It's been a long, long, lonely time, hasn't it? The doom triumvirate fronted by guitarist Lori S. has been around a good long while for a band with such a miniscule catalog -- their self-titled debut 10" ep came out in 1994, and since then they've only managed to issue two full-length albums (ZOROASTER, a swell album with iffy production, and BUSSE WOODS, one of the most brilliant doom albums ever recorded, with great production) and two splits (one with the totally rockin' Melvins side project Altamont, and one with the way-overrated Mystic Crewe of Clearlight). The second split came out in 2000 on Man's Ruin, and shortly after that Frank Kozik's grand experiment in musical hubris and fiscal mismanagement cratered, leaving the band in limbo. For a long fucking time, dude. Like, bummer. Fortunately the dudes at Small Stone know a bad-ass band when they see and hear one, and since they appear to have their turds together, not only is the magnificent BUSSE WOODS back in print (with mildly modified art and bonus tracks), but they have enabled the band to bless us with a third full-length release. If you've heard the band before, then you know what to expect: Songs about cycles, cars, and hippie shit, all cloaked in layers of fuzz and reverb, with enough low end to dislocate your eyes from the sockets. Billy Anderson's on board again for the recording and production, Lori's voice is still a droning wail soaked in so much reverb that she sounds like she's yelling somewhere off in the bushes, and Joey Osbourne's drum thunder still sounds like lead pipes falling off a flatbed truck in slow motion; the only thing particularly "new" is bassist Guy Pinhas, the latest in a constant stream of four-string thumpers, who made his debut with the band on the last split. Oddly enough, this album sounds more like BUSSE WOODS than the split (where Brian Hill was responsible for the four-string levitation), but that's okay with me, because BUSSE WOODS is a hell of a lot better than either of the splits. Osbourne's drumming is a tad busier this time around, but otherwise everything on this album sounds like it could have been recorded during the BUSSE WOODS sessions. This is a good thing. Several of the songs clock in around six or seven minutes, and "War of the Mind" is nearly twelve minutes long, so there's plenty of opportunity for Lori to waffle on fractured leads and cyclical riffs. There's nothing quite as instantly riveting as "Tank" (from the first full-length) or "39 Lashes" (from BUSSE WOODS), but overall it's far more consistent than anything they've done outside of BUSSE WOODS. Bonus points for the nifty and mysterious artwork, which gets a lot of mileage out of the trinity concept. You need this. Deep down in your shriveled raisin soul, you know you need this real, real bad, okay? More mind-bending sounds from Oakland! Is Oakland the new Seattle? By the unused balls o' Ra, I sure hope not.... At any rate, Aemae (that's "ah mah" to you, boyee) is one Brandon Nickell, and the tunes on this mysterious-sounding album are the result of experiments in "vocal resonance and digital formant manipulation," all synthesized through the use of self-written software. It's all about the frequencies, mon! Apparently the idea was to create a "dark electronic exploration into frequency space" that is completely created in the digital domain, with no use of field recordings, vocals, or samples. Given that Aemae was one of the participants on the Dielectric release DIELECTRIC MINIMALIST ALL-STARS: [I!] (which rocked THE WIRE'S staff so hard they called it one of the top ten electronic releases of last year, if you care about these things), it's hardly surprising that there's a significant drone element at work here. For a purely electronic release, it sure doesn't sound that way -- the ghost noises reverberating through "Walking Along Edges" sound more like the processed sound of cymbals, wind in the trees, and trains than anything you'd automatically associate with electronica, and "41667" sounds like a field full of alarm clocks going off as the earth's firmament shifts and settles. "Translucent Tongues" sounds a bit closer to the expectations of electronic sound, with what sounds like a toy piano being disassembled in a haze of glitch noises, while the title track sounds like a devolved experiment involving slowed-down tapes, screech noise, and dismembered snatches of ambient sampling. "Cryptocrystalline" is one of the stranger ones -- snatches of glitch noise and silence lead into bell-like tones and abrupt, jarring noises in the background that finally resolve into something that sounds like wind rattling through pipes. "End Sentinel" could easily pass for a field recording of traffic in the distance blowing past a faraway construction site, or perhaps the shelling in a war zone as recorded from a rooftop outside the city. The bottom line is that very little of this perverse experiment sounds like what you would expect of a purely-electronic release; it's also often quite soothing in its ambience and its reliance on incidental sound. The result is an unusual and intriguing foray into the space where ambient sound and digital technology meet. This disc is a collaboration