Video: Black To Comm - Hotel Freund

I just want to thank my BFF Mr. Comm for making this video for me. It's truly one of the greatest birthday gifts I've ever received. I mean, I told him exactly what would make the greatest video ever so it's not like he can say it was his idea or anything. But still. It is the greatest video ever.

Also, he's playing Boston on Friday the 5th at the Goethe-Institut with Xela & Matt Christensen (of Zelienople) opening, and the always entertaining DJ Ning Nong.

Inhibitionists - Lithium Salt Mines (Tape Drift, 2010)

Inhibitionists - Midwinter Mass


Another gentle giant of a noise record from Tape Drift, this one from Danish dude Christian Kann recording as Inhibitionists, which has gone through numerous line-up and sound changes over the years. Used to make experimental pop, used to be an actual "band," used to have a "The" in front of the name, now it's just Kann making awesome noise. Something tells me we're better off with this current incarnation of Inhibitionists because Lithium Salt Mines is pretty fucking killer.

With a few exceptions, the noise found within isn't really loud or scary or harsh. It's actually pretty accessible for a noise record, even though it's still most definitely NOISE. A bit on the psych side of things, Kann creates super rich textures that keep you on your toes, making sure you're always hyper aware of what's going on, trying to distinguish one layer from the next as instruments & sounds melt into each other.

This is the sort of stuff that puts you in your place, glues you right to your seat, props your ears open with toothpicks, and goes to town. Dark, thick clouds of poison settle in, jittery tape warble hisses through electric bee teeth, creaking light fixtures burn magnesium in thunderous warehouses, crackle cellophane static echos with funereal nightmares... all that awesomeness bursting through your speakers, just waiting to jump your bones.

Lithium Salt Mines is perfect for those nights where you just need to lay naked on the floor with a sleeve of Chips Ahoy on either side, waiting for the hypnosis to kick in. It's also good for when you're not doing that, too. I guess. For $6, you can listen to it however you want.

Sunken - New Zealand Eels (Emerald Cocoon, 2010)

Sunken - Eelman 003


Yall remember Sunken, right? I mean, not even just because their last CD Eye Electric Organ, Brain Electric Nerve was some of the best massive blissful organ drone out there, but because it's Stefan Neville (Pumice dude) & Anthony Milton (of The Nether Dawn). Little mini drone superduo, right?

New Zealand Eels is their third record, first on vinyl, and second release off of Emerald Cocoon. What all this is leading up to is an enormously depressing, bleak, drowning drone record. Sunken took the uplifting sounds from their previous records and fucking buried 'em at the bottom of the ocean.

I have no idea where the sounds on this record are coming from, except for the muffled cries for help that are almost certainly vocals, vocals that weigh heavy on your heart and empty your bowels. As far as I can tell, Eels is made with broken organs, tape decks, & electronics torn from a centuries old barnacle covered shipwreck. It's distorted, bloated from soaking in too much water, warped & claustrophobic, creaking planks, echoing in an empty submarine as it's going down. It's lo-fi as shit, everything blurs together in a noisy, droney whirlpool of depressing fucking gorgeousness.

This is sad music for sad people by sad people. You can't listen to New Zealand Eels and come out feeling ok. It has a haunting beauty, but that beauty can't make up for the utter doom & desolation permeating it. Sunken have created an incredibly stunning record that is probably going to win them some awards or something. Only 300 copies. Join them on their journey to the black ocean floor.

AGB Radio 10/26

image via

Yesterday's primarily disgustingly brutal black metal show is ready for the ultimate portability test. Download it, take it wherever you want!

Also, not sure if it's the program I was using to record, but my vocals are wayyyy low in this mix. Did it actually sound like that live? Should I crank that shit up so I'm screaming at your facez? Feedback makes the world go 'round. Tell me what to do to make it better and I'll fucking deliver.

Play it loudest, play it hardest.

