More early (???) weirdness from Jackman, the man behind the curtain known as Organum. This disc consists of three tracks of Organum-like droning backgrounds over which a lot of extraneous material has been grafted. Doors slam, babies gurgle and cough, drum rolls abound... odd. This is the more sample-heavy aspect of Jackman's pysche, i suppose. Unlike much of Organum's best work, this material never really "goes anywhere" (at least not in the accepted sense of the phrase, anyway); Jackman just lays down a background and shuffles samples over the top, occasionally throwing in something a bit different. How well this works depends on your fascination for found-sound and tolerance for the concept of nothing happening. I think this is okay -- Jackman doesn't do shitty work -- but frankly, i prefer his Organum material. I would not recommend this as a place to start for neophytes. Plenty of cool sounds o' destruction in the third track, though....

My understanding on the circumstances surrounding this disc is limited; apparently this is a reissue of a key work by Jackman, more commonly known to the world by his "collective" moniker Organum. (There's supposedly a new Organum disc waiting in the wings, by the way. Sure wish it would hurry up and land.) Beyond that, i know very little. I can say that this is some of Jackman's most interesting work, and by far the most drone-oriented that i've heard (his oevure is so vast, and so equally obscure, that there may well be other drone bits i haven't heard). The pieces essentially consist of long electronic drones augmented by looped sounds (of flutes, perhaps -- that would be my guess), and they are a bit mysterious -- it's hard to tell if they are all excised bits of the same long performance, or remixes, or re-recordings using the same material in different schemes. But Jackman's always been about playing it close to the vest, eh? Regardless, the pieces are all similiar in their instrumentation, mildly different in composition, and heavy on the droning hypnosis bit. The sound is pretty sparse -- he's not throwing a lot of stuff into the mix -- which is probably why it works so well; sometimes the hardest thing to do is to know when to leave well enough alone. Jackman has that skill down cold. A most worthy reissue and maybe even a good introduction into Jackman and the wild, wild world of Organum, even though this technically isn't an Organum disc.

Jarboe -- ANHEDONIAC [Young God]

Jarboe returns with by far her most stunning album yet, an album that links the gloriously grinding slo-mo death-pulse of the early Swans albums to techno stylings and her own radically chameleonlike personality. Jarboe has rarely sounded more darkly demented and sinister as she does on the opening title track, built around what sounds like a broken calliope, which grinds on like a blind idiot god while Jarboe delivers a rant in many voices, like a demented madhouse escapee drafted into service to narrate the opening of a book of extremely dark fairy tales. That abruptly segues into "The Cage," a grinding electronic blast o' fear whose sole lyric is "I want to fuck your soul," repeated endless while Jarboe drones and wails in the background and unsettling noises bump and crash throughout the song. Things calm down a bit with "Sinner," which Jarboe sings in her "pretty" style, until halfway through -- at which point the electronics crash in, surging along in relentless and mechanical fashion, and her delivery changes as the story -- already plenty grim to begin with -- blackens to include betrayal and murder. "Rage" turns out to be a radically EQed remix of "Cage" with different lyrics that end with the lovely observation "loneliness is churning with maggots and womring, and flesh-eating beetles suck a furious rot" (by this point, incidentally, she sounds remarkably like the late Dawn Crosby, former singer for Fear of God and possibly the only person even scarier-sounding than Jarboe).

The oppressiveness recedes a bit about midway through the album with "Sacred Disciple Wannabe," a heavily-technoish song anchored by an endless synth drone and Jarboe's mournful singing. That doesn't last long, though -- the brief and mysterious "Mississippi" (in which Jarboe reveals yet another forbidding voice) fades into "Burnt," a thick mountain of aggression that finally gives way to "Anhedoniac Bottle," a remixed version of the title track minus most of the bizarre stuff. Things gets really interesting with "Circles in Red Dirt" and its companion piece "Panasonic in Red Dirt" -- the first is a droning tale of medieval love and doom that gradually builds, layer by layer, into a lush and heavily layered opus of some grandeur, while the second is a radical deconstruction of it by Panasonic, possibly the most amazing thing on an already mind-pillaging album. After that, the low-key "Honey" and eerie "I'm a Killer"are almost anticlimactic (notice i said almost).

