamp.

Cosmic Schmuck Entries

Old Age - This Land Stays With Me

2011-12-15T22:15:00.002+01:00

If you think Connor Waldman's Old Age project is yet another drifting, dreamy ambient project like many others, think again. While the first track stays tightly within the ambient territory with a sound between the artists of Sunshine Ltd. label and the massive drones of early Emeralds, the second track abrubtly cuts the heavenly drone zones with a steady, bassy, folktronica beat with female vocals. The sound is brooding and full of light at the same time. The songs on the album are an amalgam of trip hop beats, surupy krautrock aesthetics at times and echoed vocals adding to the synthesizer background ambience with glitched-out electronics on top. The sound of Old Age is difficult to categorize, costantly shifting between introverted folk and vast ambient mindscapes, reflecting the changing moods of the artist during the creative process. Sometimes melancholic, sometimes uplifting. Also make sure to check out Connor's earlier release, Minnesota and David Lynch inspired ambient trip Lutsen.

The Land Stays With Me

Thug Entrancer

2011-12-12T23:17:00.001+01:00

If I wasn't so much in the minimal/techno/dance zone right now, I would've probably ignored this guy, but as I am devouring almost everything with a steady beat right now, this guy fell just into the right place. Inspired heavily by juke dance tradition, analog synthesizers, noise, musique concrete and southern rap, Chicago-based Ryan McRyhew (originally 1/2 of Denver duo Hideous Men) cranks out zonked-out club killerz. Leave your floaty drone tapes for a moment and go dance a little. It will do you good.

Tropics Mind Vol. 1

Tropics Mind Vol. 2

Nocow - Ruins Tape

2011-12-12T22:38:00.002+01:00

Brilliant tape released by Russian UK garage apostle Alexey Nikitin, a.k.a. Nocow through Gimme5 Tapes together with Sweat Lodge Guru, with which move they [SLG] managed to smuggle some future garage/dubstep beats to the unexpecting drone/psych head crowd (some of whom [including me until not long ago] perceiving "dubstep", or anything related to dubstep as in-your-face brutal bass boosts by brostep hacks like Skrillex). 12 tracks of ambient-inflused bliss balancing between deep, focused headphone listening and after-hours dancefloor meditations. On a side note, I really need to get into this scene more.

Ruins Tape

Range Rover - All is Bliss

2011-12-12T22:22:00.003+01:00

I first heard about the San Diego unit Range Rover (consisting of Austin Caesar, John Warlick & Cody de la Vara) when reading about the new batch of cassettes from Sweat Lodge Guru (their most diverse batch to date, including the Russian future garage explorer Nocow, about whom I'm gonna write in a moment). Not paying much attention to it, I just passed by it mistaking it for just another woozy, hazy drone cassette, like many others. How surprised I was when some time I later I discovered Range Rover on Bandcamp! It's still woozy and hazy, yes, but it's really far away from the narcoleptic, soothing trappings of drone. In fact, what we're getting here is hypnotic, lo-fi ambient/dub techno not very far from the dark forest soundscapes of Gas, the dreamy zones of beat-driven Loscil or the minimalism of Plastikman. Sprawling, nocturnal bass lines and toned down beats for the night drivers. Highly recommended.

All is Bliss

Review: Preslav Literary School - La Réflexion Du Tir (Full of Nothing, 2011)

2011-12-10T22:14:00.001+01:00

Preslav LiterarySchool is the artistic pseudonym of UK’s Adam Thomas, who specialized in makingsprawling and boundless ambient music with the usage of cassettes, which hemanipulates and processes to the point where the original source of sound isalmost unrecognizable and instead replaced with sometimes haunting, oftendreamy wall of sound which is meant to completely envelope the listener. La Reflexion Du Tir, released on Russianup-and-coming label Full of Nothing, collects two of those lengthy collages,giving us one of the most soothing tapes of the year.

I always like to payattention to the relation between the album’s artwork and the music containedon the cassette, the vinyl or the CD. LaReflection Du Tir does the job: the front cover show the cutaway of agothic cathedral, including the spaces right below the roof. Preslav LiterarySchool’s music is a bit like exploring the space right under the roof of an oldcathedral: it’s dark, mysterious and somewhat “abandoned”, in a way that itoccupies an area very few dare to explore, just like very few would dare toexplore the forgotten space between the nave and the church roof.

Just like manyabstract/experimental cassette releases, LaReflexion Du Tir has two tracks which occupy the entire sides of the cassette.Side A’s “Francis Servain Mirkovic” begins with warped loops of what appears tobe faint remnants of what once could be a rock tape – the snippets of electricguitar soon dissolve into a massive, heavenly drone which could only becompared to the side A of Bee Mask’s HyperboreanTrenchtown, minus the bells. This is ambient at its most minimal, changingtexture at a glacial pace, with the listener barely noticing the shifts in realtime. Skip the tape or the mp3 a few times – one can notice the changes. Listento it in real time – no way. Like the tapes erased and smoothened in theprocess of creating new tracks, the music listens like a record of memorieserased in transformed to make way for new memories.

Side B’s track,entitled “Yvan Deroy”, follows the similar path, but somehow achieves at beingeven more minimal and haunting, reaching almost dark ambient areas withsmeared, distant moans (or at least synthesizer/processed tape that sounds likemoaning) and deep bass rumble, which occasionally dies away to give way formore soothing, calmer ambience. The whole track is a constant struggle betweenthe relaxation and meditation and an unsettling, pulsing soundscape, changingplaces at a glacial place and falling into each other without much notice –like on side A, it takes a few minutes to notice that the deep bass rumble isfinally gone.

Or maybe it’s neverreally gone? The premise of Preslav Literary School’s music is precisely this:distorting the lines between the haunting and the beatific, confusing thelistener about the nature of his music, the intentions behind the lengthy soundscontained within the cassette, the deconstruction of the line between thebenevolent and the malevolent. Preslav Literary School makes music to get lostin, and he wants the listener to get lost in both universes at once; in analmost fetishistic way he wants the listener to be blissful about his sonicdiscomfort. Brilliant.

Stream and buy at Bandcamp

Buy at Full of Nothing website

Review: Christopher Merritt - Crown Heights (Digitalis Ltd., 2010)

2011-12-10T15:06:00.001+01:00

Christopher Merritt’s Crown Heights, despite falling under thegeneral “ambient” category, cannot be regarded as being merely “wallpaper music”that exists somewhere in the background without distracting the listener muchwhile he/she is doing something else. In terms of composition and density, hismusic falls closer to the likes of Sean McCann (at his least drifty and most “busy”)and maybe even Tim Hecker, in a way (not as much digitalized maybe, but stillsomewhat heavy in terms of sound alone).

Crown Heights,being his debut release, sets the stakes high: it is 25 minutes of intense,almost disorienting sound collages which combine thick layers of strings andviolins, processed found sounds and shimmering, pulsing electronics in the veinof Sunroof! or beatless Astral Social Club. Two side-long compositions startand end abruptly, often changing into a whole different mindset with a violent shift,going in a second from full-blast noisy psychedelic bliss into barely audibleremnants of melodies. The sound is bombast, heavy and flat out abrasive attimes, yet it has nothing to do with noise music or its ideals – instead ofcutting itself from any possibility of dialogue and providing sonic distress,Christopher Merritt sculpts demanding and slightly chaotic, yet rewarding andpeaceful music, like an ADHD take on tape ambient music, using a dozen sourcesof sound at once, blending minimalist traditions of string-driven drone a’laTony Conrad, processed and impossible-to-locate field recordings of LorenChasse and Chris Watson and glitchy laptop folk of Greg Davis (pre New New Ageera) and Christian Fennesz.

Christopher Merritt is a man to bewatched. Digitalis Ltd. understood that we might be dealing with an unpolisheddiamond, a raw talent that only waits to be harnessed and trained and put intomore constrained categories. CrownHeights is a document of raw ideas that might be a gateway to somethinggrand if correctly applied and directed.

Copies still available at Discriminate Music.

Review: Plankton Wat / Super Minerals - Split (Stunned, 2011)

2011-12-06T00:38:00.001+01:00

It turns out that the Portland basedStunned Records still had one last surprise up their sleeves before they ceasedto function; some “save it for the final moment” material that just waited tobe released into the public. The ultimate Stunned release is the split betweenthe Portland’s own Dewey Mahood (who also shreds in caveman kraut unit EternalTapestry), known as Plankton Wat andMagic Lantern’s own William Giacchi and Phil French, a.k.a. Super Minerals, this time backed up byCaitlin C. Mitchell and M. Geddes Gengras himself. The split between the twoprojects may be read as a psychedelic tribute to the West Coast, with PlanktonWat side recorded in Portland and the Super Minerals side recorded in LosAngeles.

Side A, despite Plankton Wat’s morenorthern origins, presents the warmer, sunnier side of psychedelia in a seriesof shimmering, relaxing guitar meditations ranging from shamanic folk, wherethe phased wordless moans sound like the ultimate deconstruction of thesinger/songwriter format (“The Path Obscured”) to beach head dubby reverbationsin the vein of his Edibles project (“Borneo Canopy”) with stealthy wah-wahedguitar barely, yet noticeably making presence within the abstract, non-rhythmicdrumming. Mahood goes for a shorter, song-oriented format which sounds almostpoppy compared to the flipside’s lengthy, cavernous explorations. Despitemaking some more experiments, his trademark style of instrumental, bassy guitarstrumming stays – “Dark Temple” and “Still Lake Reflects” are the example ofthis, being the mystical invocations much in the vein of this year’s In Magical Light, released on a UK labelReverb Worship (highly recommended, both the label and the album itself).

