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I picked this up on a whim when I saw it in a little record shop. I had never heard of the Melvins and I knew Lustmord through reputation only. Boy, what a nice surprise! It's like these two artists were made for each other.The Melvins, for those who don't know, are a sludgy, grungy metal band who used to hang out with Nirvana, but whose music is way, way better. They have always had some experimental tendencies and they are used to good effect here. Lustmord is, of course, the undisputed king of the Dark Ambient genre.The tracks on this release tend to jump back and forth between the two styles without much evidence of true collaboration... at first. The opener "III" is a spooky bit of slowly building ambient that centers around a clock chime. It leads into "The Bloated Pope," a classic Melvins style tune. However, this illusion is shattered when we get to the twenty-two minute title track, an epic slab of downtuned riffage surrounded by wonderful atmospheric textures. Honestly, I could listen to this track all day. It features the best of what both contributors have to offer.The rest of the album has both metal tunes with dashes of ambient, and ambient atmospheres with dashes of metal. It all works terribly well, and many of the songs are actually quite catchy (one of the Melvins' strengths.) I know a lot of experimental music lovers out there hate metal, and if you're one of them you probably won't like this. Personally, I am a great lover of swampy, sludgy guitar riffs and those are present in abundance. Add to that the gorgeously sinister electronics of Lustmord and you've got a record that I return to over and over again.
This is the first Coil record I ever bought, and as such it holds a rather special place in my collection. It contains a number of remixes and reworkings of one of the band's earliest tracks "How To Destroy Angels." The original piece was made entirely with gongs and other metallic percussion and is one of the landmark achievements of early industrial music. Here, we have a variety of studio manipulations that surpass the earlier version in imagination and atmosphere."The Sleeper," at a mere two minutes, isolates and focuses on a weird pulsing sound like a wet jumprope being swung around. "Dismal Orb" strips away all but the most minimal of textures and simply hangs in the air, like swamp gas. "Tectonic Plates" is a highlight, filled with violent scraping and grinding noises. It lives up to its title completely, as it conjures up images of vast rock formations smashing against each other under the mounting pressure of liquid magma. The vast array of effects the band is able to achieve from such simple source material is astonishing.The album also includes a full length remix of the original sixteen minute "How To Destroy Angels" by Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound.) Unfortunately, the remixing is too subtle to really be noticeable unless you listen to the two side by side. The upside of this is that listeners who have been unable to acquire the the compilation "Unnatural History," on which the original track appears, now have a chance to hear it.The album concludes with one second of silence, entitled "Absolute Elsewhere." This is a reference to the original one-sided vinyl, on which the blank side was labeled with this title. This albums is often referred to as an EP, owing to it's rather specific nature, but its length spans a good fifty minutes. More than satisfactory, considering the quality of the material.
Earthmonkey is a project by the oddly named Peat Bog, best known for his collaborations with Nurse With Wound. On this release, however, he strays far afield from the avant garde sound collages and eerie soundscapes, tackling instead the trippy, strung out world of Ravers. The difference is that, unlike Rave music, this doesn't suck. On this two disc set (three discs if you got one of the first 300 copies. I did not.) the listener is assaulted with relentlessly frenetic, out of focus music that drifts between rock, disco, trance, jazz and experimental. The guitars are fuzzy, the vocals are distorted and mixed way back. Everything is designed to feel like a haze of thick smoke and intoxication. The consistently fast tempos and overworked drum machines prevent you from ever really relaxing, though, which makes this an oddity among psychedelic records.The fact is that the music is unnerving and it's hard not to be slightly on edge when listening to it. Combine that with the sheer length of the album (two hours without the bonus disc) and we're talking a seriously draining experience. For that reason, I don't often listen to this record, but it works well at parties where you want to keep the energy up, or when you're just in one of those moods.That being said, the whole production is quite impressive, especially given that all the instruments were played by a single man. "Funhouse" is a standout track, with its repeated vocal sample and twelve minutes of Gong-like psychedelia. "Be That Charge" is certainly an interesting record by a talented guy. It just may be a bit much to take in a single sitting.