The best thing about this album is that it should finally (God hopes) put to rest all the foolishness about Jarboe being nothing more than an appendage of Gira's vision or a detriment to the late Swans. As the album makes obvious, she's capable of going much further out on a limb that Swans were usually wont to do, and her musicial vision is actually far more forbidding than Gira's these days (jsut one more reason, probably, that Swans called it quits). The bottom line is that this unquestionably Jarboe's best solo disc, and maybe the most violent, frightening thing released on Young God in eons, and definitely something to hear. Although hearing it may be tricky: Given Jarboe's growing distaste for the commercial music industry (not surprising, given the number of times she and Gira have been screwed), she's making this one available only through the Swans web site in a limited edition of 1500 copies. Then, too, given the controversial nature of the album graphics (and graphic is definitely the word here -- just ask the original printing company that refused to print the artwork, thus delaying the CD's release), it's rather unlikely that you'll ever see this available in stores. My advice? Go to the Swans site right now and pony up the $$$ to make this yours. No way around it, it's a must-own thing, mon....

Yes, I know, it's hard as fuck to find this in the States (Dry Run is a UK-only label, and apparently one with less than swank distribution on this side of the big blue ocean), but you should seek it out anyway. The first outing for Justin Broadrick in the wake of Godflesh's abrupt collapse is worth the wait, although I get the feeling this is kind of a stopgap effort until the full-length album (recorded with a full band, unlike here, where it's just Justin and a drum machine) appears on Hydrahead early next year. This ep consists of exactly two songs, each approximately twenty minutes long; "heart ache" opens with grossly dissonant slo-mo chords until the drum machine comes in, at which point the song begins its journey through movements of avalanche sound and machine beats. There are times when the sound approximates the heavy, crushing fury of early Godflesh releases, but there's also a lot of strange noises and movements -- crushing grind-riffs mutate into chanting and then into genuinely beautiful harmonic guitar washes. The unlisted "hidden" track at the end of Godflesh's final album HYMNS definitely points toward the sound happening here, only here the possibilities that were hinted at in that recording are more fully realized. The main difference between Jesu and Godflesh is not necessarily one of sound, but of intent -- where Godflesh was frequently about darkness, paranoia, and rage, the music here is more benign, focused more on the moments of beauty that appear between the grinding ugliness of humanity. It's a spiritual journey, one more concerned with emotions deeper and more complex than mere anger -- the photographs of empty fields and empty churches are there for a reason, dig?

Which is not to say there aren't moments of stark, naked heaviness (they just aren't the main point anymore). The most startling thing on the disc is the brooding piano that opens "ruined" -- slow, brooding chords and a minimalist melody that grows more complex over several minutes, until the chords drop out, leaving only the melody... then the pattern reverses itself, with the melody beginning to diminish as the chords become more dominant. Then, as the last notes of the piano melody die away, a growing rumble of amp doom rises... and rises... and then an utterly monolithic guitar riff obliterates everything in its path. Steadily, surely, the song grows more thunderous, even as Justin (bathed in highly repetitive reverb) intones the near-indecipherable lyrics. This is the song where it really becomes obvious that while he's certainly capable of being heavier than lead when he feels like it, his approach to heaviness has changed dramatically. The riffs (heavy or harmonic) in this and the first song, too, are constructed very differently than most of Godflesh's riffs -- not so differently as to dramatically alter the man's unmistakable sound, but different enough to make Jesu a very different beast. It's interesting to see him working with such long songs, and that he can keep it moving without bogging down, in spite of his faithfulness to the core tenets of minimalism (namely, play as little as possible and as many times as possible).

Yee, it's going to be a long wait for the full-length....

The title is an in-joke -- he's a former Euroboy and came to Ulver's attention while working as a session man on the seocnd Kare and the Cavemen album -- but there's nothing funny about this album, which is either the album the Beatles should have made after the white album or the one Black Sabbath should have made instead of TECHNICAL ECSTACY, i'm not sure which. The kind of company he's keeping on this album should tell you something about the quality level here -- Anders Bortne of Norwegian Grammy nominees Whopper sings on most tracks, two former Euroboys appear on bass and organ, and members of Turbonegro, Gluecifer, and Ulver show up on various tracks. As for the sound, well, Kare's main focus is drumming and he's equally invfluenced by Can and Black Sabbath, so he's certainly not lacking in the range department. As with all Jester releases, it sounds like it was recorded with exacting precision, which make the nuances easily discernible. Kare calls it "psychedelic blues" -- i call it a droning superlink between pop and metal at the psychedelic intersection.

