★Holy Mountain
Compathía
While the "acoustic based project[ions]" of Six Organs of Admittance have been pigeonholed by some as a chance-operated celestial jam unit, the group has always been about songs, and nowhere is this more apparent than on their fourth full length album, an eight-song cycle that mixes the strengths of Ben Chasny's acoustic and electric guitar with his knack for placing this on top of disparate and subtle atmospheric backgrounds. The live favorite (and rare single) "Somewhere Between" has been redo…
Famine Of The Soul
A limited, vinyl-only release (each containing a different baseball card from the 1972-1974 era), Famine of the Soul is a ready-made psych oddity destined to join the ranks of such mythologized artists as Maitreya Kali and Skip Spence. Like a Nam vet street-preacher having an acid flashback, the Baseball Astrologer's debut, Famine of the Soul, despite its outward absurdity (or maybe because of it), resists easy dismissal. Using baseball as a kind of metaphor for innocence lost, Douglas Berman (a…
Variations On A Theme
* 2023 repress, on olive green vinyl* Om reunites one of the most powerful rhythm sections in rock music; Al Cisneros [bass, vocals] and Chris Hakius [drums] both ex-members of the legendary Sleep. "Variations on a Theme" is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. The album's numerous lyrics serve as symbolist vehicles to a state outside the field of time and space."Variations on a Theme" is a series of vibrations and …
Conference Of The Birds
* Clear with Purple vinyl * Comprised of two songs that build on Om’s (Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, rhythm section of legendary sludge and stoner rock pioneers, Sleep) use of cyclical rhythm, riff, and vocal intonation, the duo’s new album Conference of the Birds blends metal, chant, drone, dub, and psychedelia . The band’s lyrics expound upon the structure of the universe, potentiality, and freedom from the physical body.
Engineered by Billy Anderson and produced by the band, Conference of the…
Shoulda Zenith
The sky goes on forever in Barry Walker Jr.’s Shoulda Zenith, and it’s crackling with unexpected lightning. The Tennessee-bred, Portland-based pedal steel master subverts his instrument’s tradition for lachrymose, innocuous Rootzak™. Instead, he ventures to outward-bound strata more frequently traversed by Sonny Sharrock than Gram Parsons. “So often, the pedal steel is used as a textural flavor,” Walker says, “but it really can breathe fire itself.” Evidence for that claim abounds on Shoulda Zen…
Silver Tongued Sisyphus
Recorded in Brooklyn, Germany, and Memphis, Silver Tongued Sisyphus followed Cloudland Canyon's well-received Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004. The album's secular calls to prayer with humming, looping, and loping ambient passages are interspersed with bursting rhythmic energy and agitated guitar lines. Pulling influences from the foggy ether of generations past, the band stakes their claim to the shadows of the cult musical culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s German underground scene. Live sh…
Dust and Chimes
Ben Chasny was on a holy roll when he laid down the eleven tracks on Dust and Chimes. It was 1998 and y'all were floating on that Bill Clinton peace-and-prosperity bubble. Meanwhile, Chasny had dropped his self-titled debut LP earlier that year, and the cognoscenti and illuminati were pricking up their ears. Dust and Chimes announced the arrival of a brow-furrowed troubadour whose complex, morosely beautiful guitar playing didn't Basho you over the head with Fahey-isms. The three solo guitar tra…
Ecstasy & Refreshment
Further down the highway from last year's ace split with Roy Orb D.MT., Food Pyramid reach for lush neo Krautrock heights on 'Ecstasy & Refreshment'. They first break orbit with 'Dexedream''s stellar trajectory powered by twin-panned guitars and rocking rhythm machines to zones of swirling vocals, plateauing at the dreamy psych-house plains of 'Pacifier' and spinning dubwise with the corkscrewing, Ekoplekz-meets-Sun Araw-like scramble of Deep Fantasy'. Up there, the chiming African guitar chops …
Test Leads
Includes digital download voucher redeemable from the label** Judging from his prolific output, L.A. dude M. Geddes Gengras must have a heavy carbon footprint. But we'll let him off 'cause he makes exceedingly good music. After techno odysseys as Personable, psych-dub trips with Sun Araw and The Congos, and duties in Robedoor, Pocahaunted and LA Vampires, he flies under his birth name for 'Test Leads', perhaps his purest and most honest revelation to date; two sprawling sides of throbbin…
Water's Edge
Future Shuttle is a Greenpoint, NYC-based duo (sometimes trio) comprised of Jessa Farkas and Camilla Padgitt-Coles. Prior to the group’s early 2009 conception, the pair studied electronic music at Oberlin College alongside their friends in Blondes and Teengirl Fantasy. Blondes member Sam Haar also produced the Water’s Edge EP, the group’s first officially released recording. In Future Shuttle’s beautifully dense brew of psychedelic reprogramming, Tangerine Dream meets the KLF at the UFO Club, an…