between ambient-drone masters Austere and another band I'm unfamiliar with, Abstract Audio Systems. As I understand it, Austere provided the sound materials, then AAS shaped the material into six dronescapes. The first, "exo-bio," is primarily a moody wash of ambient sound and droning keyboards leavened with sporadic bursts of glitch electronics and unusual noises; "blu" consists of shimmering, high end drones that ebb and fade, with a minimalist sensibility at work. On "blackfilm" the clouds of drone are thicker, more like giant gusts of wind, with some of the glitch electronics and squalling metallic sounds creeping in from time to time. A rhythmic pulse is incorporated into the sonic landscape in "unquiet," one that slows in speed and becomes more subterranean as the piece progresses. There's a noisy cyclotron and something vaguely resembling a fractured techno rhythm in "atul," and the final track, "evergone," features beeping electro-rhythms that fade in and out of the ambient wash and a mysterious sample of someone urgently hectoring the masses. Austere's usual power-ambient drone is broken up somewhat by the electronic experiments of AAS, with interesting and hypnotic results. The result is an amplification of Austere's minimalist drone into a somewhat more active field of sound. Clouds of drone mutated by electronic frippery and moments of repetitive rhythm snippets -- nice. Fans of immense keyboard drone will want to check this out. I have no idea who Stephen Philips is, but Austere have enlisted his assistance here to re-jigger their earlier album FADE. The disc doesn't provide a track listing and there's only three tracks here as opposed to the original album's four, but the results are just as drone-o-rific as the original release. Philips is credited with "mystical demixification" of Austere's original source material, and as far as I can tell, his main contribution here is in making the drones even thicker and deeper. For the uninitiated, Austere is a duo that prefers to remain largely anonymous and let the music do the talking -- all of their releases, and this is no exception, are heavy on thick slabs of majestic, forbidding keyboard drone. The tracks on this album tend to greatly resemble early Tangerine Dream, but unfold at a far more glacial pace, frequently sounding like an arctic wind howling through an endless procession of glaciers, calling up images of a perpetually slow-moving storm across Antarctica, in the land of endless twilight. The three tracks on here are also quite long -- the first two creep up toward twenty minutes and the last one is over thirty minutes long -- giving the song structures plenty of time to unfold in slow, minimalist fashion and plenty of time for the listener to drift off into the shuddering sonic ether. Play this back to back with the Mingo disc reviewed elsewhere this issue and you may never come back down to the ground. Now this is what I call bizarre shit -- ten tracks on a three-inch cd-r of hideously mutant noise and "vocalist" Kid Pow Wow shrieking like an R&B stylist on crack, sharing disturbed vignettes over violent swatches of junk noise and distortion. Cut-up sound, distorted vocals (hell, distorted everything), crazed electronics abuse, microphone feedback, and jarring texture shifts result in a seriously violent and unnerving listening experience. The entire hellish audio package is highly reminiscent of To Live and Shave in L.A., and the cryptic poop sheet cites the likes of Nautical Almanac, Dizzee Missy, Hanatarash, Ghostface, and other purveyors of sonic terrorism as influences. It's definitely not easy listening, to say the least. Got to dig those savage layers of junk noise and glitch electronics, baby... and it doesn't hurt that the Kid sounds genuinely possessed. If you seek recognizable melodies, riffs, rhythms, or anything approaching sanity, you are looking in the wrong place, o pitiful grasshopper. This is for chaotic noise-hell swingers, okay? Play it for your grandmother, see what she thinks. (Hint: She'll probably start sending you lots of Chick tracts and Bibles afterwards, not to mention look at you real funny....) The opening track "Crow For Day" makes it real, real clear where they're coming from -- a titanic wall of scorched-earth noise-drone and pokey drums way in the background call up pleasantly fuzzed-out images of early Skullflower and mid-period Earth, while vocalist Leslie offers a ghostly counterpoint to the shuddering wall of death drone. "Brindle" is even louder and more catastrophic, at least in the beginning -- then the feedback from Max's highly-abused guitar recedes enough to reveal the primitive thunder of Steve's slo-mo drum plod. By the time Max finishes eviscerating your ears with high-pitched bell tones drenched in distortion on "Dehlilahia," your ears will beg for relief.... The groaning piles of drone on "Seed" are so violent that it's a miracle they were able to get them down on tape intact (recording on half-inch tape probably helped), and the guitar is so monstrous that you can barely hear Leslie and Steve somewhere under there. Midway through the album, they back off from the godlike overkill on "Morning Jewel," a brief snippet of ambient