The album starts in a promising psych vein as "Captain Trips" fades in with warbling organ, throbbing tape noises, and a serious drone -- like a darker-toned version of Tangerine Dream -- and gradually morphs into a blaring pop-metal song that could have come from a Beatles album (post-REVOLVER). The drums are pure PARANOID-era Sabbath, though. "Channel Five" begins with a basic riff and a beat repeated endlessly and builds, instrument by instrument, chime by chime and drone by drone, into a ringing wall of sound. By the time they start to seriously rock the house, they have at least two or three guitarists (inlcuding Kasper Pedersen on slide), a jazz piano, horns, and backup singers all waffling away. Kare establishes a fondness for mantra-like repetition and cascading waves of sound 'n drone early on, and "Channel Five" is probably my favorite track here. If you can imagine the build of the Beatle's "Hey Jude" transformed into heavy metal minimalism with a gospel choir, you can get an inkling of why this track alone beats the pee out of anything nu-metal or top-40 bullshit is ever going to come up with.

By the time we get to "Sunshine Blues," i start to wonder if they and Cheer-Accident share some of the same influences -- this track would have fit in well (in structure if not necessarily in tone) on THE WHY ALBUM (itself a perverse tribute to their Beatles influence). This is what he means by the psychedelic blues: soulful guitar and straight-ahead rock drumming that has more in common with progressive rock than anything else. By contrast, "Frank Furius" is an agitated mechanical punk dirge somewhere between early PiL and The Fall, with startling and sinister lyrics: "My teacher sent a letter home / They wouldn't leave my mom alone / They blocked the street and screamed...." Relentless, monochromatic thunder punctuated by bursts of titanic and unpredictable noise/efx guitar provide the backdrop for the crazed singer to work his way up to roaring over and over "I'm blowing minds, blowing minds out with a hose!" until the song abruptly ends. This is the sound of growing hysteria with the line way too tight and starting to fray.... "Mission To Cure My Condition" is a pretty swank semi-funk vamp with ringing star-drone guitars, all air and light and twinkling radiance over a persistent beat. The extended breakdown is filled with all sorts of peculiar noises -- birdcalls, guitar chatter, who knows what else -- and the beat never lets up. Surreal and yummy and good for your tummy.

"Love Report" begins with reverberating ice-drone keyboards, then suddenly shifts gears -- an actual song -- a pop song! -- is superimposed over those ice-drone ivories, and when the vox appear, so does a twangy minimalist guitar borrowed from Morricone's stable of boss tones. Like everything here, it manages to be surreal and yet insanely catchy at the same time; even though the backbone is intensely minimal, with beats and other elements that repeat for long stretches, the other melodies and counterpoints from other instruments fill out the sound with enough variety to keep it from lapsing into tedium. The final track, "Dark of Heartness," evolves from a dark chant into a clattering engine of ritual possession, as a persistent beat and a growing battery of sounds and effects construct a machine of sound and energy overrun with alien strains of melody. Like Hawkwind with better sound, the sound of the interstellar overdrive harnessed in the service of dark pop music.

This is one of the best albums of the issue -- one of the best albums i've heard in a long time, period. This man (a complete unknown to me up to this moment) is a fucking genius. Just more evidence that Jester may well be one of the most underrated sources of incredibly new and different sounds -- it says a lot about them, i think, that everything i've heard from them so far is consistent with the quality of this release. I'll be listening to this one for a good while to come, seeking out its secrets....

Another fine album by this black metal mastermind. Much more furious drums and guitar than in previous releases, this is for true underground black metal fans only -- no posers. We can't even talk about individual songs because the entire album is outstanding as a whole, one riff-roaring song after another -- no sucker punches. This release is not comparable to many other current black metal bands because here we have an extremely dedicated and truly brutal musician. I can't even compare him to the greats because is so totally doing his own thing. Bloody hails to No Colours for putting out this 180-gram vinyl -- limited to 666 copies. That's 180-GRAM VINYL, MOTHERFUCKER! He has dropped out of the "scene," so good luck finding any new material he might have coming out. DEATH TO FALSE METAL! [TTBMD]

