Century Plants / Locrian - Dissolvers (Tape Drift, 2010)

Century Plants - Delirium (excerpt)


When you've got two like-minded bands as awesome as Locrian & Century Plants, and a label that churns out winner after winner like Tape Drift, you know it's only a matter of time before the two shack up and squeeze out a monster like Dissolvers.

This is Century Plants' first vinyl adventure. You should be as excited as they are about it because it means they put on their game face and made some of the best drifty jams ever. Their two tracks are a perfect fit for a Locrian split. They're dark and moody as fuck, blending noise, metal, doom, drone, and throwing in some psych to spice things up. The first track is a wandering mess of clatter, hiss, & reverb. Not doing much but creating a weird atmosphere and being a creeper until 6 minutes in when it gets into a real groove and they start banging out those chords, bordering on blissful, but it stays rooted in a brown rusted drone. Their second piece is more cosmic, wonky bloops mixed with solid celestial guitar tones, just drifting through space dust, waiting to get sucked into the inevitable black hole. The pleasing guitars turn into a more evil buzzing beast, more feedback & distortion added to a layer of deep bass drone & static noise while a buried muffled guitar solo works its way through echoing vocals and ever increasing volume. This is some top notch shit as only Century Plants could do it.

Flip it over and you're treated to Locrian's latest mastery of indescribable black ambient noise metal. They start things off with a piercing tone, already more harsh than anything CP did on their side. Let it settle in, though, and some beautifully sad guitars show up with lazer feedback in tow. They crank that shit up, getting super evil, throwing around more & more crash & burn like it ain't no thing. It's noisy and loud and totally fucking badass metal without so much as tapping on a drum. Their second track has that same looped electronic scale that I think also showed up in some form on Rain Of Ashes. Then comes in some delayed picking & shredding and a wash of wind style static. Super hypnotic, a semi-psych jam pulsing through Locrian guitars, heavy on the harsh buzzing drone.

Dissolvers is a dark twisted piece of noisy psych metal drone that couldn't be any better. These two duos are forever at the top of their game, and even though they're both so goddamn prolific, this split is essential.

Barn Owl - Ancestral Star (Thrill Jockey, 2010)

Barn Owl - Light From The Mesa


Barn Owl is a name everyone probably knows. It's Evan Caminiti & Jon Porras, two dudes who have put out plenty of records all over the place, Root Strata, Digitalis, etc. Ancestral Star, however, is their Thrill Jockey debut, and it's a fucking knockout.

Most of this is pure guitar drone, with some extra piano, strings, harmonium, & bric-a-brac, and a little percussion or delicate plucking here & there. Just describing parts of a single animal, though. The drones are fucking HEAVY. Seriously. So so massive. Big enough to blast me into unconsciousness with three cups of coffee running through my veins. They're the hardened sun baked drones straight from rusty Californian deserts. Wide open dust caked steel, endlessly ringing through the black heart of daytime stars. Lonely, blissful, & dark, dreaming of a distant oasis with the weight of a dozen buffalo on your shoulders.

The real killer here is the 10 minute title track. It fucking burns, white hot feedback soaring through the empty sky, embarrassingly euphoric buzz & hum bleeding through the speakers, finishing with a wandering haunted cloud. Some of the best I've heard from Barn Owl.

Ancestral Star is unbelievably good. They're master crafts of the new American raga desert psych thing. Regardless if that's your style, this is meant for everybody. It's essential, it's fucking grand, and it'll simultaneously melt your heart & your face.

WYLD WYZRDZ / Stag Hare - Antelope Island (Inner Islands, 2010)

WYLD WYZRDZ - Antelope


Utah DIY chieftain Braden J. McKenna brought a lot to the SLC scene. Lots of sweet music under various guises (WYLD WYZRDZ, his own name, etc), dozens of free releases through The Magic Goat, and general awesomeness. He's since gone to Portland, killed The Goat, and started a physical label called Inner Islands.

One of the first releases is a split seven inch mini wax with him and psych drone extraordinaire Stag Hare. Pretty much a match made in heaven. WYLD WYZRDZ puts on his fancy suit and goes to town with "Antelope." A delicately lush tropdrone, everything looped to infinity, equally perfect for a party scorcher or nap time chiller. Stag Hare's track, "Island," is a lazy shaker with faded lazers & a muted beat. The hazy guitar meanders along with echoing obscured vocals, making a supreme droney jam.