Super Minerals’ side consists ofonly 2 tracks, which are more abstract and slightly darker, while exploringmore “oriental” areas. Gone is the lo-fi musique concrete of The Hoax and Contacteer. Super Minerals redefine themselves once again, thistime going for complex, multi-layered psychedelic folk compositions with atouch of sustained guitar dark ambience from The Pelagics and the liberal use of heavy, bassy moans. Thecascading, aquatic guitars and the chaotic pipes and flutes sound like thecalmer moments of Magic Lantern, devoid of much structure and stretched out intime to create a thick, psychedelic ambient soup which sounds like amore-cohesive, hi-fi descendant of the ultra-weirdos The Skaters. Additionaldrumming by MGG and Caitlin C. Mitchell provides a ritualistic, rhythmicalatmosphere and further adds to the rich sonic tapestry of Super Minerals’ side.

Stunned Records ended their careerwith a bang; both parties present their own, unique take on the vast andmulti-faceted genre of psychedelic folk. Plankton Wat is the more conservativeside, with distinctive guitar tones and relatively simple style, putting focuson melody and an easy flow. Super Minerals go in the opposite, much moreliberal direction, often blurring the line between traditional instruments andelectronics, rising confusion about the source of sound, blending everythinginto an abstract, mapless and shapeless jam without dissolving into unnecessarychaos. What also makes Super Minerals one of the most exciting bands on thepsychedelic scene right now is their ability to effortlessly change their soundand ideology on each album. One can only wait what new ideas and styles thefuture brings for the Minerals (who I hope will last longer than the gone-too-soontropical psych rock outfit Magic Lantern).

Plankton Wat / Super Minerals Split (link via The Radiant Now)

Buy the cassette at Discriminate Music!

Sugarm - Songs About Guns

2011-12-04T00:34:00.001+01:00

One day, I received a mysterious package in the mail. In the great DIY fashion it was an ordinary looking CD wrapped in an ordinary sheet of paper containing an excerpt from a book (or a lenghty essay) on communism, capitalism and insurrection ("Depose autorities at a local level", the header of one of the paragraphs says). The sheet of paper is inscribed only with the name of the album, the track list and the e-mail address for contact purposes. A bit of an Internet research has led me to gain some scarce information about Sugarm: his real name is mike, and he's a 21-yr old New Yorker who makes drone and ambient music for (self)therapeutic purposes. I was absolutely shocked to find out that he's not using any guitars in recordings, only keyboards and samples. Because the opening 11-minute monolith "Two-Winged Dove" will make you think of the loop-and-delay guitar masters with its sustained, ominous notes much in the vein of Super Minerals' "Hadal". There are more influences to be heard on this bedroom masterpiece, like the multi-layered, noisy ambient of "Cockfighter" and "Belt Pkwy Mama", which sound like b-sides from Tim Hecker's Radio Amor or the fluctuating minimalism of "Leaving the Sandbox", channeling Christian Fennesz and his Venice. Music like Sugarm's Songs About Guns makes me love my "job" as a blogger more and more, because not only I get to hear some amazing music I wouldn't have known otherwise, but also share it with others. Great, great ambient music, not as "wallpaper music", but more as a deep, focused listening.

EDIT: Actually, Mark contacted me after I've published this post and corrected me about the guitars - in fact, they're all over this album. Sorry for the confusion, everyone and thanks for correcting me, Sugarm! Enjoy the album!

Songs About Guns

The Kurws - Dziura w Getcie

2011-12-03T16:58:00.001+01:00

Debut album from the Wrocław-based quartet The Kurws (which can be roughly translated as "The Whors"), which apparently formed in "May of 2008 as a spontaneous consequence of a ping-pong session" (from the band's own website). Somehow I'm not surprised, considering the nature of their music. Dziura w Getcie ("A Hole in the Ghetto") documents the band's development of their own brand of spastic, energetic math post-punk spanning the Shellac-worshipping guitar and bass interplay, relentless drumming and occasional presence of aggressive, free improv inspired saxophone. The Kurws became the true masters at "controlled chaos", with all their compositions sounding as if they were about to fall apart and become a free-form, enveloping mess, Magik Markers-style, yet are kept within very tight constraints by hard bass slaps and robotic, krautrockish percussion. My favorite Polish act right now. Highly recommended!

Dziura w Getcie (Filesonic)

Dziura w Getcie (Fileserve)

Stream at The Kurws' Bandcamp (and buy their shit, too!)

Merkabah - Lyonesse

2011-12-01T17:50:00.001+01:00

Are you afraid of the avant-garde? I hope not, because this Polish avant-prog-jazz-psych-noise-math unit is sure to fill all your needs regarding lenghty, tightly-composed and complex compositions. On three tracks, ranging from 7 to 11 minutes, the boys show a wide spectrum of influences and inpsirations, ranging from John Zorn (probably the most prominent influence on the album, with ominous sax snaking its way through heavy prog), King Crimson, Grails, Acid Mothers Temple, Secret Chiefs 3 and Psychic Paramount... The Lyonesse EP is just the prelude to the band's debut studio album, which hopefully will soon find the right label to be released on. This EP has been released on a small, yet always reliable independent Polish label Assonance Records in a hand-made, elegant carboard packaging in three color versions. Download the album first and support the label (and the guys from Merkabah, too) and buy the album, if you enjoy it!

Lyonesse

Storm Shelter - Storm Shelter

2011-12-01T15:04:00.001+01:00

Debut minuscule EP (or maybe even a cassingle?) from an all-female psychedelic garage rock (or, as Monofonus Press website describes their sound, "sludge pop") quartet Storm Shelter. Judging from the cover, featuring all members standing topless wearing jeans next to a pig head on a stick, their main inspirations might be the funeral folk imagery of Belgian weirdos Silvester Anfang and William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Three lo-fi, fuzzy songs with thumping, propulsive, somewhat doomy feel which fuse stonery guitar noodling with gently rising and falling vocals (often more than one at once), which sound like a twisted, shamanized take on 1960's pop hooks and ultra-catchy choruses. You'll find yourself stomping your feet and nodding your head to almost 3-minute long "Crones" in no time. Bleak and poppy at the same time. I really, REALLY hope these girls release more stuff soon. Highly recommended. Buy the cassette version for $5 only at Monofonus Press.

Storm Shelter

OMM - █▄▄█

2011-11-29T17:59:00.000+01:00

Here's the set up: one day I was checking my e-mails (as usual), sifting through countless bullshit indie newsletters, when I saw a message signed as "● ▲▲ ▲▲". My reaction was something along the lines of "Oh God, someone didn't get the memo regarding triangles and weird symbols" and "I really shouldn't be clicking this". A few days later, however, I was searching my inbox, looking for bands and projects I might have overlooked to make up for the neglect of my blog. Reluctantly, I clicked the link to the Bandcamp page, where I was greeted by even more impossible to write, let alone pronounce track titles. Despite all this, I clicked the play button and instead of witch house, I was greeted with disastrous, ultra-fuzzy, post-apoc guitar noise with clear signs of raw black metal worship, recalling my brief infatuation with Striborg in late 2007. OMM (also written as O /\/\ /\/\ - I wonder if it's a reference to the improv ensemble AMM?) is a solo project of Slovakian experimentalist Jozef Tušan, whose speciality is the creation of deafening and/or unettling soundscapes using mostly his guitar. Not your usual relaxation music, but one can find certain transcendence in the waves of flesh-tearing noise.

█▄▄█

Mohave Triangles - Eternal Light of the Desert Plateaus

2011-11-29T17:19:00.001+01:00

A photograph of Macchu Picchu adorns the cover of Mohave Triangles' newest cassette, and it's not just aesthetics. The artwork of Robert Thompson's newest album (released on Georgia's killer Hooker Vision label) goes beyond being merely a "old NatGeo pictures collage" to become a true reflection of Robert's inspirations behind his music. Imagery of old, forgotten civilizations from both North and South America (before the Europeans came), shamanism and the temptation of believing those civilizations had actual contact with extraterrestial beings is a staple of Mohave Triangles. On Eternal Light of the Desert Plateaus, Thompson stays in the drone area, but doesn't limit himself to drone only. Both sides of the cassette begin with a cavernous, almost dark-ambient passages, but gradually transform into windswept, scorched guitar invocations somewhere between the desert doom of Barn Owl and folky primitivism of Six Organs of Admittance (sans the vocals). It's great to see the scene's up-and-coming artists evolving beyond the area of pure drone, which, let's face it, is slowly beginning to eat its own tail. Recommended. Cassette version available at Hooker Vision.

Eternal Light of the Desert Plateaus

Neon Pulse - Field Recordings From the Heart Station

2011-11-29T16:50:00.001+01:00

Oxford's dronesmith Neon Pulse describes his music as "emo" or "emotronic". But it's not used in a pejorative, degrading way we all got so much used to in the last few years (because I'm sure many, or maybe even most Weed Temple readers know about the original emo movement of late 80's and early 90's, not those whiny teen attention whoring fucks fueled by sensation-seeking pulp media) - Neon Pulse's music fits the term very well, but here we find him switching guitars to synthesizers and creating nearly 2 hours of enveloping, cosmic ambience with two, maybe even three sides: sometimes it's smooth "wallpaper music", at other times it's filled with sandpaper textures in the vein of Infinite Body or Stitched Vision and occasionally the music even kicks into the ambient techno territory ("Love Plume"). But the emotional package characteristic for the genre masters stays, only now it seems harnessed, digitalized and lenghtened into a series of meditations, sometimes sad, sometimes wide-eyed. A truly immense and immersive album, highly recommended for all ambient lovers, especially at this time of the year. Let your heart station open. The double cassette is still available at Sangoplasmo Records.

Field Recordings From the Heart Station

Tygerstrype - Lackadaisical Daisy

2011-11-24T23:34:00.001+01:00

A slowly unfolding psychedelic pop journey from Philadelphia's Gabriel Guerrero (vocals, production) and Alden Towler (guitar). Swells of ethereal ambience and upbeat sequencers set to economically, yet effectively used beats and Guerrero's crystal clear, powerful vocals and Towler's funky guitar licks. For fans of Merriweather Post Pavilion-era Animal Collective.