Don't be fooled by the drone-o-rific quasi-industrial opening bit -- once it finally segues into "Time Has Come," it becomes obvious that this is a metal band. In fact, they sound to me an awful lot like early Pro-Pain, only with more listenable songs and a guitarist who knows better than to squeal blindly all over the place. The cover is a confusing disaster of bad metal cliches and confusion about what the band's name really is, which is too bad, because the disc itself is actually not bad at all. The band may be in the dark about the packaging, but on the songs they have the good sense to come up with really hep riffs, then play them lots and lots of times. I call this a good fucking plan. That's especially true of "Quest For Comfort" (which I gather is about why we'd all be better off burning our credit cards), which basically has one amazing riff that they never wander too far from. They can play pretty parts too, as they demonstrate on "No Good-Byes," one of the better ones on the disc. They also have a fair number of samples happening; one of them introduces "Let Us Kill," which is filled with more swell riffs and a lot o' busy (busy!) drumming, just the way a good metal song should be. "Dance in the Fire" and "Pain" have plenty of highly-listenable riffs, and while the packaging and recording are pretty no-frills, the band sounds well-rehearsed and there's plenty of energy happening here. The drummer is also the singer, which should make for some real interesting live shows....

I know nada about these boys except that they are somehow in Totimoshi's orbit, which is a big point in their favor. (The Totimoshi connection explains "Tonymegshi," natch.) This arrived literally at the last fucking minute so i can't get real detailed here on such limited opportunity for playback, but initial spins reveal mondo heaviness and math-rock precision, plus -- this is key -- lots of fucking shouting 'n shit, especially on "Fellatio." (Now there's a title i can hang with.) The math-rock thing is definitely in effect -- structurally (especially in the riffs 'n drum patterns) they call to mind the likes of Shellac, Slint, and other math-rock demijazzsquatthrusters, only twitching with a fondness for squiggly riffs 'n grinding heaviness. Tonally they're metal, dude -- their basic credo appears to be big amps + tortured riffs + everything on 11 = a real good time. But it's all scientific-like, man... riffs with joints that writhe in precise time, dense clouds o' controlled fuzz... implacable thunder (especially on "Tonymegshi") and endless robot riffing at tinnitus-inducing volume. I like "Tres Futbol del Mono I" because it sounds like slowed-down Killing Joke played doom-style with lots of spaced-out psychedelic chiming guitar floating somewhere over the fuzzed-out riff death. "Case in Progress" is a bit more down-to-earth and violently jet-propelled, mostly a handful o' riffs and a lot of shouting, all of it insanely loud and distorted and blown up bigger than life. "Gasmouth" is slower and more revealing of their Sabbath roots, but with complicated riffs 'n beats like something from the last Zeni Geva album, all lurching and stop 'n start moments and other weirdness. There are moments of jazzy motions in "Claxton II" that are broken up by pure unbridled heaviness (and of course, lots of shouting). Heavy as Chris Farley's coffin and made from die-tool cast precision parts, suitable for consumption at high volume. If the swell guys in Totimoshi think they're swank, don't you think you should find out why? Hmmmm?

The Killcrane return with yet more bludgeoning math-metal, opening with a feedback dirge and the occasional flurry of percussion on "intro" before seguing into the thundering crawl of "the slow decay" -- which itself turns into a racing slab of menace. This disc is different from their earlier releases; my memory's a tad shaky, but I'm pretty sure the guy beating up the drum kit this time is a new addition, and their sound has become leaner, more straightforward, and less reliant on the tricky-riff thing. Which is not to say that they'll be mistaken for AC/DC anytime soon -- there's still plenty of proggy moves in their seismic assault, and their penchant for velocity makes them far more forbidding than anything you're likely to hear on the radio. The songs are long (mostly between seven and nine minutes), allowing plenty of time for radical shifts in direction, tempo, riffs, mass, velocity, defiance of gravity.... The lurching properties of sludge-rock in the vein of Eyehategod and Grief shows up in "brown," while "locust blanket" combines rapid-fire drumming and stun-guitar riffs. There's even a bluesy element to the guitar lines that shows up from time to time, especially on "coital abyss," but as "die, stabbed" proves, they haven't forgotten their origins as a stop 'n start machine weaned on sick riffs and weird time changes. They've just streamlined the engine and torqued it for more horsepower, that's all. Their evolution doesn't stray far enough from the earlier stuff to scare away the devoted, but by clarifying the sound and making it just a tad simpler (and thus marginally easier to digest), they may well win over a whole new boatload of head-shakin', math-lovin' metal geeks. The men of the Killcrane do not embarrass themselves here.