field recordings and sonic effluvia that segues into "Yellow Sky," where the ambient sound is supplanted by an immense drone with the texture of a pipe organ being fed through a Leslie cabinet. That lazy, revolving drone is joined by a squealing, feedback-drenched guitar about three minutes into the piece, and from that point the guitar drifts in and out of the monochord drone in a lovely and spacy fashion. The violent buzzdeath returns in full force on "Blood A Necklace," and the closing track "Flowerpot" isn't far behind it in sonic bludgeoning power, driven by crashing and distorted cymbals as the subterranean drone of doom lumbers into the sonic landscape, threatening to blow out the speakers as Leslie does her thing beneath a veil of feedback. Like, yow. Fans of Skullflower, Earth, and Sunn O))) need to hear this, even if they don't know it yet. Now all we need is to put them on a bill with those three bands and watch the ground split open.... The band gets mondo bonus points right off the bat for the swell, swell artwork. Sleazy girls in fetishwear and gasmasks = excellent taste, right? I think all albums should have covers featuring sleazy girls in fetishwear and gasmasks. Anything by Garth Brooks or Britney Spears or those hideous ass-monkeys in Velvet Revolver could be immediately improved by artwork with sleazy girls in fetishwear and gasmasks, because then you could just throw the rest of the album away and keep the cover. It is an idea whose time has come! (The artwork comes courtesy of Missy Graham, just in case you'd like to see more examples of sleaze.) So I guess now you're going to want to know about the actual music on the disc that comes with the swank cover, huh? Well, that turns out to be four tracks from the forthcoming full-length album PALLID INCOMPETENCE NAILED TO A TREE, all deliberately rude, lo-fi techno-trash conjured into existence by the perverted duo of Vik Kaos (vox, guitar, etc.) and Zebolzog (bass and programming). Machine rhythms and grotesque synth hell form the bedrock of "forward to rapture," over which Vik bleats rude sentiments about religion and the world in a distorted rasp. There's an even more technoish feel to "weapons in space," but the insanely catchy "just can't stop" -- sounding like a mad cross between Devo and Foetus, maybe -- is the EP's secret weapon. This sinister weapon must not be allowed to fall into evil hands... oh wait, I think maybe it already has. WUPS! We're all fucked now, hoo-hah! Seriously, the first time you hear this you will be bouncing all around the room like a crack-addled monkey. The final track, "zebolwaltz," is (amazingly enough) a synth-driven waltz with some really jarring movements toward the end. Coolness incarnate, and I sure hope the band sends the full-length along for review when it comes out. Candye's a California girl right out of David Lee Roth's biggest and baddest wet dream, to be sure, but Austin (home of Clifford Antone's record label Antone Records, who released her first album over a decade ago) might as well be her second home, which has a lot to do with why she recorded this album here. And what an album it is! Produced by Mark "Kaz" Kazanoff and mastered at Terra Nova Mastering Lab (home of Grammy-award winning mastering god Jerry Tubb), with a stellar roster of talent including Gary Primich (harmonica), Riley Osbourn (piano, organ, Wurlitzer), Preston Hubbard (bass), Jeff Ross (guitar), and Damien Llanes (drums), this is a great-sounding album from start to finish. Candye was apparently a country and western singer before switching to the blues, which is amazing to me, since she has a big, brassy voice tailor-made for the blues. That big voice is very much in evidence all over this album, and it doesn't matter what she's singing -- barn-burning blues rock ("White Trash Girl," "Estrogen Bomb," and "Queen of the Wrecking Ball"), jumpin' jive tracks like"Big Fat Mamas Are Back in Style" and "Work What You Got," ballads like "What Happened to the Girl" and "Misunderstood," or naughtier fare like "Mistress Carmen" and "Masturbation Blues" -- whatever it is sounds great when Candye's belting it out, dig? Part of what makes this album such a standout is that the material is so varied, and all fourteen songs are excellent, played perfectly by guys who are undisputed masters at what they do. But make no mistake, Candye's definitely the one is charge, and her voice is way up in the mix, right where it should be. This is a great album and you should own this. Period. Bonus props to Scrojo for the eye-popping artwork. I defy you not to listen to a band with the balls to call itself King Shit. Seriously, I dare you. Of course, you'll have to listen fast, since this may be the briefest single ever at seventeen seconds. (I'm guessing someone spent a lot of his or her teenage years playing Napalm Death's first album over and over until he or she forgot that the songs on SCUM are abnormally short.) Someone intones, "Family Channel, ABC, Leno, Oprah. No... Oprah." The rest of the song is a lot of low-end buzzsaw guitar and howling and chaos. I guess they really don't like Oprah, huh? One thing is for sure -- you can't accuse them of not getting to the point, or even