Lackadaisical Daisy

EYE - Center of the Sun

2011-11-22T22:31:00.001+01:00

Here's a treat to the fans of the more "classical" psychedelia: a proggy space rock journey with hard rock and early heavy metal elements in the style of Hawkwind, Blue Cheer or early Black Sabbath from a Columbus based power trio of Matt Auxier (guitars, vocals), Matt Bailey (bass) and Brandon Smith (bass, vocals), supplemented by Adam Smith playing all sorts of classic old-school electronics: Mellotron, ARP 2600 and the Moog. The result is a trippy, yet tight and thoroughly planned album. Without resorting to creating a chaotic, disorienting mass of sound EYE manage to take the listeners into new worlds AND kick ass at the same time - while most modern bands are more into the "psychedelic" part of "psychedelic rock", these guys are the "rock" part of the equation. Recommended!

Center of the Sun

Technicolour Sattva - Technicolour Sattva EP

2011-11-22T15:57:00.001+01:00

Too cosmic and far out to be straight chillwave, too beat-based to be straight drone/Berlin School. What is it? The man behind Technicolour Sattva, Carlos Gatel, calls it "retrowave". Going from Oneohtrix-style crystal New Age zones to sweaty, Madlib-worship funkadelia in just two minutes? No problem for Gatel. Technicolour Sattva EP is more a series of multi-styled collages than actual songs. And it's a good thing - an abundance of hard-to-pigeonhole music lately is astounding.

Technicolour Sattva EP

Parae

2011-11-22T13:20:00.001+01:00

Don't get discouraged by the cover of Post-Camp / Nonplussed? - it sure looks like fuckin' shit, but it's supposed to be this way. San Francisco's Parae play the self-proclaimed "camp-core". Under this mysterious genre name hides an energetic fusion of 1960's psych and pop rock (we're talking about San Francisco, after all), truly (post) punk rock vocals and 1990's psychotic, nervous noise rock. The result is somewhat campy (duh), spastic hippie punk - a strange crossover, repeatedly punching you in the face with one hand while putting flowers in your hair with the other. The closest point of reference here would probably be Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Recommended!

EDIT: Apparently, the guys from Parae are really disillusioned about how things turned out for them. Let's show them it ain't that tragic and let's download all the stuff they've released up to this point. Because in an alternative universe, I can see Pitchfork readers drooling all over them (in b4 hurf durf bitchfork is garbage etc. comments).

Tinnitus

Post-Camp / Nonplussed?

Creepy Marbles - ddrrrr3333ml4nd EP

2011-11-22T13:11:00.001+01:00

Just in case James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual didn't fill you with enough plunderphonic/sample-based blissful weirdness, here's a nice EP from California's Creepy Marbles. Hyper-polished R&B vocal harmonies and slow club beats filtered through Tumblr-based disorienting ma/ess of images, sounds and ideas.

ddrrrr3333ml4nd EP

Review: Tile - Universal (Lava Church, 2011)

2011-11-18T00:39:00.001+01:00

The unassuming and simple cover of Tile’s Universal does not reflect thecatchy content of the cassette lying underneath. Tile is the song-orientedincarnation of Jeff Roman, who was previously known under the moniker SkyStadium, where he created blurry, drifting ambient passages.

Universal is a collection of 8 lo-fi synth pop songs withsomewhat shoegazey vocals – quite a departure from his “usual” work in themusical sense, but not in chronological sense. After all, the 80’s were notonly the era of ambient pioneers and post-hippie New Age masters, but also ofyoung people cranking out hymns of the generation using synthesizers andrediscovering psychedelia through the use of walls of guitar and vocalsdistortion. Roman channels these sentiments through triumphant hymns with a certainbedroom pop sensitivity – though most tracks are light-hearted and somewhatnostalgic (but then again, what music referring to the previous decades can’tbe described as nostalgic?), the tape tends to hit more “far out” moments, likethe drifting “Nightship”, closer to Jeff’s work as Sky Stadium than the popminiatures of the rest of the album, or the cheesily creepy “The Haunters”,which takes numerous cues from old (by old I mean the 80’s/early 90’s) videogame soundtracks, bringing images of pixelated monsters and simple graphics.

Universal is one of numerous examples that the tape scene isslowly getting fed up on analog drone and moving in new directions; whetherit’s the simple pop format or the minimal techno structures, it’s a sign that(to paraphrase Enfer Boreal’s album name) drone is dead (or dying) and it’ssimply time to move on and explore new territories.

Purchase from Lava Church Records.

Stream on Bandcamp.

Review: Midday Veil - Subterranean Ritual II (Translinguistic Other, 2011)

2011-11-18T00:34:00.001+01:00

To a person non-familiar with the work of Seattle’s Midday Veil, thefirst few minutes of SubterraneanRitual II, released on Translinguistic Other label is one of themany synth drone cassettes, with a slowly unveiling synthesizer drone leadingto dreamy, meditative zones. But it soon turns out that the opening drone isjust the canvas, upon which layers and layers of new sounds are painted.

Side A’s monster jam “Moon Temple” (nearly 24 minutes long!) slowly adds newelements to the tripped out concoction. The drums, initially shy and hiddenwith barely audible cymbal play, finally sets the steady, echoed rhythm overwhich shamanic moans rise and fall – like a more desert-friendly, slightlyorientalized version of Ash Ra Tempel. For the majority of the track, theguitar is just barely there, noodling psychedelically in the background, whilethe reverbed invocations and the pulsing drone merge for a cosmic synergy. Itgets more audible toward the end of the track, where the music finally topplesand gains incredible momentum, resulting in a fuzzed-out, spastic jam, with sixstrings burning from frenetic soloing in the vein of Manuel Gottsching orKawabata Makoto.

Side B’s “Naxos”, besides being considerably ten minutes shorter (asomewhat untypical move, especially for a cassette, where most artists tend tomake both sides roughly identical in length) continues the slow, peyotic tranceof side A. The music here is more rock-oriented, but it doesn’t mean it’sdroneless – the massive drone appears after a few minutes and doesn’t liveuntil the very end, pulsing relentlessly while the guitar spews out lonely,ominous notes and the slow drumming interrupted by washes of cymbal white noiseset the mood for the desert ritual.

The dark, evocative atmosphere is amplified by the cassette’s artwork,featuring blurry, purple-hued images of a woman holding a candle, bringingimages of 1960’s Satanist gatherings and LaVey/LSD based exploitation mania.Midday Veil sure managed to possess the spirits of the greats of psychedelicrock (Ash Ra Tempel, especially) and more importantly, they managed to letthese spirits flow and release them onto the tape, where they etched theirforms in form of music. Recommended.

Buy at Translinguistic Other website.

Stream on Midday Veil's Bandcamp.

Review: Laughing Eye Weeping Eye - Where Snakes & Seers Go (self-released, 2011), 6majik9 / Prehistoric Fuckin' Morons - Split (Magik Crowbar, 2011)

2011-11-14T01:47:00.001+01:00

The great music completist Piero Scaruffi once divided the freak folkers(or New Weird Americans, if you please) into the „bards”, who focus on the songformat and keep their songs short and melodic and the „trippers”, who focus onfree improvisation, keeping their tracks long, flowing and usually formless.The two albums I’m going to review here represent both schools, both in imageryand the way they present the psychedelic aspect of their music. One is a vinylLP from a Chicago based duo Laughing Eye Weeping Eye entitled Where Snakes& Seers Go. The other (the „tripper” mindset) is a Split cassettebetween Australian psychotic folk collectiva 6majik9 and ingeniously namedPrehistoric Fuckin’ Morons (best name for a band of 2011, right afterReincarnated as a Burger).

The first of the two is the Illinois duo Laughing Eye, Weeping Eye. Itappears that LEWE are trying to fill (whether intentionally or unintentionally,this remains to be unsolved) every freak folk/New Weird America cliche in thebook. Whether it's the flashy, gender-confusing outfits or child-like (or maybechildish-like?) „psychedelic” album covers with colorful dragons and mysterioushalf-human, half-angel entities, Laughing Eye, Weeping Eye closely resemble the„bard” format classics such as Devendra Banhart or CocoRosie. The music on thepurple vinyl revolves around vocal experimentation and attempting various moodswith mostly the use of vocals and a wide variety of traditional instruments:harmonium, violins, accordions etc. etc. The album is neatly divided into 4-5minute long songs, usually based around a simple line repeated in a hypnotic,whimsical manner. Despite the simple, pastoral feel of most songs, the musiccan get quite epic, with heavy brass sections and abrasive harmonium. Most ofthe time though, the music stays on the gentle side and focuses onkaleidoscopically different ways of delivery: at one moment LEWE sounds like aroyal choir, moments later they sound like cute little furry animals invitingus to play in a rainbow meadowland.

In the completely different camp are two Australian units, who share thesame tape in one lengthy outsider clatter jamming. On side A, 6majik9 offersthree tracks (which blend into each other without much notice from thelistener, really) of anarchic, communal kraut-folk noodling not unlike the morefree improv-leaning moments of Sunburned Hand of the Man or early Amon Duul.Despite the general lack of direction and the band just playing around with ashapeless mass of sound, there are moments where the musicians get a generalgrasp of things and randomly create something that would serve as a rough draftfor a polished, organized album: a math rock-y beat here, a few interestingguitar licks there… It’s just that the music never strays from the “jamming forthe sake of jamming” territory. But it’s not like 6majik9 ever wanted to makean album of regular songs. That’s what bards are for. Side B is taken byanother Australian weirdo collective Prehistoric Fuckin’ Morons. These dudesappear to be more into tape experiments and musique concrete rather thanfreewheelin’ bastard folk and fill the majority of their side with strange,mangled samples and cut-up experiments in the style of 80’s era Negativland. Byblending found sounds with rudimentary electronics and mapless psych folk,Prehistoric Fuckin’ Morons come off as some strange love-child of Excepter, NoNeck Blues Band and Delia Derbyshire.