Anti-Gravity Bunny Radio 10/26
Aderlating - The Shallow Waters Of The Styx
Painforged - The Achievement We Are The Crawling Filth Descended From This Planet And Our Own Funeral Creators
Emit - Dead Before Death
Lonesummer - Regrettably, Our Harvest Never Grew
Nahvalr - Let Them Eat Blood
L'Acephale - A Burned Village
Dark Procession - Mists Of Darkness
Flaskavsae - The Clouds Shall Cover
Xasthur - This Abyss Holds The Mirror
Empire Auriga - Sorrowsong
Ophidian Forest - A Herald On Silver Wings
Ehnahre - Part III
Azrael Rising - IV
Cold World - Red Snow
Planning For Burial - If I Knew What To Say
Portal - Marityme
Robyn - Dancing On My Own
A Faulty Chromosome - Groaning Like A Grown-Up
Skogar - The Future Will
Mincemeat Or Tenspeed - Infinite Girlfriend
Crystal Castles - Year Of Silence

New AGB Radio Show Time

I know I already did a post announcing to you the fact that I'll be doing a radio show on Simmons College Radio. FUCK YEAH! But shit got a bit fucked up and I had to change the time & day of my show, and since I'm sure plenty of you don't follow me on Twitter to keep up with all the awesome & informative shit I talk about on daily basis, I figured I'd make another post on my blog (because that's basically who this show is for, all you dear readers).

New day: Tuesday
New time: 10:30 am - 12:30 pm (EST)

You can listen live online either at the Simmons site or through iTunes. I plan on posting the show here on AGB the day or two after so you can download it and put it in your pocket for ultimate portability.

IT STARTS TOMORROW! Make sure you get out your old blockbusters like Marty up there so you can party with the best of 'em.

David Russell - Architecture (Pilgrim Talk, 2010)

David Russell - Fiddler


One 7", 11 tracks, super short totally twisted loops. Architecture sounds like Eric Copeland made a Zomes record. They're drugged & noisy, frenetic & chaotic, making no sense and a huge racket usually in less than a minute each. There's air raid sirens echoing into the fog, reversed electronic squawks of heartache, malfunctioning time travel machines on coke, half second psych folk freakouts repeated forever, each little snippet stuck in a locked groove of fucked mechanics that is going to be the soundtrack to the most awesomely bizarre party ever.

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.

Megabats - Goes To A Lemon (Debacle, 2010)

Megabats - Amazon Bike Tits


Megabats really impressed me with their debut in/out. It was a sweet blend of fuzzy Fuck Buttons beats with spacey Oneohtrix Point Never bloop drone. For some reason I never reviewed it, but they have a new one called Goes To A Lemon released by the same label, Debacle, and I'm not letting them slip by again.

The jams they're making are a bit derivative (wtf isn't), but they still resonate with me and I find myself listening to them way more than some of the more original stuff I come across. Goes To A Lemon is full of high quality tunes perfect for a late night joyride, a doze underneath glow-in-the-dark stars, or a hardcore blissed out neon basement dance party. Megabats pump out the deep, dark, euphoric fuzz beats with pink stars blazin past at lightspeed. Clearly this is right where it's fucking at. Stream it for free, buy it on the cheap, download it for even cheaper, all at Bandcamp.

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.

Funeral Mix

image via ECIA

Driving all by my lonesome to a farm in upstate Maine for a funeral. This is the mix I made for the trip.

Funeral
1. More Dogs - Duty. Duty? Duty.
2. Boris with Merzbow - Evil Stack
3. Daniel Menche - Track 8 (Concussions Disc 2)
4. The Mausoleums - Totem Pole
5. Xexyz - Metroid
6. Have A Nice Life - The Icon And The Axe
7. Cocteau Twins - Amelia
8. A Faulty Chromosome - Incubate'r
9. Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Salty Bean Fumble
10. Windsor For The Derby - Gathering
11. Shellac - Disgrace
12. Larval - The Strange Farm
13. Jenny Hoyston & William Whitmore - Marrow
14. Langhorne Slim - One Sunday Morning
15. Set Fire To Flames - When Sorrow Shoots Her Darts

Choi Joonyong - Burn Yoido Burn (Ghost & Son, 2010)

Choi Joonyong - 150-743


Choi Joonyong is a Seoul based noise dude who likes to fuck with open CD players. On Burn Yoido Burn, his weapon of choice is an mp3 player burning with feedback (plus a contact mic & some distortion pedals). Honestly, I'm pretty fucking floored with the sounds he can spew from such limited materials.

