Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Revel Hotel - The Beating of the Wings (revel hotel music 2009)



The Beating of the Wings is a rare breed of record, building a sonic bricolage from moody glam cabaret and early 80’s coldwave with an injection of Nine Inch Nails ire. The gentlemen in Revel Hotel don’t deal in irony: they wear their dark and damaged hearts on their sleeves, both lyrically and musically. At first listen, it’s singer JOHNNYQUINLAN‘s full throttle bravado and sweeping piano melodies that light the torch songs on the record. Lyrically, he doesn’t shy from bombast and incorporates a healthy dose of grandeur, deftly dropping lines about god, prophets, and power, even on the dancefloor ready tracks.

Beneath Quinlan’s bravura, however, is the strength of BARRETTHIATT‘s expansive and hard hitting drums, ROBERT TAHIJA‘s stirring guitar melodies, and FRANK DESERTO‘s punchy basslines and precisely apoplectic theremin psych outs. Of the five tracks, “Terminission” is by far the standout song, bringing a fresh take on early 70’s glam to life with an electric/acoustic mix akin to Bowie’s “Life on Mars” or “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.” Tahija channels Mick Ronson with Quinlan playing both Bowie and Mike Garson as he opines on what could be an indictment of desperate scenesters or the same lost souls Ziggy sang to: “We signed our leases/Bought our coffins/For the end…We talk in riddles/We worship false idols/And single out the weak/We shoot black smoke in the sky/Numb ourselves by getting high/And turn the other cheek.”

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Monday, April 26, 2010

Michael Yonkers - Lovely Gold (drag city 2010)

Utilizing original photos and the exact layout and notes of the planned 1977 "Lovely Gold" release, a lost classic at last becomes available. As of late 2009, the legend of Michael Yonkers has taken its place among the great stories of underground rock and roll music. He’d been playing rock and roll for nearly forty years when “Microminiature Love” was finally issued in 2003 (Sire had taken a pass way back in 1968). A thousand noise-rock ears pricked up, as Yonkers, a reclusive Minneapolis dancer-musician with a handful of self-released records over the years, had seminally prefigured proto-punk/metal/noise through his own brand of amped up garage rock. Since the revelation, Michael has picked up where he left off, exploring blown-out frequencies with collaborators around the globe, and his work has claimed a seat next to immortals like The Fugs, Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth and even Jimi Hendrix.

What a lot of folks still don’t know is that Michael put aside his hand-built fuzz boxes and bellowing vocal style in the 1970s to record and self-release some truly curious albums of lilting loner-folk music, including “Grimwood”, “Goodby Sunball” and “Michael Lee Yonkers”. Of this holy trio of albums, only “Grimwood” has yet seen reissue. Throughout this time, Yonkers layered madrigal-like vocals, simple acoustic guitars, and used electricity in only the most subtle of ways - all to serve his sombre, mesmerizing songs.

This brings us to “Lovely Gold”. Planned as the fourth LP in his 70s trilogy, it was never released - a true crime, because it is an exotic work of homespun brilliance. Recorded in 1977 on a four-channel ‘tube type’ tape recorder that Michael built himself by combining parts of other machines, it is perhaps his most multi-faceted solo album. The trademark Yonkers chug appears (though more stripped-down and dreamlike) and even some spraying acidic guitar on the title track, but the sweeping choral voice arrangements on gorgeous hymns like “Will It Be” are entirely unique and indeed lovely creations. What’s more, while digging through his archives Michael located previously lost cuts intended for the album, including the harrowing, near- Krautrock glide of “Nevermore”. piccadilly records

Friday, April 23, 2010

Thurston Moore / Kylie Minoise - Tusco Terror Wether (insult recordings 2009)

...nothing to be said that it's not already said about this. Limited to 120 copies.

Tracklist:
01 Thurston Moore - Noise Virgin
02 Kylie Minoise - CCTV Laceration
03 Kylie Minoise - Free Twisted Filth
04 Tusco Terror - I
05 Tusco Terror - II
06 Tusco Terror - III
07 Wether - Spirithenge

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Fields Of The Nephilim Live in Athens



Start Time:
Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 8:00pm
End Time:
Sunday, May 30, 2010 at 2:00am
Location:
Gagarin www.gagarin205.gr
Street:
Liosion 205
City/Town:
Athens, Greece



Synch Festival 2010 Line Up


HOT CHIP
LAURENT GARNIER LIVE BAND
PEACHES
FUCK BUTTONS
A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS
GET WELL SOON
BEAK>
ALVA NOTO / BLIXA BARGELD
JIMI TENOR & TONY ALLEN
MATT ELLIOTT
DJ KRUSH
BUSY P
JIMMY EDGAR
TRUS’ME
MOONBOOTS
BALEARIC MIKE
ANALOG AFRICA SHOWCASE
KEITH SLATER
NO PROFILE
LOLEK
MODREC
LUMIERE BROTHER
MATTEUS
SPYWEIRDOS WITH SCHEMA ENSENBLE
MY WET CALVIN
TERANGA BEAT
PI CI
ILAN MANOUACH
THE BOY & FELIZOL
CAYETANO SOUNDSYSTEM FEAT. DJ BOOKER
THE NEW STYLE (BLU LAGOON DVJ SET )

...Satyrus the God of festivals...

Monday, April 19, 2010

Seth Nehil - Knives (senufo editions 2010)
























Seth Nehil is an artist, performance-maker, and composer with a practice that crosses between sound, performance-events and the visual arts. In recent years he has created large-scale sound performances and has collaborated with choreographers including Liz Gerring (NYC) and Linda Austin (Portland, OR). His sonic works investigate dynamic impacts, material tangibility and stochastic structures. Seth Nehil has also been an editor of arts publications, an organizer of performance festivals and a curator of exhibitions. He currently teaches sound, video and art theory at Washington State University in Vancouver WA and the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland OR.