overstaying their welcome.... They have one of the greatest names in history, they're heavy as hell, and you can't understand a damn thing they're saying -- what more do you want? The seven tracks here are mainly a festering quagmire of sickness, alternating low-end grind heaviness with crazed blast-beat madness and burying everything in piles of noise. Plus their "songs" are generally real short: "politikidal" is nothing but a short and caustic snippet of political commentary, followed by "sloppy seconds," less than a minute of spastic freakout mania featuring heavy guitar abuse and lots of yelling. The real heavy grind takes place on tracks like "westward (w)ho(re)" and "poor posturing," where the yelling is buried under fuzzed-out subsonic bass hell, pounding drums, and other forms of ugliness. There's another short burst of commentary ("politifuckyou"), followed by a lot of crazed thrashing about and more shouting on "compulsively lying to save face," all buried under grotesquely barbaric distort-o-bass thrusting (UNH! UNH! UNH!). The final track, "the king is dead," opens with peculiar squealing cyclotron noises worthy of recently-departed Voivod guitarist Piggy (RIP) that abruptly give way to what sounds like a man being raped and butchered with a chainsaw in a cement mixer while hostile natives pound on the shell with blunt objects. This is the sound of Godflesh and Dystopia after smoking too much crack and crystal meth and looking for people to hurt with a lead pipe. Your mother will not approve. Bonus points for the fact that the last song is mostly a lot of anguished screaming while people pound on things hard enough to break them. And, of course, massive bonus points for their name. Pounding electronica about trilobites, spam email, machines hooked on dope, and suburban dinosaurs. Okay... this is strange stuff, mon.... The beats are often of the hyperkinetic variety, the lyrics are sardonic and obsessed wtih peculiar takes on pop culture, love, and money, and it frequently sounds like way too many things are happening at once and threatening to melt down in an electronic overload. The disc's setup is interesting: There are couplets of songs on various subjects, and those back-to-back songs are separated by short bursts of trilobite-fu, brief snippets of electronica with titles referencing (or inferring) the trilobite connection ("Memoirs of a Trilobite," "Trilowhat?," several edits / remixes of the first track, and so on). The remaining songs are grouped, two a time, by subject: love, rap, self-loathing, technology, rock, money, sex, and the world. The songs are a varied set of techno / rap / electronica outings with twisted lyrics referencing nanobots, the destruction of rock, estrogen, death, shopping, and more. The lyrics are often R-rated, and sometimes outlandishly bizarre, but generally amusing and somewhat thought-provoking. Throughout it all, the beat reigns surpreme, even when the electronic elements are drifting off in a dozen different directions. Strange, hallucinatory stuff indeed. It's the kind of thing that is best experienced by hearing it as opposed to reading about it, too. What we have here is a collection of thirteen solo piano pieces, all of an unpredictable and experimental nature. McDonas is an excellent player with oodles of technique practically oozing out of his pores -- someone get that man a hanky! -- but he's no stodgy slave to form, as evidenced not only by his wild piano runs but in titles like "death is our only deadline," "the poor are canaries and prophets," and "living is the strangest thing i've done" (amen to that, brutah). His playing skills are sufficiently advanced enough that at times he sounds like he's playing speed metal on a grand piano, with enough force that you can just imagine the keys flying in all directions... but even when he slows down, it's obvious that his sensibilities lie in the avant-garde and sudden shifts in direction. It's nice that the recording is good enough to capture not only the mad rush of keys taking flight, but also the lingering reverberation of sustained notes and chords (such as the more important moments of "death is our only deadline"). It would be interesting to see him play, to actually see what he's doing, because it sounds to me like he's making some bizarre leaps around the keyboard at times; there are many, many moments when it sounds like his two hands are working completely independently, with each hand blazing through totally different melodic progressions that nevertheless somehow manage to hang together. At other times it sounds like his hands are working in tandem to complete progressions that are dizzying in their technical complexity. No matter what he's doing, however, he remains firmly in control of the keyboard, clearly articulating all the notes even at terminal velocity -- sloppy he ain't. He is also capable of truly disorienting pieces like "i know that i think that i feel," where he manages to play totally different progressions with each hand moving at wildly different speeds. While technical virtuosity is obviously a requirement here, none of it sounds stuffy or forced -- in fact, he frequently sounds like he's having a lot of fun, especially