Regardless of where and when you play this, it's a sunny primer that always seems to require one more spin. Braden's got his shit together and I highly recommend grabbing this when it's officially available and then keeping your hawk eyes on Inner Islands waiting to see what's next.

Metal Rouge, Sam Hamilton, Jane Austen, Rise Set Twilight at Starlab

Starlab: basement recording studio thing in the midst of Union Square junkyards, small, intimate, sweaty

Rise Set Twilight: husband/wife duo Michael T & Linda Aubry Bullock filling in for Animal Hospital at the last minute, homemade analog synth board + electric harp, underwater wind, ice cracking, mercury tones, FXed harp by way of distorted guitar

Jane Austen: blink and you missed it, elusive pop, quietest set in the history of live music, minimal plinking, electronics glitching, tape tweaking

Sam Hamilton: White Rainbow style beat drone sans third eye, deafening in comparison to previous Jane Austen set, guitar & electronics bloop & bliss, damn near danceable

Metal Rouge: wall of buzzing guitars stacked all the way up to heaven, rhythmic drums penetrated the walls, cultish chant moaning, as grandiose as that tiny room could handle, supreme drone psych euphoria

P.S. 4 out of 7 performers were female which is clearly some sort of record

More (and larger) photos on Flickr.

Rise Set Twilight




Jane Austen


Sam Hamilton



Metal Rouge

Prince Rama, CAVE, The Needy Visions, Jealousy, Lord Jeff, SKIMASK at The Temple

The Temple: New legit venue in JP, actual stage, real lighting, pretty big, sounds decent, easy parking/close-ish to T, booked mostly by Bodies Of Water, definitely a place to keep an eye on for weird shows

SKIMASK: Lightning Bolt trio except replace bass with fucked FXd vocals and add a dude rambling stream of consciousness shit sounding like Magic People

Lord Jeff: sloppy garage pop, low key jangly fun

Jealousy: 1 wacky dude from SF playin noisy looped post punk gaze with a crazy getup and strobe lights, actually pretty awesome

The Needy Visions: way better live than on record, tons of fun old school catchy '60s psych garage jams

CAVE: fucking killer new wave psych drone rock à la Oneida, riffage galore, so so amazing live

Prince Rama: Eastern space psych with crazy drums & electronics overload, vocals from another time, brought out the Indian dancing girl, ancient double 16mm projectors throwing bizarre visuals up on the wall

As always, more photos on Flickr.

SKIMASK


Lord Jeff


Jealousy


The Needy Visions


CAVE



Prince Rama

Aun - VII (Important, 2010)

Aun - Blackhole


Aun was one of those bands/dudes I'd always heard of and sounded really awesome but never actually heard. Then he contacted me out of the blue, wanting me to review his new record on the infallible Important so I kinda creamed my pants a little because that's just too. fucking. cool.

To be honest, Aun sounds kinda like what I expected after hearing about him. But WHOA. You could've told me he sounded like angels in ecstasy and I still would have my expectations blown away. VII is just fucking incredible.

Here is some intensely blissful doomatic psych noise perfection. Massive stone walls of crumbling distortion that no sound system could ever do justice to. This is so fucking dense & white hot, the kind of rock found emanating from the inner core of the earth. Chaotic static rumbling through the veins of deep space, black holes burning pure energy, staving off starvation in the middle of infinite deserts, every universe collapsing into the singularity, and through it all a sense of underlying beauty. Not just the "beauty in the brutal" (though there's a shitton of that) but there are actually sweet sounds being whipped off like solar prominences. Harmonic euphoria pushing all the right buttons. So you got your heavy as fuck rock and your heavenly bliss all in one, making VII utterly unstoppable.

Voivod's Away takes on the drums for many of the songs, reminding me of when Nadja added live percussion on Desire In Uneasiness. Which really brings to mind one term, and if you're a regular here, you'll know it's one I rarely use. EPIC. There are times when that word is wholly necessary and this is one of them. VII is just fucking epic. There's no denying it. And I can't think of a single person who doesn't love some seriously epic riffage, so do yourself a favor and grab a copy of this already.

Isolated Lakeside Cabin Mix

This is the one you wanted. Sweetest mix of the century.

Be back soon. Going to read Being & Nothingness.