Both releases show the basic rules and ideologies behind the two “schools”of psychedelic folk revival: on one side we have Laughing Eye Weeping Eye’scheerful, simple freak folk that wouldn’t mind if someone called them “pop” or “psychedelicpop” – colorful, positive and energetic, even if a bit immature and childish. Thesplit cassette is the polar opposite – anarchic clatter that tries to distanceitself from pop as far as possible, preferring to stay in the air of mysteryand release their albums only to a close-knit circle of freaks on out-of-dateformats.

Stream and buy Where Snakes & Seers Go

6majik9 / Prehistoric Fuckin' Morons split still availabe on Magik Crowbar

Review: Spettro Family - Candelora (Brave Mysteries, 2011)

2011-10-31T18:30:00.001+01:00

Remember Matthew Akers, whose The Elders of New Detroit I’ve reviewed a while back? Well, there’s anew “carpentercore” player in town, and his name is Spettro Family (real name:Stefano Iannone). But in addition to wonderfully polished and balanced 80’s-styledsynth vignettes, Spettro adds some of the occultism and outer limits mysterywhich appears to be the staple of Brave Mysteries label.

The tape begins with an anthemic displayof power (or maybe the powers of imitation?) “Post Partum”: a dynamic, yetsomewhat nostalgic tune that begins in almost ambient territories, only tochange to a thumping main theme which sets the mood for the rest of the tape.Spettro Family does not go for the simple carpenterisms though: where one mightexpect a cassette full of ultra-manly vintage soundtrack snippets, SF cutsthrough a wide variety of moods and styles. “1978 La Fuga” is a good example ofthis: it is a quick, even abrupt, transition from the dynamics of the firsttrack to a melancholic drumless suite based on minimalistic melody reminiscing the childhood years (as the titlemight suggest, even though I have a feeling Stefano wasn’t even around in 1978,but I might be wrong, considering the influx of “old-timers” playing 70’s and80’s influenced music who actually were alive during that time, such asPanabrite or Stellar Om Source). Most of the track are short – they’re morelike drafts, variations of basic schemes laid by John Carpenter soundtracks.Like the relatively calm, yet nevertouching the “relaxing” territory “Orrore the Great”, where subtle touches ofsequencer set the pace to a quiet beat.

The flipside is set in a similar “80’s copmovie” feel, with lush synthesizer drops on throbbing bass lines, but with afew notable exceptions – like the almost ritualistic “Medjugorje” whichcontains samples of Lord’s Prayer recited in an Eastern or Southern European(Slavic) language – being Polish I can understand most of the words, at first Iactually though it was Polish! This is one of the high points of the cassette –while most “carpentercore”-rs just try to replicate the action movie vibe,Spettro Family went into the more mysterious area, with sinister drones in thebackground more similar to the work of Burial Hex than Matthew Akers.

Spettro Family covers interesting grounds:on one side there’s lots of pagan symbolism and (probably) and influence ofneofolk acts of the 1980’s, with Spettro referring to the cassette title beingtaken from Celtic and ancient Roman festivals; on the other there’s a fascinationwith polished 1980’s synth soundtracks and atmospheric electronics.Congratulations not only to Spettro Family, who managed to fuse two seeminglycontradicting areas (the outsiderism of ritualists vs. the relative“mainstream-ness” of John Carpenter movies), but also to the Brave Mysterieslabel, who have an extraordinary ear for sonic curios and obscurities, beingboth “brave” in their choices and “mysterious” in their sound and roster.

The tape is available at the Brave Mysteries Shop.

Review: Spires - Puzzlebox (Lava Church, 2011)

2011-10-24T16:31:00.001+02:00

Spires is an alias of a mysterious Denverbased musician who, according to the Lava Church’s website, has been dabblingin all kinds of music for nearly 20 years. The website also states that he’s aformer US special forces veteran. Now I don’t know whether it’s true, orwhether it’s just a clever hoax to thicken the fog of mystery around thisColorado individual, but I’m bought. Out of the three tapes I’ve got from LavaChurch Records this one got me interested the most. And while it’s nothinggroundbreaking, it surely is mesmerizing.

It might seem that the idea behind thisrecord stemmed from starting at the cold, silent and snowy Rocky Mountains oneday. Despite the rather generic image of space adoring the j-card, the cassetteplays more like a soundtrack to the wind blowing on the higest peaks of theRockies during the coldest and blackest night. The sound on the tape might bedescribed as meditative, but it’s not the calm, cosmic New Agey meditation of,say, late Greg Davis. It’s a bleak, minimal study on extreme conditions – like theaforementioned mountain peaks, or, indeed outer space. Spires shows the outerspace like it really is for fragile, weak creatures like us– it’s notbeautiful, it’s not breathtaking, it’s inhumanly cold, empty and endless. Justlike “Eyes Become Dust”, which take up the entirety of side B – despite being “only”14 minutes long, it stretches beyond its time and becomes a frostbitten, alienatingsound tapestry seeping from the speakers and sending shivers of cold throughyour spine.

What would’ve served as a melody in otherambient records is long gone here, smothered by abstract, glitchyexperimentation operating with high-pitched white noise drones and unsettlingsynth wails reminiscent of early, ElusiveLunar Bow era Bee Mask (“Puzzlebox”) or ghost-choir like metallic ambiencefilled with blows of cold wind reverbed for maximum unsettling effect. At timesthe cassette fills much closer to the dark ambient legacy of Lustmord than therest of the “tape drone” scene, bringing images of MKULTRA experimentation andmysterious, hallucinogenic interrogation techniques. When getting to listen toSpires’ Puzzlebox prepare for ajourney into the unknown. Not the most pleasurable unknown, but a veryrewarding unknown.

Get the tape from Lava Church Records.

Listen and download more Spires on Bandcamp.

Noise-A-Tron - Noise-A-Tron

2011-10-22T22:21:00.002+02:00

These Seattle, WA dudes walk the thin linebetween the apocalyptic, plodding drone doom, aggressive and unrelenting sludgemetal and distorted and skin-peeling noise rock. Additional cool points for theterrifically recorded drums, which give lots, LOTS of energy to this littlerecord, making it even more worthwhile. Thunderous, bassy and instrumental.Recommended!

Noise-A-Tron

Review: Second Family Band - Twelfth Night Reunion (Brave Mysteries, 2011)

2011-10-22T22:05:00.002+02:00

Despite the associations with the freakfolk (or “New Weird America”, if you will) scene, the opening sounds of theMadison based collective’s newest cassette, released on Wisconsin’s esoteric labelBrave Mysteries, come closer to Lee Noble’s lo-fi outsider drones than looselyformed nature jams. Eventually, the sparse percussive sounds emerge from the gentle,ambienty loop. The impression of an instrumental jam gradually unspooling fadesaway quickly, because on this tape Second Family Band decided to go into a farmore synth-based areas full of eerie echoes and dreamy shimmering synth solos.

Second Family Band were always the “connectors”between the two scenes: on one side we have the “family” aspect: music as acommunal experience and the result of sharing creative ideas in the form ofimprovisation, putting heart and soul into the act of creation and channeling positiveenergy; on the other side there’s an “experimentation” factor: channeling thespirits of mid-century avant-garde composers, early electronic shamans (such asPopol Vuh) and crafting a special brand of meandering, psychedelic electronicmusic with the intention of “zoning out” the listener. Twelfth Night Reunion is anabstract assemblage of forms, cavernous and spacy with mercilessly reverbedsynth waves, yet always “littered” and “busy” with stray guitar noodling and percussiveclatter. The closest modern comparisons would be the early work of SuperMinerals (e.g. Pelagics) and the more avant-garde moments of No NeckBlues Band (e.g. Letters from the Earth)and Sunburned Hand of the Man. But after a while, when you think you’re stuckwith haunting calls and hazy reverb, the side hits a faster, funkier side (“Feastof St Nicholas pts 1 & 6”) with a bass and organ driven freestyle hippiejam with a liberal use of cymbals by the drummer. “Under the Harvest” goes froma slow, acoustic start to a rhythmic, moaning kraut-folk in the style of AmonDüül II’s Phallus Dei.

SideB gets back on the track with droning, wandering kosmische synth lines (“Feastof St Agnes pt 5”). This is Second Family Band at their most cosmic, takingnumerous cues from classics of early ambient and progressive electronic music.Furutistic, desert-like drones loom in the distance while a dark cloud ofbassy, humming electronics rises above the horizon, like a brewing storm. Theprog suite then goes into more abstract areas, with eerie synthesizer creatinga relentless rhythm while a mysterious, processed voice moans in thebackground. While on the previous side the ambient, electronic track was anintroduction to the folkier, “freakier” parts, here it takes the majority ofthe side, sinking itself in as it progresses. Unlike Excepter, which split fromthe original line-up of No Neck Blues Band to make purely electronic music,Second Family Band feels no need to separate themselves for playing folk andelectronic music, here they make smooth transitions between the areas, oftenoverlapping both areas with acoustic guitars co-existing peacefully withsequencers and synthesizers. And while you might think “this has been done somany times before”, one cannot help but marvel how easily Second Family Bandconnects both ends and how comfortable they are with both worlds. A niceaddition to the SFB discography and a nice little tape keeping just the rightamounts of otherworldly meditations and outsider freakouts.

The tape is available at the Brave Mysteries Shop. Get it!

Review: Rene Hell - The Canon (Agents of Chaos, 2011)

2011-10-13T17:32:00.001+02:00

Rene Hell’s The Canon EP might be Jeff Witscher’s most spastic and “busy” workto date; on this cassette he ditches the ambient aspect of his music almostentirely, instead focusing on cyclical repetition and dense clusters of sound,bordering on glitch at times.

