røb - røb

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

No Mind Meditation - Malaise 1 & 2

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

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

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)

Lighthealer Stalking Flashplayer, the newest LP from the German noise rock trio Nicoffeine is a disorienting, amphetamine-fueled black mass followed by the world’s hardest coming down. Any sort of gentle introduction is an alien concept to these guys. There is no quiet guitar part, no gradual intensification or at least a fade-in. The very first track, “Holy Hell of a Himmel” throws the listener into the ultra-distorted, breakdown-filled mental breakdown of highest order, changing pitches and shifts with mathematical precision, obscuring the guitar tones to the point it becomes a thunderous bass propelled, sludgy shoegaze. Free noise units such as Gravitar, Heavy Winged or pre-Boss era Magik Markers might be used as points of reference, but while for most of the time there were elements of post-rock, free improv or straight-down psychedelic beauty hidden under walls of feedback and distortion those bands so abundantly use (or used), there is none of that in Nicoffeine’s music. The Germans’ music is infused with a sort of nihilist, hardcore punk or maybe even grindcore negativity, which they cleverly deconstruct and re-shape for their needs.

            It takes a few listens to notice that most of the tracks are actually constructed and well thought out compositions and not just carnage for the sake of carnage. Once we get over the incredibly overdriven, high-pitched guitar destruction, one can notice how tight the bass is with the brutal, fast notes and the seemingly anarchist drumming isn’t all that anarchist after all and the only thing keeping the album from becoming a possible noise punk gem is the length of the tracks and the lack of vocals. The shorter, 3-4 minute tracks share space with three monsters, each well over 10 minutes long, with the very last track, the 16-minute noise/drone behemoth “I Always Shine When You Say Nein” devolving into a monstrous, cavernous amplifier hangover not far away from The Dead C’s “Bury (Refutatio Omnium Haeresium)” off their Trapdoor Fucking Exit.

            The brutal and chaotic music of Nicoffeine is accompanied with a simple, yet effective packaging: what you see above is not the actual LP cover, but rather one of two inserts  containing information 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 pure blackness of the cover reflects the pure blackness of the sound and the white vinyl signifies the amphetamine craze of the music on the format, echoing Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat, which indeed was a hymn to the white powder. The possible VU inspirations are further reflected by the track titles, which often allude to the darker/more twisted sides of the human sexual psyche, cleverly referencing fetishes (“Milf & Honey”, “Handjobs & Runaways”, or “Motocrossdress” off their Admiring Those Artholes LP). Nicoffeine is something to be watched and heard – the ferocity of their sound really puts them somewhere above most of their contemporaries in a scene where 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stunned Records ended their career with a bang; both parties present their own, unique take on the vast and multi-faceted genre of psychedelic folk. Plankton Wat is the more conservative side, with distinctive guitar tones and relatively simple style, putting focus on melody and an easy flow. Super Minerals go in the opposite, much more liberal direction, often blurring the line between traditional instruments and electronics, rising confusion about the source of sound, blending everything into an abstract, mapless and shapeless jam without dissolving into unnecessary chaos. What also makes Super Minerals one of the most exciting bands on the psychedelic scene right now is their ability to effortlessly change their sound and ideology on each album. One can only wait what new ideas and styles the future brings for the Minerals (who I hope will last longer than the gone-too-soon tropical 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

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

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

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

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 - █▄▄█

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

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

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

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

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