Isolated Lakeside Cabin Mix
1. The Great Valley - Lucky Me!
2. Boy Without God - Call A Yellow Taxi
3. Shai Erlichman - The Season
4. M. Mucci - Moments Between
5. Master Musicians Of Bukkake - Cascade Cathedral
6. Lungfish - Sands Of Time
7. Uriah Heep - I'll Keep On Trying
8. Mugstar - Technical Knowledge As A Weapon
9. Prince Rama - Lightening Fossil
10. Billy Nichols - Life Is Short
11. Imbogodom - Of The Cloth
12. PKE - Grounded
13. Talk Normal - Outside
14. DOOMSTAR! - Rainbow BLoodsucker

Sleep In - Carnival (Enemies List, 2010)

Sleep In - The Woods


I generally try to stay away from reviewing records like Carnival. The ones where each song is different from the next and it's really hard to peg the album. I feel like I inevitably talk about the record on a song-by-song basis, and that makes me it seem like I don't "understand" the album. If I can't talk about the mood or overall sound, then it feels like I'm not doing my job right.

Sleep In's newest release from the inininfinitely unstoppable Enemies List is one of those records. He dropped it in my inbox over 2 months ago and I've been listening to it ever since, hoping to get a grasp on what kind of shit was going through this guy's mind. No luck. The only thing I've taken from my numerous Carnival listens is that 1: it's totally fucking rad and 2: it doesn't fucking matter if I can't pigeonhole this beast.

I could take the route and say Carnival is like a carnival, you get all sorts of weird shit and random experiences. But I'm not gonna do that. Promise.

So what does this record sound like? First off, it's pretty different from anything Enemies List has done before. It's not some twisted black metal Nahvalr, epic doom pop like Planning For Burial, or the industrial metalgaze of Have A Nice Life. Carnival isn't very metal at all. It gets heavy at times, but more like a psych noise freakout kinda heavy. There's backwoods swamp folk, electro-acoustic doom, warped guitar ambience, sprawling drone, feedbacked squalls, and plenty more that's just weird as fuck.

This is where I say, "But despite all these disparate sub-genres, Carnival still works because it keeps the thread of BLANK going through the whole thing." But I can't do that. I don't know what that thread is.

Despite not being able to decipher the overarching theme, I can still tell you Carnival doesn't seem haphazard or disjointed in any way. It works great as a record, everything flows and sounds perfect together. It's an album that's actually an album instead of simply a collection of songs. It's refreshing and original and 100% awesome.

Haiku Review: Concord Ballet Orchestra Players - Palindromes (self released, 2010)

Concord Ballet Orchestra Players - Boston Did Not Sob


Concord Ballet Orchestra Players
Palindromes (download)
/grooved out psych noise fuzz/
/quick third eye glimpses of time/
/homespun texture beats/

Haiku Review: Endless Endless Endless - On Growth And Form (Tired Trails, 2010)

Endless Endless Endless - Weight


Endless Endless Endless
On Growth And Form (download)
/lushed out space burnt rock/
/arms up warm energy blast/
/glide by pulsing static/

The Besnard Lakes At TT The Bear's

Grandiose dark psyche pop in love with The Beach Boys, The Besnard Lakes always get it right. They played all the good stuff (including "Light Up The Night") and closed with "Disaster."

Poor lighting on everyone except Jace (lead guitarist) and me standing dead center means he's the only one I took any pictures of. At least he was animated.

More photos on Flickr.

AGB MIX 2

CC image courtesy of Darwin Bell

Some sweet tunes I've been digging this week. Listen to the songs, download the songs, enjoy the songs, etc, etc...

The Witch - Like A Chicken
Johnny Cash - Cocaine Blues
Jim Fassett - Buffo
Spectre - Arkham
Las Robertas - Ballroom
Tame Impala - Solitude Is Bliss
Elly Kasim - Ayam Den Lapeh

Blue Sausage Infant - Flight Of The Solstice Queens (Zero Moon, 2010)

Blue Sausage Infant - Radiant Arc


"Radiant Arc," one of my favorites, gets in a rad as fuck groove, somehow both chill & rocking, and stays there the entire time with droning organ melodies and intermittent squelches of electronics. I could just listen to that jam for the entire album, eyes closed, head keeping in time with the propulsive beat, and letting the CEV take over.

Full review at diskant.

MP3: Doomstar! - Rainbow Bloodsucker

Doomstar! - Rainbow Bloodsucker


"Rainbow Bloodsucker" is the title track from Doomstar!'s latest BandCamp EP. It's a loud jangly mess of garage psych pop from Boston that's ridiculously pleasing on the ears. The echoed vocals, the sweet catchy riffs, the relentless drums, this is some high quality/high energy shit that fits right into what's going on in Boston right now. You can grab the whole EP for just $5.