when he's executing complex runs and progressions that sound like they shouldn't even be humanly possible. The sound he gets is highly reminiscent of the brilliant (and brilliantly obscure) Thymme Jones album WHILE, although the intent and final sound of that album is radically different. The thirteen improvisations here are evidence of a really different approach to the piano, to say the least. The cats at Windham Hill would probably cringe in horror at what he's doing here, but Sun Ra would have liked this guy. Highly recommended for those interested in hearing the extremes of possibility when one man with unusual ideas sits down to beat the hell out of a piano. There's some serious Tangerine Dream worship going on here, dudes and dudettes. This is space music for the new drone generation, though -- thick and layered, with percussion placed so deftly in the background that it takes you a while to even realize it's there under the cloudlike layers of synth bleat. Mingo (the band is just one drone-obsessed guy) makes no secret in the poop sheet that he was weaned on the likes of the aforementioned krautgods (along with Steve Roach and Numina), and the album lives up to its influences. The six tracks here (including the fifteen-minute closing epic "once and future world") are dreamy, droning slabs of thickly-layered space rock -- the good kind, the beautiful and shimmering kind, with no vocals or extra frippery to clutter up the soaring sheets of drone. It's been a while since I heard any of Tangerine Dream's albums, but this reminds me greatly of their early albums on Virgin, particularly PHAEDRA and parts of STRATOSFEAR. The songs are all vast expanses of grand synth lines and drone in which Mingo erects languid cathedrals of sound, sometimes with a beat hovering somewhere in the background, sometimes far more freeform. Everything sounds like it was recorded in a space station drifting far above the planets with the sun shining brilliantly through one lonely porthole. Mere words cannot convey how absolutely enormous this album sounds. Rarely has a band other than Tangerine Dream, Steve Roach, or Voice of Eye managed to sound this dramatically spaced-out and amazingly intense at the same time. Calling all droneheads... calling all droneheads... Spaceship Mingo is preparing to dock, won't you come and listen? Someone needs to explain to me again why this band remains unsigned. (Well, as I understand it, a few labels have tried to sign the band, but those labels were run by people just a tad too flaky for the band's taste.) The band (Carol: vox / guitar, Caitlin: guitar, Nicole: bass, plus a revolving door of tub-thumpers, the latest one being Pete) went to a lot of trouble to make this album (which was recorded at Uncle Punchy's in Silver Springs, Maryland -- Clutch dude Mick Schauer played the organ on one track and Josh Freese played drums on two songs); the least somebody could do is have the good sense to release the thing, eh? Their songs are insanely catchy and filled with frantic and tightly-wound corkscrew riffs, the band is so tight they routinely stop and start on a dime through lurching rhythms that your average nu-metal band only wishes it could match, and singer Carol sounds like a disaffected cross between Deborah Harry at her most ironic and Deborah Iyall on Quaaludes. They're one of the few stoner rock bands that doesn't slavishly imitate Black Sabbath or Kyuss, and while I suspect their influences are all over the map, they maintain a consistent, immediately recognizable sound all the way through the album. The only band I can think of right now they even remotely resemble is Clutch (mainly in their fondness for certain kinds of riffs), which might explain why they frequently open for that band when Clutch tours Canada. (Did I mention that the Cats are Canadian? They are from Toronto, to be exact.) One song is a remake from their 2000 "Jager Girl" EP, and the rest is brand-new material; all of it is far more swank than 99% of the usual Sabbath / Kyuss / Grand Funk worship that passes for the entire stoner rock genre these days. Do they bring the rock? They bring the rock in big bottles of Jagermeister. So... someone needs to explain to me again why this band remains unsigned. (Or did I mention that already?) The husband and wife duo of Lucas and Catherine Tizon, collectively known as Plume, was originally based in London before recently moving to the U.S. and settling in Jersey City, NJ, of all places. (Perhaps NYC was a tad expensive for their tastes -- I know it sure was for mine when my now-ex-wife tried to talk me into moving there several years ago.) Originally an electro-industrial duo with rock leanings, they have evolved into a trashy electrorock experience, in part due to the efforts of sonic collaborators Rob Solway and drummer Mark Challans (Fraud, ex-Amp). Their latest album is very much inspired by the post-9/11 vibe of NYC, and the songs are a series of thumping, minimalist trance-rock vignettes in the vein of Suicide or the better (and more electronic) work of Throbbing Gristle spinoff Chris and Cosey. The sound is jumpy, unnerving, and often deliberately low-fi. What's nice about this album is how they manage to