THE WHITE STRIPES "Icky Thump" CD

Okay-wow. This album is a giant steaming pile of derivative shit. I feel completely let down and am floored by the lack of a single memorable riff on this piece of trash. What the hell was Jack White thinking? For all the talk i heard about this being a return to rocking form, with some hints even of thrash metal being included as well as some serious soloing, this thing is beyond bland. It's like Jack and Meg sacrificed a rib each to the great god of stagnancy in return for the inspiration to churn out some worthless, grating bore-o-riffs. Not much there, John-not much there. I'm not really angry here, more confused, because the Stripes have long been a fave of mine (as well as many others) and to the day i day i will still say that "Expecting" is one of the greatest, toughest, most primeval guitar riffs that i have ever laid ears on-i'm left perpelexed and just trying to figure out where the way, the path, the noble road to rock ecstasy, was lost by Jack and Meg. It certainly wasn't on their last record-even throughout its deviations from the formula, it contained some of their best stuff, including the massive juggernaut "Instinct Blues" (which i have recently given thought to covering in Yog-Sothoth, which would be our 2nd Stripes cover.) So i guess somewhere between punching out worthless goons from lesser bands and getting married to forgettable "supermodels" and signing to a major major label, Jack just gave up. Decided to phone one in. Hell, he interviewed Jimmie Page in Guitar World- looks like he's really made it. The need to write quality material must have evaporated like so much dignity back when he was laying carpet for a living. So i would skip this one, really. Forgettable through and through. And one more thing-using an octave on every guitar solo gets really annoying. It's about as predictable as Meg's drumming has gotten. A horrible misstep.

FEAR FALLS BURNING "The Infinite Sea of Sustain" Audio DVD

Another project that is becoming far too prolific for me to keep up with but is way too good to fall behind on. This one was a no-brainer...six live concerts captured in crystalline audio over the course of FFB's European tour from 2005, all loaded on to one audio dvd for seriously extended play, along with a few mysterious photographs of the man in action as the music drifts by. And i really think drift is the most appropriate word here, as all of these pieces enswirl you in their narcoleptic hypnogogy and pull you deep down into a lovely little aura of relaxation and meditation. Listening to this album has actually eased my recents stresses as of late and not much else ahs been able to, aside from the outings with friends and games of "Settlers of catan" that i have recently been involved in. So yes, i really really like this record. But you may be wondering just who the hell FFB is and why i'm so down with his stuff. FFB is the new project begun a few years ago by the dude who was known as Projekt/Release recording artist vidnaObmana-FFB was born of a desire to revert back to guitar playing and live performance. Every FFB piece is a live real time composition, with the sounds fed through walls of pedals, loops and delays until they endlessly recycle and form new walls of sound of their own accord, more or less. It's a master class in layering and improvised composition and due to the ease of the way this music is presented, recordings are multitudinous-i have a good portion of what FFB has done thus far but some i've just missed out on due to financial constraint and lazing up on the output watching. This one is well worth your dollars, though, and is still available, and the packaging is pretty damn exquisite-it's like a velour wood case-you have to really caress it to see what i'm saying, but it's nice. The sound is towering and monolithic, the drones warm and inviting and so so comforting once you slip into them. It's very much in the vein of other soundlords like Troum, Nadja/Aidan Baker, Final, etc...hazy sounscapes blurred with melancholy and yearning, a reaching for something more, a desire to connect. I love this band, i really do, rapidly becoming a fave in my assemblage of drone albums and requisite late night listening when i'm feeling lonely or upset (which is a lot right now.) I would love to see FFB live, hopefully they'll get to the states soon so i can witness the haze in all it's volume drenched glory, but until then these live shows will have to suffice...arriving soon at my door will be the equally massive (and i mean it) 5LP set on tonefloat records, where FFB is remixed/reprocessed by such greats as Nadja, Final, Birchville Cat Motel, Stefano Pilia, et al. Probably will be the release of the year, in my humble opinion. Awesome and beautiful....