This is a mini 3" CD of harshness, similar to the last one Ghost & Son put out, Amplified WC by Hong Chulki, a frequent Choi collaborator. However, its shortness is matched in its brutality. This is some hardcore digital acid, squawks & static galore. Blown out glitch bubbling from the depths of binary hell. Joonyong has basically turned your iPod into a wall of ear destroying lightning.

Unless Joonyong has a greater message, maybe something to do with the shitty production quality of electronics or that everything we listen to on our mp3 players is really just different sides of the same noise coin, this is noise for noise sake and it's fucking great. A perfect 20 minute dose of electrocuted speakers and thunderous chaos. It'd be pretty sweet if Ghost & Son kept up this 3" noise CD thing, they're startin' to put themselves on a niche map of awesomeness.

Milieu - The Loneliness Of Empty Roads (Second Sun, 2010)

Milieu - Untitiled 1


Milieu is one of the many names Brian Grainger uses to make music, as well as the name of one of the labels he runs. The Loneliness Of Empty Roads is out on one of those very labels, Second Sun, which he co-runs with David Tagg.

Grainger improvised Empty Roads live on tape, with no overdubs, and managed to come out the other side with an endless drone affair of impeccable beauty & sadness. 3 long tracks of unwavering melancholy, apocalyptic Six-String Samurai type shit, and lovely lush isolation.

The drones here are bare bones, not much in the way of dynamic fluctuations, just a mood set on woe and left to its own devices. Solid sounds that go on for miles of emptiness, with the sole intent of hypnosis, forgetting pain & responsibility. There's one track that's less drone than the rest, with a mournful scorched guitar singing the blues. It still has a drone heart, though, interminably walking down deserted roads with nothing but the dust at its feet and the sun on its back. No goal, no end of the line. Just trying to find the perfection in sorrow.

The near half hour long closer is the grandest, yet most subdued ode to solitude I've ever heard. It's pure elegance, soaring guitar drone made for total body levitation. Resonating chords that will stay with you on the cold forlorn nights. The power of this drone is unlike any other, making its way into your bones and showing you the loveliness of loneliness. It doesn't get much better than this.

MP3: Petrels - Silt

Petrels - Silt


William Walker was a pretty astonishing fellow. He single-handedly saved the sinking Winchester Cathedral by diving for 6 hours a day for 5 years, working in complete darkness, and using more than 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks. BY HIMSELF.

Petrels is making an album honoring this man. "Silt" is the first taste and it's a gorgeous bubbly drone with uplifting organs, shimmering & grand. It's the sound of an underwater hero. Can't wait to hear the full record, which is due out hopefully later this year.

AGB Radio 10/7

image via

Ahahaha so my first radio show yesterday was a bit of a disaster. I had no idea what I was doing. But I got music to play and I was able to talk so I guess that's all that really matters.

That does mean, however, that I wasn't able to record my show the way I planned. To compensate for my idiocy, I created a mix of yesterday's playlist. So you're getting basically the same thing, except you won't hear me rambling and fucking up which record is on which label.

Here's a massive mix for you. Also, I added an .m3u this time. Let me know if that's helpful for anyone or completely unnecessary.

Anti-Gravity Bunny Radio 10/7
Eluvium - A Life In Tides Less Current (Leaves Eclipse The Light EP)
Belong - A Sunny Place For Shady People (Tour EP)
Andrew Weathers - Skin Holding Atoms In (A Great Southern City)
Ben Frost - Through The Roof Of Your Mouth (By The Throat)
Brandon Nickell - The Roughest Jewel In Your Glittering Crown (Second Key) (And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You)
Bitchin' Bajas - Zone 4 (Tones & Zones)
Greg Davis - Regarding Wave (Part 1) (Regarding Wave)
The Idealist - The Knives Are My Eyes (I Am The Fire)
Linda Aubry Bullock - Stage Evil (Fossils From The Sun) (Ray Of Dark)
Master Musicians Of Bukkake - The Heresy Of Origen (Totem Two)
Mugstar - Today Is The Wrong Shape (...Sun, Broken...)
Tiger Throat - This Brave Waning Light (Tiger Throat)
Nadja & Ovo - Movement 3: Put Some Sugar In My Cup, Please (The Life & Death Of A Wasp)
Umberto - In The Name Of Zuel (From The Grave...)
Marinos Koutsomichalis - 6 (Malfunctions)
Violet - All Records Collapse (Violet Ray Gas And The Playback Singers)
Double Awake - ...Why I Can't Be Everything I'm Not (Leaving Nowhere Forever)
Strotter Inst. - #1/45rpm (Bolzplatz)
Inhibitionists - With Milky Brushes (Lithium Salt Mines)
Reuben Son - B.2 (Glowing Departures)
Noveller - Toothnest (For Chris Habib) (Desert Fires)
Expo '70 - Analog Dreamscape (Sonic Messenger)
Max Richter - Infra 2 (Infra)