weld the distinctly European sound and feel of cold trance-rock masters like Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Coil, and Psychic TV with a more uniquely American rock feel. They are helped immensely in this attempt by Solway's sinister, stuttering distorto-guitar blasts and their willingness to dirty up the sound through what sounds like deliberately primitive recording techniques for certain instruments and tones, even as they keep the drums cold and robotic. The twelve songs on here are all relatively short (nothing is over five minutes, and many are just over three) slices of brooding rock angst that manage to effectively straddle the divide between American and European rock. The faster tracks are also quite danceable, and Solway's dirt-guitar keeps even the more techno-heavy tracks from lapsing into sterility. It also doesn't hurt that Catherine regularly calls up visions of Cosey Fanni Tutti, always the most interesting (and frequently unclothed) member of Throbbing Gristle. Swell, sweaty stuff for the electrotrash rock dirtbag in you. Oakland's favorite heavy-rock trio return (with a new drummer, no less) to rock the house one more time on this self-released EP. And no, I have no idea why it's called "VI" -- go ask Tara, I think she'll know! The method of attack remains the same as it did on their synapse-frying debut: Jenny Reb rolls out gargantuan bass lines, Tora Tora Tara (some call her T-Darlin') makes with the over-amped squealy guitar noises and vocals, and Paco (aka Auto Bahn Evel) lays down the big beat. As with the previous album, they are not afraid to borrow lines from the gods in the lyrics (this time they crib from Aerosmith on "reb meadow"). The most immense slab of heaviness this time around is the appropriately-named "god shaped hole" (which could be about body orifices or donuts -- it's hard to tell). There's just as much whole-grain rock goodness on "no parle" and "happy" as well, and "kyumm" is a riff-happy monster filled with bad-ass guitar tone. Infinite bonus points for what happens after Paco informs them, "Okay ladies, this is what diamonds are made of." And no, I'm not going to tell you what happens -- you wanna know, go spend the five bucks it will take to make this fine exercise in sonic depravity your own, dig? Twentyagon is the byproduct of five "hallucinated characters" whose music has been played on the Cartoon Network's ADULT SWIM show. The music itself is bouncy robot music, suitable for background ambience while watching cartoons or playing video games. There are 26 short bursts of percolating robot-fu, and while several of the players employ traditional instruments (guitar, two basses, kazoo, bongos and coffee cans, and so on) in addition to noise and keyboards, the end result is overwhelmingly electronic-sounding. A lot of it sounds like background music for short video clips (which may well be exactly what they are -- I have never seen ADULT SWIM, so I have no idea). The music is robotic, yes, but not aggressive, or even particularly thunderous, despite the title; most of these pieces sound more like electronic lounge music for robots relaxing after a long day at the factory, actually. Fun, bop-like tunes for the post-DEVO generation, in other words. There are plenty of different textures and varied beats to keep things interesting, and the songs are all short enough to avoid overstaying their welcome. As an added bonus, the band promises that five percent of the people who listen to Twentyagon will turn into giant Japanese robots. This didn't happen to me, sadly enough, but that's probably just as well; if I were suddenly transformed into a giant Japanese robot, I sure as hell wouldn't be sitting around writing reviews any more -- no, I'd be blowing up shit, dig? So perhaps it's for the best that their robot music did not turn me into a Japanese robot. You might have better luck.... Vocalist Mitch Foy was previously in the industrial art-wreck nightmare Pineal Ventana, which spent nine years (and probably as many albums) making catastrophic ugly noises and essentially scaring the pee out of listeners before giving up the ghost. I have no idea what's happened to the rest of the band (especially hell-shrieker Clara Clamp), but Foy has reappeared now in this nifty new band that picks up (sort of) where PV left off. Sharing the former band's love of mysterious sounds, experimental moves, and pure disorienting clatter, Foy's new venture differentiates itself from his previous band by mostly eschewing the thundering industrial angst and leaning more toward droning synth mantras leavened by unusual electronic textures. This release -- which comes packaged in an inconvenient (but utterly swank-looking) foldout rocket envelope made of stiff paper and decorated with nifty science-fiction imagery straight out of a 1950's EC comic book or the like -- is mostly a live recording from Lenny's Bar in Atlanta, GA featuring Foy on vocals, percussion, and electronics, Doug Hughes on synthesizers, Skip Engelbrecht on guitar, and Eric Young on drums. Four of the tracks are from the live recording and the final two tracks are studio pieces featuring just Foy and Hughes (I think). Like Pineal Ventana, TTTM's