Sailor Man
Utterances into a dictophone from a backdoor man hiding in the closet as the husband arrives home. The tales plod along in whispers, accompanied by defined guitar interplay, punctuated piano and snappy drums. Nearly every accent of guitar seems present. Fragile flamenco plucks, fuzz-to-the-front fumblings onto smooth lyrics of a detective attempting to resolve his own crimes. Vocals and acoustic guitar were recorded by Greg Weeks. The arrangements, instrumentation and production were lovi…
Metallic Diseases
Metallic Diseases is the most intense blast of guitar squalling heat to never find its proper audience when originally released 20 years ago. Truly unhinged at times ("Cans"), sublimely dreamlike and understated at others ("Shake Off"), Starfuckers's debut album fuses the best lineage of droning, hard rocking sounds ("USA" makes a perfect amalgam of Suicide's "Rocket USA" and the Stooges' "1969"), with a gestalt that pushes it over the cliff, as "Western Man" is the kind of prophetic call to arm…
Atlas Nation
French drone deities High Wolf might be best known for their shimmering Not Not Fun efforts, but this latest full-length (emerging on the ever-reliable Holy Mountain imprint) is probably their best yet. Apparently it was inspired by a long trip to India and Nepal, and this Eastern promise is clearly reflected in the band's sound palette. Pulsing tablas sit beneath a dense, sludgy bed of droning guitars - but 'Atlas Nation' isn't a chore to listen to. While a great deal of drone music can …
Live '418
Ainotamenishis is a loud, heavy guitar group from Tokyo who were birthed from one oviduct marked "Velvet Underground" and a massive salpinx marked "Gaseneta." Their high-energy rock 'n' roll action was first captured on an extremely limited CDR release, now released for the first time on vinyl. Ainotamenishis's brand of controlled panic is sure to spike the tongues of all those who purport to talk about the rock. It is primal, punk, eerie, harsh, and utterly essential.
Prayer for Chibi
Suishou no Fune originated in Tokyo's fertile psychedelic scene. After landing a spot on PSF's Tokyo Flashback 5 and releasing Where the Spirits Are in 2006, the group ventured out from Japan and took every opportunity to play across the United States and Europe. During one of these trips in the spring of 2007, the group-- down to the crucial duo of Pirako and Kurenai-- went into a recording studio for a few days and laid down these massive new tracks. Prayer for Chibi might be the ultimate Suis…
Ancestral Songs
Daniel Higgs has an unparalleled presence in both body and voice. This, combined with hypnotic repetition, gives the material on Ancestral Songs both a loose discipline and an immense yet serpentine power. Ancestral Songs is comprised of apocalyptic tunes, a banjo raag, mellifluous birdsong, and the sci-fi-sounding duet of a searing Jew's harp and toy piano. "Are You of the Body?" brings out the electric tamboura tone and an accompanying acoustic guitar to melt the spine. A distorted motorik gui…
Metempsychotic Melodies
Daniel Higgs returns with his second full length recording for Holy Mountain after last year's critically acclaimed Ancestral Songs and his contribution. "Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot," to Thrill Jockey's series of books collecting art and music. Metempsychotic Melodies continues to document Higgs' rise as a solo performer. Raw picked banjo drones dominate Metempsychic Melodies as the instrumental "Universal Salutation" fades into the waking dream soliloquy of observation "Love Abides." "Leontocephali…
International Hello
International Hello is the perfection of California psychedelic rock in all its ecstatic glory. Grady Runyan's guitar playing is as fantastic, spacey and heavy as ever, as is Scott Derr's always-pertinent bass throb. Drummer and singer Rubin Fiberglass is just perfect as a screaming maniac who can actually keep time while Doug Pearson's electronics consistently enhance the dominant power-trio rock that swirls in the sky like some kind of creation myth. In case you don't recognize the names, thes…
Megafauna
Understand this: Yoga dispenses a sinister frailty of howling swellsin hissing static that combusts into crawling shock heaps, to the effectof Mayhem performing Twin Peaks incidentals in a prairie recordedby The KLF. A brief description casts them as black metal's answer to Throbbing Gristle. The texture-based rendering of their compositionssails them on a strange sea between song and sound effect as itbobs along the waves like a dead man s bottled message. Aspects ofGoblin rehearsals in dead hi…
Old Punks
Doronco is a bass player who is most well known for his stints in Les Rallizes Dénudés, Suishou no Fune and with Keiji Haino. Here he is joined by members of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, a Frenchman and an additional female vocalist who have made an album of sophisticated 70s style downer pop. The band uses vocals, bassoon and trumpet over a see-sawing battle of piano / guitar shrill balanced against warm rhythms that sound suspiciously close to how you want them to. Translated as "Mud Cloud," t…