The opener, “Variation Third” seems to bethe closest to his usual oeuvre as Rene Hell, with a simple synthesizersequence relentlessly repeating its way through all sorts of small bleeps andbloops with massive, bassy drones that can almost be disguised as melody risingand falling every now and then. At the end, the piece’s structure is almosttoppled by a cluster of rapidly played (or programmed to be rapidly played)synth piano notes, which continues into the second track, “Melody for Arkham”. Whatis characteristic of this tape (and maybe of Witscher’s latest work in general)is the intentional “fakeness” of sound – one can tell it’s a synthesized pianofrom a mile off and Rene Hell isn’t trying to hide this fact. Quite thecontrary – he’s taking refuge from the rest of the scene with hissuper-polished and super “fake” sound. “Melody for Arkham” is fast and ravingmad, with superfast clusters of piano notes creating a ripped, irregular melodywhich brings to mind La Monte Young’s AWell Tuned Piano on amphetamines. “Med School Prince” follows the samepath, this time blending the jagged piano madness with massive, gradientaldrones, reaching almost disorienting heights. The closing “Nazi Love Motel II”can be best considered as “whimsical” – simple, repeating piano motive (oh,that fakeness of sound!) is joined by high-pitched whining and playful glitchesresembling the sound you make when trying to imitate a horse (not the neighing, the other sound).

The Canon is a nicelittle addition to Rene Hell’s discography. The music on the tape is not lifechanging, or extremely atmospheric. Instead, Jeff’s trying to craft his ownkind of hyper-real, maniacal minimalism played through the prism of skewed IDMand glitch, falling somewhere between La Monte Young, James Ferraro andAutechre. Rene Hell’s idiosyncratic sound is further represented in his art, mergingfashion world and celebrity imagery with abstract shapes, random dots andcommas and cryptic track titles.

Rene Hell - The Canon

Link via The Radiant Now

Review: Girlhood - Surfs Pure Hearts (Holy Page, 2011)

2011-10-13T13:39:00.000+02:00

Girlhood’s Surfs Pure Hearts appears to be an another artist following theairy, blurry 80’s/early 90’s nostalgia occupying the territory somewherebetween “psychedelic drone” and chillwave. Too varied and beat-based to beconsidered the first and too abstract and not enough articulated and catchy tobe considered the latter. I tend to categorize this category of music as “waporwave”(similarly to “vaporware” type of software) – projects trying to the retro feelof the older decades (analog synths etc.) with shy beat structures and NewAge-y and old computer imagery. Girlhood is one of them.

Side A of the cassette opens with delicate Stellar Om Source-y synthsinterspersed with washes of white noise which simulate the sound of crashingwaves. The sound cuts abruptly into another lo-fi ambient meditation with shy,quiet notes giving way to more futuristic, techno/IDM-ish sounds with thumpingbass on top. But this is no dancefloor banger – the rhythm is irregular and isused more to set the pace to a lethargic monologue with barely recognizablelyrics. The sound is rough around the edges and gives an alienated, unfinishedfeel at times. As if some songs were yet to be enriched with more sounds, morevocals or a better production but basic mix master tape accidentally went tothe plant and bam, the tape’s here. Despite the dancey, beat-oriented settingsthe tracks are more like minimal meditations for focused headphone listening orlounging in a dark club very late at night with just a few people.

The tape manages to keep an air of mysteryand uncertainty. For example, it’s hard to tell whether the droning, melancholicsounds on “Purity Kiss” are synthesizer sounds or mangled and processedGregorian chanting taken from one of those horribly clichéd “modern Gregorian”CD’s popular in the 90’s, which took medieval church music and blended it witha cookie-cutter, mid-tempo electronic sounds. The vocal samples and lazy,indifferent vocals together with an artwork consisting of pretty, serif fontsand gentle gradients remind me of those cool Tumblr blogs which post b&w photosof indifferent looking models in sharp, ultra-expensive clothes (some of themactually do like expensive clothes, other look like a homeless person’s attire),pics of inverted crosses and burning churches (for a “shock effect”) andminimal modern art. Side B of the tape retains more of the distorted mutanttechno feel with barely recognizable vocals above thumping bass and silky synthlines (delicate like ocean spray) plodding their way through the disco.

It’s hard to tell whether Girlhood willtry to build a career on their sound or whether it will be lost forever in themaze of endless other tapes released in small editions. As the name suggests, “vaporwave”might have an extremely short span – it might be just a fleeting fad no onewill hear about in a few years or might become the next chillwave. Time willtell whether we’ll be rocking out to indifferent techno-ish sounds or zoningout to dronestep in 2016.

Stream and download for free or buy the tape from Holy Page Records website.

Review: Fungal Abyss - Bardo Abgrund Temple (Translinguistic Other, 2011)

2011-10-13T12:51:00.000+02:00

FungalAbyss’ Bardo Abgrund Temple is a perfectdocumentary of how psychedelic mushrooms can affect the creative process. Inthe j-card the band openly admits that they have ingested hallucinogenicmushrooms before recording, which is truly a bold statement in the times whendrugs in music are, of course, still being used, but it is just not considered cool anymore to brag about using them increating (marijuana being an exception). This band came back to the roots of conjuringenlightened sounds under the influence of psychedelic substances. Natural ones– the term “shroom rock” comes to mind. By the way, “Fungal Abyss” is one ofthe coolest band names I’ve heard in a loooong time. Not only as a name for apsych band – but a name for a heavypsych band. And what a heavy psych it is!

Being thesister band, the more psychedelic counterpart of the sludge band Lesbian,Fungal Abyss took the bass-heavy, stoner-y sound from Lesbian and filtered itthrough a prism of primordial, ethnic visions and fungal manifestations. Theresult of those manifestations are two sides of the cassette, each a bit over30 minutes, filled with four tracks with length ranging from over 10 minutes to24 minutes long. The jams on the tape seems to have no end, and it’s all forthe better. Now that fans of lengthy jams are delighted, here’s something more:this cassette is an El Dorado for all fans of reverb and delay. There are manyambient-ish moments on the album, especially at the beginning of the tracks,where guitar drones mix with strange samples and snippets. The resultingintroductory meditation are eerily similar to the calm opening parts of Ash RaTempel’s 1971 monster “Amboss” off their self-titled LP. At certain moments themusic hits blatantly stoner territories, with “Timewave Zero” being a slow,bassy jam filled with blurry, echoed vocals that resemble CB radioconversations.

Bardo Abgrund Temple might quite possibly be the best psychedelic rockCASSETTE this year. The sound is perfectly mixed – you won’t find a drop oflo-fi here, only beautifully (or maybe beatifically?)recorded drums, sharp guitars and thumping bass guitar (which doesn’t drown outother sounds, mind you). Here is some true psych from the true shamans for whomthe psychedelic experience is serious business – those guys are not your usualnice “dudes-next-door” who just happen to play a bit “trippy” sounds during aband practice after Sunday school. These dudes are real fuckin’ psychonauts whoknow how to pack a punch. I mean just look at these fuckers:

Now go pick some shrooms and grab this cassette from Translinguistic Other. Or stream the entire album on Bandcamp.

Fungal Abyss - Bardo Abgrund Temple

Link taken from Trippy Jam.

Kalkh-In(joy) Erode

2011-10-12T00:05:00.004+02:00

Thenearly-unpronouncably named Kalkh-In(joy)Erode is the alias of a mysterious French alchemist, who blends ominous andprimordially pulsing dark ambient structures with psychedelic cozmikelectronics, full of hisses and echoes. The resulting concoction is a deeplyatmospheric and immersive ointment of undisclosed sounds and moods. Good nightlistening, even better with headphones on.

The Xmas Chaos

The Way of Another Way

Heads on Sticks

2011-10-11T23:16:00.004+02:00

Despite thename suited more for a grindcore band than a psychedelic one (although I’m surethere is, or was, a punk or a metal band under that name), the Raleigh, NCbased unit Heads on Sticks playsunny, multi-styled psychedelic pop that is so positive in its sound one maynot need any drugs to feel better and enjoy life just a teeny tiny bit more.Psychedelia for those tired with 20-minute overdriven, wah-wahed guitar solosor brain-frying shimmering, glacial drones and hungry for beat-driven(sometimes bordering on “beat heavy”), catchy music full of vocal harmonies andinfectious hooks.

Mocking Bird

Brutish & Short

Bodhi Syurfs

2011-10-11T22:41:00.006+02:00

Hazy and dimly lit midnight jams from San Diego citizen Bodhi Syurfs. In this unclear and eclectic mix, Bodhi Syurfs delivers a lo-fi, bleak poetry over outsider folk guitar strumming, ambient-y industrial beats and bedroom-based outer limits filth. Terms such as “dream pop”, “shoegaze” or “beach goth teen whatever” come to mind. Like a Californian equivalent of Russian Tsarlag, only slightly less raw. Recommended!

Bodhi Surfs

Youth on the Run EP

Midnight Premiere

Review: Nite Lite - Marlene (Stunned Records, 2011)

2011-10-04T16:40:00.003+02:00

Californian-born, Portland-based labelStunned Records has been specializing in an extraordinary kind of psychedelia.Stunned often explored the outer limits of psych and music in general, creatingmeticulously arranged, multi-layered, droning pieces of music that could lastup to 45 minutes (or maybe even longer, you never know what you expect fromthose sonic shamans. Stunned Recordswas founded by Phil French (1/2 of ambient duo Super Minerals, one of themembers of Magic Lantern and the man behind minimalist piano project Eureka)and Myste French, who joins Phil on the Nite Lite project.