core sound is one of propulsive rhythm cloaked in wild sonic effluvia, but whereas PV solidified around a core concept of Clara shrieking like a possessed harpy over thundering, ominous percussion, TTTM moves the rhythmic propulsion over to the keyboards and employs erratic, unpredictable drumming for the startling headkicks. Foy is a plenty agitated vocalist in his own right, but his brand of agitation has more to do with the obsessive wailing of new-wave / punk singers like Gary Numan and Pete Shelley. In fact, the new band seems to be drawing far more from traditional music structures and new wave in general than from industrial / noise rock. The result is just about as disorienting as his previous band, but nowhere near as resolutely terrifying. There are some genuinely catchy rhythms happening too, especially on "No Nothing Never" and "Deadbeat Bath." The live tracks are definitely live-sounding, but nowhere near as lo-fi as one might expect; they are, however, very different from the twisted sonic frippery of the two studio tracks, "Other Norms" and "--" (both of which were recorded at Tenth Central). It's all odd but interesting, listenable without being off-putting, and definitely worth checking out, especially for those curious as to what has happened to Pineal Ventana's former members. The cover is murky and grim -- upon first inspection you almost can't discern what it depicts, but eventually you make out the murky shape of bare-limbed trees protruding upwards to a dim sky. The interior of the booklet contains a list of those involved: Wrest of Leviathan, Malefic of Xasthur, Hildolf of Draguar, Imperial of Krieg and Azentrius of Nachtmystium, as well as simple, grainy photos of each member. No lyrics, no pomp (although, with that list of names and their associated projects it's difficult to not get a sense you're entering sacred ground with this disc -- American black metal elite represented here in force). Needless to say, this sort of line-up makes expectations soar, yet also is cause for a moment of doubt: can such phenomenal solo artists collaborate successfully? Is the decayed, murky, grim cover indicative of that which lies within? I began my listening with both excitement and trepidation, hoping for the level of quality I expect from each individual to not become an overdone mockery when blended with the talents of others. Thankfully, and within the first few moments of the first song, this fear is laid to rest. "Woe is the Contagion," the album opener, features vocals reminiscent in some way of Beherit. That theme continues to greater and lesser degrees throughout this recording, but as far as first impressions go it is indeed a favorable one. Third song, "Larval Liaise," is perhaps my second favorite. It is -- at this point in my listening -- the coldest song yet. Being a fan of the grimmer and colder end of black metal I'm pleased to see this band utilizing their talents in this direction (not that this is any surprise). The next song, "As the March of Worms," also represents this coldness well, in particular pay attention to the guitars near the three-minute mark. The fifth track, "Winter Before," begins with low, layered synth sounds, creeping up from depths and flowing throughout this song. These are not your cheesy Cradle of Filth synths, these synths are used properly and with care, enhancing the tension this song emits while allowing it to remain an extremely dreary experience. All around, it?\'s a disturbing listen, which I much appreciate -- at 7:13 it's also the second longest song here, which endears it still more. Now it's become my favorite, a song to put on repeat and listen to alone late into the night. It surrounds you with a dreary menacing tension, and it's not until the next song begins that you finally feel freed from it. And now I begin to note that all the tracks thus far have a rotted sound to them, as though they've been left to decay a while before being put to disc. I don't know what it is they're doing to achieve that, but it's amazing. The sixth track, "White Fire Under Black Text," speeds up a little in comparison to the last, and features some very fine drumming by Wrest. The percussion shines here, accompanying perfectly every other facet of this creation. I do think Wrest's drumming is some of the most superb around, and this song serves as yet another reason why. "Hopeless Etheride," follows, with more speed and a slightly more "metal" structure than the other songs. The rotted decayed sound is still intact -- as are the wretched vocals -- but for me this is the song that will be my least favorite. Eighth song, "Swollen Voices in Silence," puts me loosely in mind of Darkthrone. Not in a rip-off manner, because there's more -- strangeness, perhaps --to this than Darkthrone. It isn't the entire song either, but a few passages. That weird, murky vibe is what makes this completely different yet similar to those Norwegian greats. The last song here, "Beyond Light (Beautiful and Malignant)," is the only one featuring lyrics written by Azentrius. It's also the longest song, reaching over eight minutes in length. It begins with some cleaner, harmonized guitar riffs. I mean only slightly cleaner, because