MP3: Ming Ming Dance Company - Crookline

Ming Ming Dance Company - Crookline


"Crookline" is the latest track from Boston's Ming Ming Dance Co and it's a 9 minute long slow burner jam of the highest awesomeness. They got that new/old psych drone sound everyone loves kinda like Sun Araw, Predator Vision, or Emeralds. But this one's real chill, like a loping burned out blues number. Warped and fucked guitars get their groove on while some synths get all noodly. You can check out similarly crazy hipster-type shit on the free comp this came from, Waaga's News.

MMOSS - i (self released, 2010)

MMOSS - Woolgathering


MMOSS
i (download)
/dreams in jangly psych/
/climb mountains, embrace the sky/
/lush gardens of warmth/

Dire Wolves - Magickal Mayan Age Of Musick (Dynamo Sound Collective, 2010)

Dire Wolves - Side A


This is like the most obscure supergroup ever, but it's still totally a supergroup. Dire Wolves is Jeffrey Alexander (Black Forest/Black Sea, Secret Eye Records), Dan Letson (Forest Dweller), Matt McDowell (Sagas, Bravepriest, a bazillion collaborations), and Ian Bonnet (Whitetail, In The Belly Of The Whale, etc). And unlike all of the recent bullshit "supergroups" like Them Crooked Vultures or Monsters Of Folk that totally suck ass, Dire Wolves fuckin kills it. These dudes are so awesome.

Magickal Mayan Age Of Musick is a drugged out spider's web of psych noise drone in the form of a 20 minute cassette. Sometimes it gets in a warbled bluesy groove that could be filtering out from some no-light smokey basement club, sometimes it'll dissolve into a empty hazy tin of nothingness before it jolts into a spastic on-off freak out that makes more sense as "noise" than it does as "psych jam." All 10 minutes of the A side, however, are fuckin nuts, scanning the radio and jumping all over the place from semi-ethnic garage meanderings with lazy drums to balls out The Heads-channeling to twinkling interludes to wah-wah blazin electronic static nastiness.

Not sure if these dudes actually know what they're doing or if they're just having a good time fucking around making absolutely ridiculous psych noise tapes but either way Magickal Mayan Age Of Musick is definitely not to be missed. Only 50 were made so grab one from Dynamo! (which just so happens to be run by the dude from Hunted Creatures. Bonus!) before they run out.

Video: To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie - The Needle

Ambient psych folk gaze rockers To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie have a video for the single "The Needle" off of their newest record on Kranky, Marlone. They take the road of old school German Expressionist films like The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and make a (mostly) black and white video with lots of layers, shadows, and tons of shit that doesn't make any sense. Floating letters + skulls + sledgehammers + horseback riders = SUCCESS!

MP3: Andrew Douglas Rothbard - Wisely Wasted

Andrew Douglas Rothbard - Wisely Wasted


Holy shit I have been listening to "Wisely Wasted" constantly for the entire week. It's fucking gorgeous. It's like if Citay made an IDM record. Just thick, lush, electronic psych that wraps it's warm bear paws around me and I just totally lose myself in it. The part around 3:30 where it stutters gets me every fucking time. I love this song so much. It's on Rothbard's (digital only) Exodusarabesque that came out back in February on Peaking Mandala. You should download it, like, now because it's fucking fantastic.

Homegrown Fest at Church

I was only able to go to the second night of the Homegrown Fest at Church but I'm OK with that. You know why? Because that night had one of the best lineups I've ever seen. Fucking ridiculously awesome. Because so many bands played and I could easily write a whole review for each set, I'm just going to post the pictures I took coupled with what I wrote on Twitter immediately after each performance. There are more photos on my Flickr page if you're into that sorta thing.

Gary War
"Gary war just played good clues. I am happy."


Magic People
"Magic people just played a very short but killer set to a surprisingly unappreciative audience."


Reports
"Who knew reports were so awesome. I sure didnt."


Quits
"Quits just fucking lit my face on fire and melted my brain."


Infinity Window
"Once infinity window finished i realized that i think i forgot to breathe the whole time."


Bobb Trimble & The Flying Spiders
"Holy shit gary war just played with bobb trimble. Coolest thing ever. Except bobbs guitar. Wooden with oak leaves carved in it."

Then once I got home...

"So Gary War played with Bobb Trimble because he's an official member of The Flying Spiders. Nice. Thanks internet!!"


Sightings
"Sightings were painfully amazing to watch."