Nite Lite is a dense, cluttered collage ofvarious field recordings collected from various places. The recordings areinterrupted by vaguely tropical folk music or more European, traditionalfeeling interludes which last for 2 or 3 minutes. They’re short, but theydefinitely can serve as some sort of an instrumental, musical ending for every “movement”consisting purely of field recordings. The recordings are mixed with eachother, many layers of different recordings are placed one upon another, theresult being intricate sonic tapestries, reflecting various moods rather thanplaces. It says on the j-card that the whole material was recorded in Cascadia,but it might seem it could have been as well recorded in Europe (thetraditional folky pieces) or even on some remote tropical island or in anAfrican country (the few tropical-ish shorties).

The connection between the snippets of themusic and the recordings is similar to the creative method of Loren Chasse,especially his Of project. But Nite Lite is apparently more civilized, insteadof Chasse’s purely natural, primeval sound, Phil & Myste present a civilizedversion. There are processed sounds of kids playing on some playground, thevoiced lowered so it might almost appear the recording took place in somemutant town, where the normal humans have been replaced with weird zombie-likecreatures. But apart from the moments of weirdness, there are moments of sheerbeauty: the choral magnificence of “Swenson” or the tropical bliss of “Cajón”.But what remains in every single piece on this cassette is the sound of birds:birds chirp and sing on every track and they’re even in the album artwork,adorning the cassette (the artwork was done by Phil French himself).

Nite Lite’s Marlene is a truly wonderful and exploratory journey into the fieldrecording headspace – creating a soundtrack to an invisible movie (that neverwas). Highly recommended, even if it cannot be listened at anytime. Listeningto this needs some free time and focus.

Nite Lite - Marlene

Link via The Radiant Now

Review: Dark Fog - Drug Portal: Heavy Dilemma (Commune Records, 2011)

2011-10-03T22:52:00.004+02:00

When one of your band members shares their second namewith one of the greatest Beat poets, you're in for a nice psychedelic ride.Dark Fog is a Chicago based trio of oldschool psych shredders who have noproblems with creating extended lysergic jamzzz or cranking out catchy garage-ytunes. Mysteriously stating the band members YT Robinson, Matt Ginsberg and RayDonato as Present Tense, Past Tense and Future Tense, the band adopts the roleof a time machine, looking into the heydays of acid rock in the 1960's andadding modern elements like ambiental, Windy & Carl style post-rockminiatures into the mix ("Space Part 2").

Though most of the cassette space here is taken byHaight-Ashbury-ish guitar freak-outs, there are certain parts which have analmost poppy feeling – short outbursts of sheer songwriting power so full ofhooks it could make any aspiring garage rock/punk band blush, like the slightlyover 2 minute song “Flash”, which punches its way straight into your brain andstays there for days, weeks even. Sometimes Dark Fog will reach more funky,sweaty moments (“Heavy Breath”, like the name suggests, evokes an image (or a“mind Polaroid”) of a seedy, underground bar where some hellish Hippies are jamminghard after ingesting God knows how many drugs). There is a plenty of drugreferences in this cassette: starting with the front cover, featuring a stillfrom Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, starring Johny Depp asHunter S. Thompson to the titles – after all, one entire side of the cassetteis titled Drug Portal.

Although the tape was recorded in the studio in arelatively short period of time (Dec 2010 – Mar 2011), the sound of the tracksmake it seem it was collected from various soundboards from live performancesrecorded over a few years. This adds a sense of variety and gives different “moods”– one can almost imagine when listening to the tracks what kind of a venuecould be perfect for the currently playing jam. There seems to be anintentional inconsistency in track editing – some track begin and end abruptly,as if the recording process started way into a track. This gives even moreauthenticity to the track, reminding the listener of the “only fragments”policy of bands like Sunburned Hand of the Man or Parson Sound. The tracks oftengain a frenetic pace over a course of a few minutes, achieving a krautrock-ish,motorik sensitivity (“The Denial of Manking”, sounding like Americanized BabyGrandmothers).

If you’re into more-or-less classic psychedelic sound,with certain poppy hooks but not without a certain degree of freedom and evenmoments of pure hallucinogenic madness, then Dark Fog’s Drug Portal: Heavy Dilema is a tape for you. There is just asuitable amount of “drug” and “heavy”, being intense without ever becoming too intense. A perfect album for thoseevenings when you just can’t take a continuous one hour jam with Acid MothersTemple or can’t stand the monolithic guitar carnage of Fushitsusha. Psychedelicrock with a human side.

Stream the tape on Bandcamp.

Buy the tape from Commune Records.

oldwyoming. - When Debord Met Salinger on the Slowly Lapping Shores of the Aasee Lake

2011-10-01T01:30:00.002+02:00

oldwyoming. is the creative alias of Texas resident Ryan Durfee. The curiously titled When Debord Met Salinger on the Slowly Lapping Shores of the Aasee Lake EP contains a little over 20 minutes of melancholic, autumn/wintery drone/ambient, which pokes this special emotional nerve somewhere deep inside of you and makes you want more of this guy's music. Hopefully there's more coming soon.

When Debord Met Salinger on the Slowly Lapping Shores of the Aasee Lake

Birthgiving Toad - For Awkward Company

2011-10-01T01:00:00.001+02:00

Birthiving Toad is a Danish "newly discovered, mind-altering, highly addictive, yet listenable psychoactive" headed by multi-instrumentalist Lasse Buch. Members of the band like to describe their sound in the areas of psych and prog, but to my mind this is closer to a sweaty, funky, a bit lo-fi version of math rock. Totally diggin' the raw, oldschool atmosphere they got goin' here. Like U.S. Maple doing Funkadelic, minus the Beefheartian vocals. Recommended!

For Awkward Company

Wolves of Isle Royale

2011-09-27T23:10:00.002+02:00

Let me tell you somethin': these brothers are PROLIFIC. Their website hosts 38 albums - 38 albums full of noise rock definitely more on the noise side. Dark, ominous and psychedelic, the music of Wolves of Isle Royale ranges from free-form guitar carnage improvs to brooding drones and industrial sound collages. The sound of what's to come after the bombs fall. For the fans of Skullflower, The Dead C, Gravitar, Mouthus, Burnt Hills, Aufgehoben, Nautical Almanac et caetera. Recommended!

Wolves of Isle Royale

What I'll post on this blog and what I will not.

2011-09-27T12:56:00.004+02:00

Since I've started my blog in 2008, I've been getting e-mails from people who wanted to have their music featured here. In fact, most of the music downloads posted here come from the people who have written an e-mail to me and whose music got me interested enough to post. In fact, at this point, I am getting some 100-200 e-mails a week with people wanting me to post their music on Weed Temple. To somehow cope with the influx of e-mails asking for a feature for review, I've created a few rules I follow when viewing e-mails and posting albums on the blog:

Albums in material formats (CD, cassette, vinyl) have far larger chances of being reviewed than digital ones. From all the reviews I've posted on WT some 5 are of digital albums. I might post a review of a digital album if I find the music interesting enough, but I tend to spend more time with the material format.
If you've sent me a cassette or a CD some time ago and I still haven't posted a review, it doesn't necessarily mean the package was lost or your music doesn't interest me (although I admit, there are a few cases). Since I've started working at school as a teacher of English this September I'm busier than ever and sometimes it's challenging to even write a short note about an album download, yet alone write a full review. Sometimes the review of a cassette or a CD you've send me can apear on Weed Temple a month or two after receiving.
I will not post single tracks, never. Whether it's a single song posted on SoundCloud or Bandcamp or a link to an mp3 download in an e-mail, or a single music video on YouTube or Vimeo, I usually don't even bother to listen/watch. Weed Temple is first and foremost a blog for full album downloads and it will not change. If I was to write about every bandwagon-jumping indie fart I receive in my mail I would've been on an Altered Zones payroll since the beginning (pretty hypocritical, considering the fact much of the music I post nowadays is also jumping the bandwagon, the retrofururistic, neo-kosmische, 80's/90's nostalgia one)
I don't even bother to check mails which contain nothing (as in: no introduction or description whatsoever) except a link do a SoundCloud/Bandcamp page. If you don't give a fuck about promoting your music, why should I?
I will not post links do Bandcamp pages containing albums which are not free for download. Whether the files are set to the "share only" mode or need to be paid for in order to be downloaded, they will not be posted on Weed Temple.
I don't even check mp3 files attached to the e-mail. Cut it out.
I'm usually extremely suspicious to any e-mails containing triangles, crosses or other weird symbols and there's a very slim chance I'll check them at all.

Review: Love Cult - Nebulaes (Brave Mysteries, 2011)

2011-09-26T18:04:00.000+02:00

Maybe the best review of this little cassette would be the words of my mother who said after hearing side A of the tape: “It would make a nice doorbell”. Of course, in the mouth of some sarcastic, cynical blogger this might be an insult but what my mother meant was clearly a compliment – by the “doorbell” sound my mother rather described something clear, easily recognizable, warm and welcoming. Love Cult’s Nebulaes is exactly that, at last side A.

The first track, entitled “Reflection”, which features a truly minimalist series of shimmering tones played on kantele, an instrument native to Karelia, among others (the historical area divided between Finland and Russia, where Love Cult also come from). The tones are sparse and played in a simple, descending manner. The simplicity of the track is where it takes its strength from: the seemingly endlessly sustained echoes put the listener in the state of deep trance. The kantele lead is then gradually, yet gently transformed: more layers stack upon one another, new waves of delay and reverb are added, deepening the meditational state. The track’s title, “Reflection”, might have a double meaning: both a reflection of the autumn/winter sun in the clear, cold water and a reflection upon a feeling or a simple meditation on the simplicity of beauty.