Anti-Gravity Bunny Radio Starts Today!

So before I did Anti-Gravity Bunny, I was the General Manager, Music Director, and DJ at Salem State's radio, WMWM. It was the best. I loved it. I graduated and stopped doing it. Now that I'm doing the graduate program at Simmons, I'm getting back at it. FUCK YEAH DDUDES.

Here's all the details. Anti-Gravity Bunny Radio is a title-in-progress (I'm open for ideas). You can listen to it online (and only online, no FM, no AM, sad face) from the Simmons College Radio site, Backbone, or right in iTunes (under College Radio). Currently it'll be every Thursday from 3-5:30 starting TODAY. I'll attempt to keep that time slot every semester but we'll see what happens.

In addition to listening live, I'll be posting the entire show here for downloading hopefully the day after (aka every Friday) so you can listen to it over and over again wherever you want.

I'll be playing all of the type of stuff you usually see here on the blog but I'll definitely be expanding the tightly curated AGB roster to include other awesome shit. So tune in today and every week from today to get your face explod-gasm-ed like that bro up there.

Nick Hennies - Lungs (Full Spectrum, 2010)

Nick Hennies - Sympathy


I hope you remember Nick Hennies from his ode to his grandfather, Lineal, because that album was spot on beautiful. Apparently the dude is a drummer and his new disc on Full Spectrum is profoundly minimal ambient drum drone.

When I say minimal, I mean the first sound doesn't show up until about 20 seconds in. This is as sparse as it gets unless you're going the 4'33 route. Hennies has crafted an amazingly gorgeous drone record that is almost entirely ethereal. It's barely there and it never moves. And I'm pretty sure there's no processing either, meaning all of these sounds are coming straight from the drums. It's incredible.

The few sounds that do make up Lungs are found mostly on the two centerpiece tracks, "Lungs" and "Second Skin With Lungs," which are bookended by two short songs of exactly the same length & title that differ only slightly in content, "Sympathy." "Lungs" is made up of stretched out rubber bands of varying sizes vibrating at an insane rate, making a highly textured & tense drone, occasionally pulsing and throbbing with an industrial darkness. Then "Second Skin With Lungs" (super gross name, btw) comes along and you're not sure anything's even playing until a few minutes go by and an ominous doom rattle appears. It's 15 minutes of the sound of a silently massive black cloud hovering overhead as it waits to unleash a flood.

This is the anti-background music. The only way to listen to Lungs is with noise cancelling headphones in a coffin at the bottom of a mine. It's futile to try otherwise (as I sit writing & listening on this fucking train). Make sure when (not if) you pick this up, you give it your undivided attention. Otherwise you'll just be wasting your money.

Haiku Review: Hautain - Glass Desert (self released, 2010)

Hautain - 1


Glass Desert (download)
/windstorm sand nightmare/
/gritty blasts of feedback skree/
/scraped rusted machines/

Video: Koen Holtkamp - Loosely Based On Bees (Excerpt)

Koen Holtkamp, half of the masterful field recording/drone duo Mountains, has a new solo record coming out on Thrill Jockey called Gravity/Bees. There'll be two side long tracks and this is a video of an excerpt for "Loosely Based On Bees," a blissful droney piece using the sounds of Philly bees. Honestly, I could use some more bee buzz on this song but who knows, it might show up somewhere else in the full track. This is shaping up to pack a hefty dose of awesome and if we're lucky, it might even be better than Holtkamp's last solo outing, Field Rituals. But at the very least it's getting the deluxe mini-LP treatment from TJ with a custom letter-pressed jacket and everything.