For those of you who don't know, Sun Ra was a jazz musician from Saturn. At least that's what he claimed, and when you listen to his music it's easy to believe him. Atlantis is a fine example of his eccentric compositions and live improvisations.The first half of the record is devoted to short pieces in which Ra plays quirky melodies and jagged rhythms on his "Solar Sound Instrument" which turns out to be a Hohner Clavinet. The backing band is subdued, but the percussion and rare splashes of saxophone add a very nice touch of spice to Ra's admittedly impressive keyboard work.These pieces are all very well crafted and enjoyable, but we all know why we're really here: for the epic twenty-one minute title track on side two. This monster was recorded live and features Ra banging away on an organ like the Phantom of the Opera having a seizure. The track features some truly top notch big band playing, and it's rather a shame that the organ pyrotechnics dominate the proceedings so thoroughly. Nevertheless, it's a wildly engaging, if violently dissonant, romp and certainly a good demonstration of Sun Ra's demented genius.If there ever was an Atlantis, I imagine the sense of chaotic terror its citizens felt upon sinking into the ocean is well captured here. Definitely worth hearing for fans of free jazz.
When most people think of Space Rock, they think of Pink Floyd style psychedelia, extended jams with trippy melodies and lots of swirly little arpeggios. That is to say, Space Rock designed for tourists. Zip along in your rocket ship, snap a photo of the pretty nebula and wave to the Martians. It's all very fun, but it resembles space about as much as It's A Small World reflects world politics.
Space is dark. Space is cold. Space is mostly empty. Such is the music on Zeit. Yes, that's right; before Tangerine Dream became insipid purveyors of New Age treacle, they made some truly adventurous and influential albums. Zeit is the longest, the strangest and certainly the most sinister record of their career.
At seventy-five minutes long, Zeit (the German word for "time") is certainly an appropriate title for this double album. The music is divided into four sides, but it might as well be one long piece. The music begins with a cluster of cellos slowly fading in, basically the only acoustic sound on the whole album. The following hour is made up of analogue synths droning and shifting very...................very.........................slowly. One can imagine planets forming out of primordial darkness, rivers of magma gradually cooling and hardening into the crusts of what will - in just a few billion years - become mountains and oceans.
Needless to say, Zeit is a difficult listen, particularly if you try to pay attention to the whole thing. However, those fascinated by the infinite mysteries of the cosmos will be hard pressed to find better mood music for contemplation or stargazing.
Even by my standards, this is weird one. It was recorded live in 1966, and consists mainly of very high pitched violin drones, bolstered with feedback, occasional piano stabs and percussion. At least it starts that way. After what seems like a very long time, you begin to realize that development is happening. More sounds begin to enter the mix and the music becomes more complex. You can hear guitars, saxophone, clarinet, cellos and (perhaps most interestingly) snatches of "found" sound coming from a radio.
The cool thing is that all this happens so gradually that you don't even realize it's happening. Suddenly you just notice it. In its own way, the album can be trance inducing, lulling you into subconsciousness with its incessant hum, noisy humming.AMMMusic probably bears more relation to free jazz than it does to psychedelia or space rock, and it's at times reminiscent of some of Sun Ra's more extreme outings. It should also be noted that in 1966, nothing like this was being done. Even John Cage's contemporary pieces seem tame by comparison. One can only imagine the impact it must have had on its release.The CD version offers extended performances that were too long to fit on the LP, as well as the original versions, giving us a nice set of listening options. As I said, the music is very high pitched and brittle, but if you can get past that I think you'll find multiple listens to be quite rewarding. Definitely not for beginners, though.
Organisation was the name of Kraftwerk before they were Kraftwerk. My oh my how things change. Here you will find no catchy tunes or lyrics about pocket calculators, no dance anthems about robots or mannequins, indeed not even a single synthesizer!In contrast to their later all consuming fascination with the future, Tone Float is a downright primordial record. This is bona fide, old school Krautrock; raw, visceral and mostly improvised. The title track is a side long psychedelic trip centered around bells, drums and organ. It starts off very quietly and builds wonderfully into a shrieking Hammond-drenched nightmare. It is a remarkably well composed example of the twenty minute jam, all too common on these early seventies releases,with very focused playing by all involved.The second half is a bit less organized, consisting of a series of shorter works, still probably improvisations. There's a weird, almost dance-like flute number called Milk Rock and some rather sloppy percussion experiments. We conclude with a nearly eight minute groove that is similar to the first side in its instrumentation and structure, although with strange, jittery amplified violin dominating.Overall, this record has far more in common with early Amon Düül and Ash Ra Tempel than with the sound Kraftwerk would make famous later in the decade. Nevertheless, it's a charmingly idiosyncratic example of the genre and worth checking out.