Knives has been influenced by cinematic sound design, hip hop music production, musique concrete and noir films, among other things. These days, I am interested in making music that is equal parts dramatic and abstract, songs with all of the regularity removed. I want to incorporate room tone, accidents, lack of control, mimicry, suggestion, tangentiality. senufo editions


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Magic Lantern - Platoon (not not fun 2010)

It’s been a while since Magic Lantern shined its High Beams out into the world but life’s a maze of alternate paths (marriage, children, Portland Oregon, etc) and that’s just the way it goes/went. Fortunately for all lovers of heavy male psych brotherhoods the ML gang convened back in 2009 before parting ways temporarily to track their second full-length, Platoon, and here it is. As oughta be expected, it's a monstrous hot-rod cruise into screaming dual wah distortions powered by the poker faced Gavin/Chip rhythm section and splattered with jazzy freak-out organ and the occasional Stallones echo yelp. Featuring most of their live classics from the pre-hiatus era (“Dark Cicadas,” “Friendship,” etc) and tracked/mixed by Best Coast Bobb Bruno, this fills the hole in yr heart left by High Beams... not not fun


Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Acid Mothers Temple - In 0 To 00 (important Records 2010)



Latest in the seemingly endless wave of releases from this prolific Japanese psych. rock collective led by Kawabata Makoto. This release is credited to the Acid Mothers Temple, the most long-running iteration of the group. Following upon the group's recording of Terry Riley's In C in 2002 (which saw follow-ups like In G, a collaboration with ultrasound), the new LP offers four long pieces including "In A" and "In 0" and promises more of the Acid Mother's fuzzed-out experimental rock. From 0 to Infinity is also the first Acid Mothers release in a long while to feature long time member Cotton Casino on vocals.


Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Omar Khorshid - Guitar El Chark (Guitar of the Orient) (Sublime Frequencies 2010)



LP SF052

The late Omar Khorshid remains an iconic legend of the Arab world, though he’s received criminally little international acclaim. Born in Cairo in 1945, the glittering age of Egypt's cultural reinvention, Khorshid was soon to become one of its luminaries and most well-known, if short-lived, voices. He is regarded as the greatest guitarist the Arab world has ever known. By the mid 60s Khorshid was established with his group Le Petit Chats, an Egyptian beat group modeled after the prevailing influence of Elvis and the Beatles. It was at this time that one of the reigning figures of contemporary Arabic music, Abdel Halim Hafez, asked Omar Khorshid to join his orchestra. With Baligh Hamdi composing, Hafez with Khorshid in place would create some of the most innovative modern sounds in the Arabic musical canon.

Time with the Hafez orchestra offered Khorshid instant fame, and it wasn’t long before he was asked to play with the queen of Arab music, the voice of Egypt herself -Oum Kalthoum. Over the next few years Khorshid became a well-established and integral part of the Arab musical landscape. He was featured heavily in live concerts, national TV and radio and studio recordings, playing for the leading artists of the day. The guitar had now become an essential ingredient in the Oriental orchestra.

Khorshid began recording albums under his own name for the prestigious Lebanese record labels Voice Of The Orient and Voice Of Lebanon. Working with visionary engineer Nabil Moumtaz at Polysound studios in Beirut, Khorshid would take his music into some of the most progressive musical terrain of its time. The tracks included here in this retrospective are from the prolific span of Khorshid’s career in Beirut from 1973 to 1977. The venerable Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish best encapsulated this time in Lebanon: “unfortunately, it was paradise”.

Khorshid’s prolific instrumental music enjoyed recognition that transcended class and status during the brief period he shone. It’s a testament to his immense talent and some of the finest guitar music the world has ever heard.

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Sunday, April 11, 2010

Voice Of The Seven Woods - The Firefly Dusk

...just another fine EP from Voice Of The Seven Woods...
A. The Firefly Dusk
B. Winter's Temper

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Lee Ranaldo - Maelstrom From Drift (2008)



Lee Ranaldo's "Maelstrom From Drift" provides an excellent snapshot of his entire solo career, collecting tracks recorded over the span of a decade plus and with numerous different sorts of collaborators.
From the album's start with a track from Ranaldo's
Glacial project with David Watson (bagpipes) and Tony Buck (drums) to it's conclusion with the multi-layered guitar din of the title track, "Maelstrom From Drift" is a highly focused work providing the listener with numerous different aural styles, each ready to engage and challenge the listener.
Lee Ranaldo proved himself long ago a musician comfortable in any number of settings, but on the unpredictable procession of these nine tracks, it’s the more focused music that finds him at his best.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Zeni Geva - Desire For Agony (1993)



"Zeni" is an old Japanese term for money, and "Geva" comes from the German "Gewalt", meaning "violence".

Following several years in the Japanese noise rock scene that included collaborations with Merzbow and Hanatarashi, experimental noise rock guitarist and electronic programmer
KK. Null formed Zeni Geva in 1987. Former members include Ikuo Taketani of Boredoms and Hanatarashi and Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins.

Their music combines elements ranging from death metal and hardcore punk to math rock, psychedelic, and noise rock. Their unorthodox mixture of styles has even earned progressive rock comparisons: critic Patrick Kennedy describes their 1993 album "Desire for Agony" as resembling "Motörhead meets King Crimson." - add Swans and Godflesh and you might get close...