while they aren't distorted with bm fuzz, they still sound decayed, as has this entire recording, as if it were left to rot a while covered in wet leaves. Back to the single song in question though, which is truly dirge-heavy. A doomed black metal sound permeates the guitars, brief punctuations added by cymbal-crash and hollowed drum beats. The vocals are bestial on this one, sounding like some tormented animal in parts. As they commence there's more crashing of cymbal and a slightly faster pace near the mid-mark. We do return to the morose flow of the beginning minutes though, although slightly altered and more "wrong" sounding. Or perhaps it's just because I love Wrest's drumming and it's doing guttural things here. Yes, guttural. Drumming. It's the sub-sound you can almost hear beneath it that makes it so. It makes appearances in other tracks, but is best heard here. I don't relish the ending of this recording, simply because it is the ending and I want more now, being addicted to what I've heard. I can only wait and hope these brilliant musicians decide to give us further releases of this dim, autumnal, rotted, decayed nature. The only thing better would be to witness this corruption live, but I doubt that will ever happen. And so, we wait? [Amanda] Venison Whirled (the name is a play on the name of a Texas deer-processing store) is the solo drone concern of Lisa Cameron (formerly of Glass Eye, Brave Combo, one of Roky Erickson's bands for about fifteen minutes, and way more bands you've probably never heard of) when she's not providing the beat for ST-37. This triplet of long drones clocks in at over forty minutes and makes a nice (and far more blissed-out) companion to the shuddering dronefests of bands like Sunn O))) and Khanate. Unlike those bands, this is an angst-free recording, one probably closer in spirit to Troum (or maybe even Alvin Lucier or Alan Lamb), now that I think of it. The first drone-o-rific heaping of sound here is "Invocation," eleven-plus minutes of shuddering bass and pleasant tones courtesy of bells and a Tibetian bowl. One of the most interesting things about Venison Whirled is Lisa's strict adherence to the "less is way, way better" mantra -- I have seen her perform, and all the equipment used to generate these suave sounds can be carried in the trunk of a small car and carted into a venue in one trip. She doesn't need much to make the earth move -- just bass, sometimes a snare drum, a contact mike, and a couple of odds and ends like the bowl and the bell. This is certainly true on the sixteen-minute power-electronics mantra "Crossroads," created with nothing but a contact mike attached to a broken snare drum. The result is a growing, expanding brainshake of white and pink noise frying like grease on a skillet while a subharmonic bass hum gathers immense force, eventually reaching levels of earhurt that would give Merzbow a stiffy -- and then, about twelve minutes into the piece, the feedback starts wailing up and down, threatening to disembowel your speakers, before settling back into a high-pitched whine backed by twitchy pink noise in the background. "Yum," employing nothing but powerful bass hum, is just as long and filled with unpredictable feedback... and a bass guitar turned up loud and feeding back is a beautiful thing to behold, right up until it levitates your stomach up your esophagus and out onto the floor (SQUACK!). This is pure, ass-quaking feedback drone that would make Dylan Carson weep with joy, minimalist drone-fu the likes of which you rarely have the opportunity to hear executed so well. It's also really loud, which is always a plus. You can score a copy of your own through the swell people at Volcanic Tongue in the UK.
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Frankenstoner, Gafne Rostow, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
Small Stone Records
Acid King
Acid King -- III [Small Stone Records]
Isounderscore
Aemae
Aemae -- THE HELICAL WORD [Isounderscore]
CD Baby
Austere
Austere / Abstract Audio Systems -- EVERGONE [CD Baby]
Dark Duck Records
Austere
Austere vs. Stephen Philips -- FADED [Dark Duck Records]
Rat Instant Press
Crown Now -- s/t [Rat Instant Press]
The Goslings
Goslings -- BETWEEN THE DEAD [self-released]
KML Records
Immaculate Deception
Missy Graham
Immaculate Deception -- [KML Records]
Ruf Records
Candye Kane
Scrojo
Candye Kane -- WHITE TRASH GIRL [Ruf Records]
Borrowed ROMS Software
King Shit -- "Cult of Oprahanity" cd-single [Borrowed ROMS Software]
Borrowed ROMS Software
King Shit -- SUPER KING [Borrowed ROMS Software]
Bat Hot Axe
George Korein -- MEMOIRS OF A TRILOBITE [Bat Hot Axe]
Pax Recordings
Thollem McDonas -- SOLO PIANO [Pax Recordings]
Helmet Room Recordings
Beta-Lactam Ring Records
Mingo
Mingo -- THE ONCE AND FUTURE WORLD [Helmet Room Recordings]
Nice Cat
Nice Cat -- THREE GIRLS, THREE NIGHTS, THREE BOTTLES [unreleased]
Fiat Lux
Plume -- AT LAST [Fiat Lux]
Shevel Knievel
Shevel Knievel -- VI [self-released]
Twentyagon
Twentyagon -- THUNDEROUS FILTH [self-released]
Tenth to the Moon
Tenth to the Moon -- TENTH TO THE MOON LIVE [self-released]
Twilight -- s/t [Southern Lord]
Volcanic Tongue
Venison Whirled -- VENISON WORLD [Sister Skull Records]