Side B’s “Absorption” gets a little more lo-fi and hazy than the minimalist side A, but it’s still deep in the melodic, melancholic territory. This quiet, introverted jam (it’s a bit weird to write words “quiet” and “jam” together) is based almost solely on acoustic guitar and moaning, wordless vocals. The music wanders through the raw nature soundscapes – birch forests, cold springs, reeds at the lake’s shore. “Absorption” is an exercise in loneliness and melancholy. Not a cold, detached calculation, not a distanced look: it’s Love Cult telling the story of times bygone, the story of lost love, from their own experience: even though there aren’t any lyrics, the distant, gentle guitar and the calm vocals make listening to “Absorption” an almost heartbreaking experience. Nebulaes is a folky version of M. Geddes Gengras’ Magical Writing (or maybe it’s the other way around?). Both artists displayed on those albums their personal and introverted take on melancholy, be it through outsider guitar sound paintings or synth-driven ambient introspection. In fact, this connection is not coincidental: Ged Gengras has mastered the Love Cult’s tape before it was released on Brave Mysteries.

Love Cult can serve as a doorbell sound in my house every day; each time the guests would be thrown in a state of calm, meditative state. Not a druggy, “faded” state – Love Cult might be described as psychedelic folk, but their music is psychedelic without the use of psychedelics. Rather it’s seeing and feeling more through leaving it all behind – the drugs, the Internet, the technology, the career. Love Cult want you to simply go to the nearest woods, sit down and listen.

Available at the Brave Mysteries shop.

Review: Super Minerals - Contacteer (Stunned Records, 2011)

2011-09-26T16:23:00.000+02:00

American duo Super Minerals appears to have taken an idiosyncratic, exploratory approach to ambient, beginning with smeared, guitar-based drones (The Pelagics, The Vooh), dabbling with La Monte Youngian piano minimalism (Clusters) and hazy musique concrete (The Hoax). On their latest cassette, released on dearly departed label Stunned Records, they’ve taken the way of cryptic messages, bleeping their way from the distant future.

Contacteer generally follows the lo-fi, synth-based noodling path set by The Hoax, but this time it’s generally more “human”: sounds of bells and distant oriental drumming, sometimes reversed, are heard – sometimes the album turns to even more ethnic areas, with free-form, NNCK-ish tribal jamz coalesce with ominous, sustained guitar sounds known from the duo’s early albums. Each side of the cassette is divided into various, unrelated “movements” separated by short silent pauses. It seems like Super Minerals wanted to make up for the unnamed tracks of The Hoax, giving the tracks ridiculously long, post-rockish titles. If someone showed me track names like “Earth Acropolis Welcome Panacea Home: Man the Rod, Woman the Measure, and Metabolising All Their Poisons With Ease” and “Be Brave Children of the Monsoon And Rise Above the Deep Shield Like Buddah Burning Brightly on Mars”, I would have sworn these are the titles from the new Red Sparowes album. Or something by the Skaters: in fact, the Skaters comparison might be more apt both because of the medium (the cassette, that is), the somewhat lo-fi quality of the music of both bands and the genuine interest in creating sometimes extremely hazy, yet intricate sonic tapestries which gives you that “what the hell did they use to create this sound” feel.

Super Minerals rose to “fame” and made their name by creating guitar-based ambient. The Contacteer moves more towards a non-descript area somewhere between shapeless, mapless territories somewhere between a way more lo-fi Excepter and ritual psychedelicisms a’la Golden Jooklo Age. Despite the length of the cassette (it’s almost 60 minutes long), the tracks flow quickly and smoothly. There are no tiring “oh god when it’s gonna end” moments – none of the “movements” overstay their welcome and they have a perfect timing – the pieces last long enough to sink, yet not long enough to bore the listener and make them skip forward. Super Minerals also have the talent to make music with no fixed geographical “point” – unlike the FWY! album I’ve reviewed a few days ago, the music of Super Minerals gives the feeling that it could be recorded anywhere and anytime – they may be using a basic framework of ambient or psychedelic folk music, but unlike in most folk or ambient music, the sounds are not attached to a given point or feeling. Super Minerals can be listened to in almost any mood – and depending on the mood in a given moment they can be either depressing, uplifting, meditative, sometimes flat out terrifying and always fascinating.

Super Minerals - Contacteer

Link via The Radiant Now

Vinyl Williams - Lemniscate

2011-09-25T10:28:00.000+02:00

Vinyl Williams is the music-making moniker of visual artist Lionel Williams. His newest album, Lemniscate, was released in August 2011 on vinyl LP, and is also available for free in digital form. Williams blends the dreamy, druggy vocal styles of shoegaze and dream pop with the rhythmical, bassy punch of krautrock. 70's meet the 90's. Highly recommended. The link includes two unreleased tracks and links to all Hiyao Miyazaki films!

Lemniscate

Adderall Canyonly - Asuuna

2011-09-20T21:47:00.000+02:00

This album is going places. The tracks flow into each other almost seamlessly, yet each one creates a different microcosmos of sounds. Kosmische Musik and progressive electronic is an obvious point of reference here (wonderful "Vega Caves"), but there is much more: cavernous loner psychedelic folk ("The Damp"), mysterious drones ("Silent Deadly Drones") and even dark ambient ("Fed Back"). Worth checking out.

Asuuna

Review: M. Geddes Gengras - The Empty Space (Stunned Records, 2011)

2011-09-20T13:31:00.001+02:00

Tireless synthesizer explorer M. Geddes Gengras offers his possible tour-de-force on his ultimate tape released by Stunned Records (a label that will be truly missed and very hard to replace in terms of sound and packaging quality). Despite naming his previous Stunned tape This Could Be the Last Time, Gengras proves that he still he has amassed quite a collection of ideas over the course of a few months and is ready to strike (or at least continue to strike) with The Empty Space.

One thing you gotta know about this tape: it is MASSIVE. Not in terms of physical size, or the packaging: in fact, the cassette itself is fairly unremarkable and the insert does not contain any information on the dates of recording, the tracklist or so. Everything that should be known is printed on the cassette. The Empty Space is massive in terms of sheer length: it contains 93 minutes of music. That means each side is a bit over 45 minutes long. Which is even more impressive considering it was all probably recorded in one take during a live performance in June 2011 (if the dedication “for those who were there” might be any indication). I’m a sucker for live electronics and people who manage to create intricate and multilayered structures in real time are pretty much my heroes.

The Empty Space sees Ged Gengras in a more experimental, harsher light, especially in comparison to his previous releases, like the stellar ambient float of Magical Writing (released on his own Peccant Tapes). The sparse, cold sound of the cassette might take quite a few takes to get into, but once it clicks, a world of new possibilities opens. The beginning of side A is deceptive – it makes one think it will be a massive drone jam, while it clearly isn’t – after some 8 minutes, it dissolves into a series of variously pitched extraterrestrial glitches and chirps. One might say, “how isn’t 8 minutes of drone a massive jam?”. Well, remember that each side is over 45 minutes long, so eight minutes is pretty much just a tiny fraction. Having 90 minutes, Ged Gengras has a lot of time to expand his ideas slowly and carefully – people used to standard c30’s might get annoyed by the seemingly monotonous sound which changes very slowly. But that’s the trick – Gengras gives the listener time to immerse into each “movement” and “choose” their personal favorite. The slow, somewhat “shy” sequences are separated by echoed, glitchy escapades into separate worlds of synth pad wizardry and abrasive, noisy textures.

While the side A was dominated almost entirely by the Glitch, side B is the domain of the Sequence. It begins with a bubbling glitchy madness that is paradoxical in the fact that it’s at the same time cold and cozy. 12 minutes later and a faster pattern kicks in, existing in a “virgin”, clear state for a short time, but soon getting attacked by the spores, which in turn deform and skew the sequence, gradually smothering it and reducing it to occasional distant bleeps. The whole process of deconstruction and replacing the crystal clear, needle-like sounds with mangled, abrasive textures is like the destruction of the polished, meditative gems of the Berlin school by the British industrial/noise iconoclasts like Whitehouse. The Teutonic sequence then gets up and fights with the warbling synth noise again – the second part of side B becomes a battlefield between the melodic and the chaotic; where brutal glitches and blasts of white noise clash with cosmic echoes and rhythmical kraut-isms. The end of the tape is a sort of consensus with cut-up sounds forming a rudimentary, skewed, yet strangely enjoyable melody in the style of Caboladies’ Renewable Destination.

M. Geddes Gengras’ The Empty Space is an interesting insight into the creative process, the ability to improvise during live performance and a document of Ged’s amazing work in the field of synthesizers and electronic music. It might also be an indicator of the “tape scene’s” directions for the future, where the marriage of 70’s and 80’s prog electronics and 90’s and 00’s glitch is inevitable.

M. Geddes Gengras - The Empty Space

Link via The Radiant Now

Review: FWY! - CA 80's-90's (Brave Mysteries, 2011)

2011-09-20T12:47:00.000+02:00

In the thoroughly motorized world the notion of “music for highways” comes up every now and then and is realized by many bands and musicians in many genres. Be it the original “highway music” album, namely Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, the rhythmic post-punk of the late 70’s to the seemingly endless stream of minimal and ambient techno releases in the 1990’s and 2000’s Germany, there is a constant need to create music best suited for driving lengthy spans of asphalt for a long time.

Whatever genre we’re talking about, in music for driving the rhythm is essential. A steady, unchanging rhythm that sets the pace to everything else – the rhythm rules, it is the Master, everything else is a slave to the Rhythm (unintentional Grace Jones reference, yo). On CA 80’s-90’s, a compilation created from FWY!’s (pronounced Freeway) previous EP’s, Californian Edmund Xavier presents his version of autobahn musik. Almost all of the titles are named after specific stretches of Californian highways (“99 FWY”, “The 65”, “The 51”, “HWY 101”), putting Edmund’s music in an almost conceptual, “site specific” territory. By listening to the differing moods on each track, one can almost make out the geography or the weather, or even the time of the day when the highways was driven, inspiring the musician to create a given piece.

