May 2012
17 posts
9 tags
Single Mothers - Indian Pussy
A deformed, mutant take on stoner metal from Los Ang eles. Using slow, droning (often crushingly heavy) riffs as a basis, the guys from Single Mothers subvert the stoner rock/metal stereotypes in playful and mischevious ways, often locking into bass-driven grooves, creating a tapestry of cut-up samples, weird vocals, aggressive growls or jangly, dissonant guitars. Sludge gone dada.
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10 tags
Aquatic Lifeforms - Aquatic Lifeforms
Looks like the spirit of German Kosmische Musik (or maybe rather: Autobahn Musik) can infect any part of the world. In this case it’s Aquatic Lifeforms, a psychedelic collective from Brisbane, Australia. Their take on kraut is highly dynamic, filled with driving motorik beats and at the same time infused with a serious shoegazey haze. Think Belong’s Common Era, but more improvised,...
9 tags
Review: Koi Pond - So Higher (Sonic Meditations,...
New York City based trio Koi Pond has a short history of throbbing, underground psychedelic jams and the fact, that its individual members are more known than their own little musical enterprise itself - drummer Dave Aron on drums, Pete Vogl wielding both synthesizer and electric guitar, and Arik “Moonhawk” Roper himself (the guy who did most artwork for {among many others} Sleep,...
8 tags
Review: The Rainbow Body - Metatron's Cube...
Matt Kattman sculpts brutal, immediate “power ambient” structures, that are filled with the shoegazey, rough-edged feel of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s Love is a Stream. Like many hazy, foggy ambient records, this cassette was recorded in a short period of time with the usage of heavily processed guitar. But what is of note is the fact that the album was mastered by Mr. James Plotkin...
10 tags
Review: Voder Deth Squad - II (SicSic, 2012)
II, as the name suggests, is the second release by the drone (super)duo of M. Geddes Gengras and Jeremy Kelly. The first cassette, entitled simply I, was released by Stunned Records and (as pretty much all releases by Stunned) was sold out in a heartbeat. The second cassette picks up on the same ideas that put Voder Deth Squad into existence and develops them in order to completely envelop the...
8 tags
Review: Is/Is - III (Guilt Ridden Pop, 2012)
The name Is/Is might be a bit too similar to the name of another guitar band, namely Isis. But the only thing connecting the post-metal monsters from Isis and the noisy shoegaze of the grrls from Is/Is is the penchant for both to create eerily atmospheric, somewhat dusted music, where the sounds blend into the background noise or are heavily distorted. However, Is/Is goes for more punky,...
10 tags
Lunar Miasma - Impermanent Nature
Originally released in February 2012 in an edition of 135 tapes from the KILLER label SicSic Tapes (I think the spirit of Stunned Records travelled all the way across the globe and settled in this German imprint, coming back to the sourceof the kosmische power), this tape by Greece’s whiz kid Panos Alexiadis is a touching display of Panos’ knack for creating eternally blissful and...
9 tags
Review: Phylum Child - In the Sawdust Lobby...
The laid-back and disarmingly simple sounds of the East Coast rock unit Phylum Child appear to echo the prose of late Jack Kerouac, when he was already getting tired of all the Beatnik-star-in-the-center-of-attention lifestyle with all the wild parties and bullshit chit-chats with worshipping Beatniks and other artsy types. The music of Phylum Child is seemingly the rebellion against all the...
8 tags
Review: Mattress - Lonely Souls (Field Hymns,...
This cassette from a mysterious one-man project by Rex Marshall, aka Mattress, sees the output of the Portland synth label in a more pop (or rather, something-wave)-oriented, concise form. It is one slow burner of an album, setting the buzzing, skeletal analog beats against the low-pitched, gothic vocals.
The songs here are strangely catchy and once we get through the early Peaking Lights level...
9 tags
Product0 - Locus Amoenus
Freewheelin’ Spanish psych rock unit Product0 (also spelled as Productzero) offers a darker, more brooding album located somewhere between the works of proto-gothic post-punkers of Bauhaus, desert rock stoners and Aluk Todolo. The result is a bassy, lo-fi droning muscle car drivin’ soundtrack for the tortured souls. Those are some bitchin’ jams (even if a bit amateurish),...
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Review: Isle of Sodor - Goshen (SicSic, 2012)
It seems that the state of Ohio is the breeding ground for nearly countless cohorts of analog synth wizards and experimental explorers. Some of them (like Emeralds and its individual members or Burning Star Core) manage to make it outside the deep underground and get noticed by the more “outside” crowd. Many others stay in the microcosm of electronic sounds, apparently staying...
11 tags
Cub'b - XX
Dreamy half-hop emanations by Chris Cubbison of Santa Barbara, CA. XX is a collection of half- and fully remembered moments from Cubbison’s 20 years of life. The result is something between hypnagogia and moments of nearly palpatable quality. The cover is somewhat shoegazy - and that might be the spirit beneath it all. Drifting, drone-infused psychedelic beats.
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12 tags
Sacred Flower Union / Leafy Suburbs - Split
A split cassette between two local acts from Perth, Australia(the most isolated city in Australia, according to Dan from the Perthian microlabel Future Past Records). Two takes on shimmering, summery ambient with a little touch of chillwavey pop in some parts. Take a dive into the Australian haze and get with the groove.
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11 tags
Wilson Alonso Sanchez - Misaligned Everything
Rarely you come across an album whose name describes the sounds inside so well. Misaligned Everything is a dadaistic, cut-up and mixed-up hell of a sound collage, where absolutely stone age rudimentary synth bloops mix with snippets of pure, outsider weirdness, becoming an absolutely deranged and noise infused piece of musique concrete. Thankfully, Wilson Alonso Sanchez throws a bit of calm...
9 tags
Color Rabbit - Looking Out Surreal Window
Psychedelic, stroboscopic, kaleidoscopic - just a few small words to describe Color Rabbit’s non-fixed, fluctuating and genre-jumping cassette. Outsider emanation straight outta the 60’s acid-wave and avant-garde experimentation. Weird as fuck, but very satisfying once it clicks.
<a href=”http://rainbowbridge.bandcamp.com/album/looking-out-surreal-window-c62”...
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Review: Digital Natives - Blow Your Brain Out...
Floridian loop magician Jeffry Astin, founder of the Housecraft label, has made a name for himself in the dusted lo-fi underground with his solo project Xiphiidae, in which the endlessly looping and repeating psych folk experimentations reached an almost Skaters-like levels of intensity and trancelike suspension. With his new project Digital Natives, Astin still bases his work on power of...
9 tags
Review: Grasshopper - The Day America Forgot...
Echoes of Jasper Johns resonate througout the cassette artwork, with a tiny strip of the United States flag spread across the bleak, abstract smeared paint, as if signifying the last remains of American identity in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Or rather, the last remnants of cozy, comfortable life in the times of neverending bleakness and despair.
Listening to The Day America Forgot is like...