I’ve already mentioned the importance of rhythm in any kind of driving music – but in FWY’s case the rhythm is not always the same. It changes from track to track, from the softened, shoegazey version of self to the hard, crisp and clear rhythms existing somewhere between minimal techno of German Kompakt label and Warp’s early 90’s IDM. The deceptively simple bass lines are accompanied by dreamy, somewhat melancholic guitar work, which stretches the pop hooks into an oneiric, lulling tapestry. Despite being disciplined and rhythmical, the album does not take command of the listener; instead the sound seeps out of the speakers/headphones like a relaxing, non-malevolent gas. And speaking of Gas, the last track of the album (“The 5”) may bring certain Wolfgang Voigt connotation, with the rhythmless outro so similar to Voigt’s Zauberberg.

FWY!’s CA 80’s-90’s is a great driving album. One thing is important though – it is better not to listen to the album while driving and being tired. The ambientalized, reverbed bliss of the album might kick the listener into a sort of road trance, or, even worse, sleep. But then again, being tired, one shouldn’t be driving in the first place, should he?

The tape's available at Brave Mysteries. Grab it!

PLAENS - Cabin

2011-09-19T23:47:00.000+02:00

Long, freeform New Age-isms from Asheville's Joe Moresi. 40 minutes of healing Nat Geo drones that will either send you to a pleasant sleep or kick you into a deep, constructive meditation. Recommended! Coming soon in tape form on Sweat Lodge Guru.

Cabin

Velcro

2011-09-15T23:12:00.001+02:00

Imagine a lengthy, bombast, emotional and atmospheric, yet somewhat repetitious post-rock jam. Now strip it down to the very basics: sparse guitar playing a skeletal melody, shy and distant ambience and drumming designed to barely keep pace, to deliver some vague semblance of a rhythm. This is pretty much what Velcro sounds like. A sort of ambientalized, introverted and quiet droning guitar jams in the vein of Roy Montgomery, except less spacey and more down-to-earth and a bit downer-y.

Live at Absinthe Lounge

Pearl St. Jam

Bastian Void - Ported

2011-09-15T20:58:00.001+02:00

Ultra-nostalgic and somewhat nerdy take on 70/80's synth revival. Remembering your first dial-up and connecting to AOL via Netscape in Windows 95 and hosting your first website on Geocities. Polished, old-school ferraroisms, except less pulp pop culture oriented and more into consciously kitschy, Oneohtrix-like mindscapes from a bygone age, the age of Web 1.0. Originally released as a cassette on Digitalis Limited.

Ported

Mario Gonzalez

2011-09-13T23:44:00.000+02:00

Chicago musician Mario Gonzalez jumps from one style to another with amazing ease, crafting harsh, abrasive ambient pop ballads, glitched and zonked out sampledelica and filthy, cut-up walls of sound set to deconstructed, out-of-context hip-hop/dubstep beatz. Already Dead Tapes record label describe Mario's sound as "young Aphex Twin, with angst and girl problems". I'd like to add he also sounds like Amon Tobin falling in love with British late 70's industrial scene and Japanoise (and the fetishistic imagery connected to it).

BDSM

Disgusting

Sueisfine (buy the tape at Already Dead)

John Micah Rapp - Catharsis

2011-09-11T22:43:00.000+02:00

John Micah Rapp took an incredibly ambitious route to record one song a day over the course of six months. The double cassette Catharsis, released on Chicagoan label Already Dead Tapes & Records is a compilations of John's favorites from that time. 24 compositions, spanning a vast variety of genres, including quiet intimate folk, psychedelic drone, stoner rock, skewed dub, weird synth rock and an overall outsider bliss. For fanz of distorted guitars and electronic beatz.

Catharsis (Tape One / Tape Two)

Buy the cassettes from Already Dead Records & Tapes.

William Bowers - Soundtracks #2

2011-09-11T22:27:00.000+02:00

An ambiental trip from William Bowers. The first few tracks are incredibly dark and murky, floor-shaking bassy escapades into the world of the uncertain, arousing the fear of the unknown ("Drawing heavy influence from composers such as Basinski, David Lynch, Philip Glass, and Silas Ciarán"). The last tracks are more melodic and lighter, while still staying in the great lo-fi plain. A late night listening session for the seasoned droneheads. Released on Already Dead Tapes & Records.

Soundtracks #2 (Stream and buy from Bandcamp, too)

Review: Piętnastka - Dalia (Sangoplasmo Records, 2011)

2011-09-08T22:39:00.000+02:00

Once in a while, a release comes along that is so different, so hard to categorize that it’s just mindblowing. Dalia, the debut release by Piotr Kurek’s new project Piętnastka (“Fifteen” in English) contains some of the most well-composed and bitchin’ tunes of the year. A blend of whimsical, cinematic folktronica, IDM and some psychedelic guitar work, Dalia is probably the best thing released by Sangoplasmo Records to date.

In terms of sound and style Dalia is somewhat similar to another Sangoplasmo release, Pompa Funebris by Folja. But whereas Folja’s sound was more sparse, purely electronic and trying to appeal to the more 80’s revivalist (psych drone/chillwave/carpentercore etc.) crowd, Piętnastka’s Dalia is a dense, cluttered affair where minimal electronics set the tempo for all sorts of “live” and traditional instruments: accordion, drums, electric organ, guitar et caetera. The tracks are filled with a sense of child-like curiosity (without resorting to childishness) and mischeviousness, like restless schoolboys exploring the local abandoned factory ( “School Boy”) or a group of children playing paper chase in the woods (“Podchody”). One of the strongest points of the tape is the sense of rhythm – every track is pretty fast-paced with beats ranging from lethargic minimal techno (“Czterdzieści Cztery”) to thumping, almost tribal drums (“Salto”). Even though Kurek seems to be taking cues from Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden (the cassette sounds like a mid-point between Rounds and There Is Love In You), there are certain non-folktronic (a lot of you are probably foaming at the mouth at the very sound of the term “folktronica”) moments – like the blissful, minimalistic “Dice”, a condensed version of Terry Riley’s “A Rainbow in Curved Air”.

This is my first contact with the music of Piotr Kurek, who also plays in the band Ślepcy and releases music under his real name. Dalia is an exhaustingly beautiful and energetic cassette and it’s a shame that because of the format and the relatively low profile of the label releasing it the album might go unnoticed in the music world. Albums like Dalia recognize more recognition – perhaps one day Piętnastka will re-issue this album on vinyl?

Available at Sangoplasmo Records. Grab it now!

Review: Various Artists - Fangs & Arrows Board Music II (Noise Not Music, 2011)

2011-09-07T15:19:00.000+02:00

Board Music II, released on Irish label Noise Not Music is a cassette compilation of tracks created by the users and friends of the Internet experimental music community Fangs & Arrows. Those familiar with F&A will know what to expect: the board first and foremost deals with drone and ambient in all shapes and colors. So it’s no wonder the comp will contain all sorts of textures: the nightmarish, acerbic noise jams of Zonal Taste Wand (“Sleep Deprivation”) or Robe (“Serenade in Black”) provide a stark contrast to the vast and dreamy soundscapes of UUUUUU (wonderfully delayed and layered “Mirror Lies”) or Polymer Slug’s “Cloud 3” (wonderful guitar-synthesizer harmony). The musicians, often dealing with electronics often break the boundaries of what is considered “drone” or “analog drone scene” or whatever other name it has. For example, “Pancakes” by Coloured Jaw Chest stands much closer to the raw glitches of early Morton Subotnick or Keith Fullerton Whitman circa Disingenuity / Disingenuousness than Marble Sky and Boys of Summer’s “Rainbow Islands” appear to be taking cues for modern retrofuturists such as Panabrite or kosmische revivalists like La Revelateur and Jonas Reinhardt.

Like on many great compilations there are almost unknown artists next to well-established names. These are either up-and-coming bands and musicians, paving their way to the drone/psych stardom or just obscure names who decided to submit a track here and there and will remain hidden and undiscovered in the future. One can hope it’s the first option here, because music by those obscure projects (whose play count usually revolves around a few dozen on Last.fm) is some of the best on the album – and the most detached from the usual “F&A = drone” association. “Pummel” by Maschalismos is a smokin’ scum rock jam in the style of Heavy Winged, Burnt Hills or Owl Pillage while the Poor Farm’s “Apples, Peaches, Plums, Pie” explore the more freak folk-ish areas with their suffocating, almost shamanistic atmosphere turning into a lo-fi swamp blues improvisation. But for me one of the best tracks on the compilation is “XVIII: The Moon” by Dreamers Awake, a soothing ambient lullaby constructed almost entirely of sparse guitar strumming recalling a less dark Knive by Svarte Greiner and a dubby psychedelic pop of Dark Marks, whose “Jembalaleah” appears to be influenced by latest Peaking Lights.

Board Music II provides a satisfactory and exciting outlook on the condition of the tape scene today, especially of the artists centered around Fangs & Arrows board. It shows that many of them can step outside the limitations and reach out to other genres. Because one sometimes have to take a rest from all the droning drone.

Stream and download the compilation on Bandcamp (contains 6 tracks not available on the cassette

Billiam Wutler Yea

2011-09-07T14:40:00.000+02:00

Strange, crusty psych-electronix with a nice dosage of weird samples from Moscow, Russia. Sometimes droney, sometimes noisy, sometimes just plain funky - Billiam Wutler Yea is sure to bring you into a trancelike state. Another great from the so-called New Weird Russia scene!

Nude Sunrise - Should Be

2011-09-03T02:04:00.000+02:00

Up-and-coming (hopefully) band from Chicago, IL which cleverly wraps classic pop rock standards from the 1950's and 1960's in dense, repetitive psychedelic/kraut soundcapes creating an idiosyncratic style somewhere between Chrome, Pharaoh Overlord and Magic Lantern. SERIOUSLY, listen to the first track and tell me it doesn't sound like a discarded jam session for Sun Araw's On Duty or Magic Lantern's Platoon. Highly recommended.

Should Be (Mediafire / Bancamp streaming)

Buy the tape from Spooky Town Records!