LUNAR AURORA "Andacht" CD

Holy shit. This album absolutely fucking slays. Amazing. Lunara Aurora are one of the more mysterious black metal entities lurking around (and alas they will lurk no more, as they have stated that this record will be their last in a long while) and have more or less eschewed any sort of spotlight that's been cast their way, presumably more concerned with creating beyond EPIC black metal with a fucking freezing cold atmosphere and gorgeously melodic, devastating riffs. This album serves as an amalgamation of everything they've done honed into a knife of deadly precision. The disc starts off furiously and pretty much never lets up-sounds well up and fill the space you're listening to it in-this is a sonic masterwork compared to anything that any band has done, ever. It's like the sound glut of Mogwai filtered through black metal-everything is here-massive crunchy/fuzz guitars, ambient soundscaping keyboards that encompass the entire compositions, freezing them with mooncrust and glacier shine, heavily delyaed and chorused guitars that bleed into the keyboards and add to the majesty, choral vocals that sound as cavernous as if they were recorded in the Sistine Chapel, and of course screechy reverb-laden vocals that echo of despairs unknown...it's a thick, dense mix of true blackened art and i am hard pressed to think of any band that has gone to this level. Xasthur's layering technique comes to mind but his sound is far too lofi to butt heads with this epoch-there's a definite Burzum influence at work here too but rather than go in the buzzing, torturous direction that more of Varg's disiciples choose Lunar Aurora crafts grandiose swaths of music that could be the national anthems of some weird black metal universe. I really can't go on-just know that this is triumphant, masterful music of the highest order regardless of genre.

SHINING "V:Halmstad" CD

At long last it has arrived at my door, after months of trying to find someone in the US who was distributing it. Upon me at last is the fifth monumnetal effort from Sweden's Shining, the "suicide squadron of Sweden." Shining is the black metal project of Niklas Kvarforth, started in 1996 to help him deal with the agonies and hurts he was struggling with in his life. Shining pretty much invented the "suicidal" black metal genre and this new recording cements their position as one of its reigning practitioners. Of course the big claim to fame was that Hellhammer of Mayhem used to drum in Shining-apparently those days are gone now, as Niklas has replaced everyone with some weird backing band called "The toolbox." Shining is only Kvarforth-everyone else is relegated to backing band status. So why do i love Shining so? They are one of the few bands who actually convey a true, frightening and real sense of depression, hurt, torment, sorrow, agony...and this has to be the result of Kvarforth's own suicide attempts (three times) and resulting hospitalizations in Swedish mental facilities. Now i know what you're thinking, and i agree-if he really wanted to kill himself, he'd just do like the girl in this fantastic album cover and eat a muzzle. So i guess there's something he's clinging to, some reason he's still here, but i don't think that his suicidal failures at all dimish the power or command over my emotions that his music has. There is no vocalist i have ever heard in all of black metal that sounds more tortured-when i listen to Kvarforth let out an out of tune wail and hear his voice break and crack, i can feel what he must be feeling. He can project and draw you into what he's feeling, the hurt that's inside. Secondly, he's an absolutely amazning guitarist and songwriter. Shining is midpaced for the most part but extremely technical-they come up with riffs and counterpoints that are rooted in the basics of black metal but they take them to a far more progressive place and create an altogether eerie and disconcerting pummel of atmosphere by way of weirdly dissonant passages and and depressing samples lifted from films along with devastating metal riffs and incredibly impressive and well planned guitar solos. A lot of time and effort goes into a Shining record and it's obvious to me that this record came at great personal expense and emotional devastation to Kvarforth. Comprised of six tracks (one is an interlude by way of Beethoven, so really only five) the record takes you down a very dark road where the sorrow and regret wells up in a massive pool, the waves getting deeper and deeper until eventually you're drowning in the total choking mass of desperation that the band has built up. The songs almost all feature haunting acoustic guitar figures and majestic and melodic solos that give instant goosebumps (and a few rock and rollisms don't hurt either.) Amazingly well recorded and totally crushing in sound, the guitars and drums will flatten you. Kvarforth's voice is getting even more torn and ragged, if that's possible-his vocals have become a choking hoarse bark that breaks consatnly and send shudders through your body-by the time you reach the final track, where a gorgeous chord progression of fuzzy guitars pulls you down down down and Kvarforth's clean (!!!) sung vocals lull you into his near suicide vigil, you will feel like there is no hope, no escape, no light, no love, nothing-nothing coming ever but an endless parade of defeats and hurt, piled higher and higher until you're buried under their collective and suffocating weight. This record is completely amazing, beautiful and fucking scary. Another masterpiece from Shining.

"Need for A Crossing: A New New Zealand Vol. I" CD

Aaah, a glorious return to the noise stomping grounds of olde. It's no secret that New Zealand is home to some of the greatest weirdo/narcoleptic/stumbling/damaged noise guitar bands out there-this disc is packed with big names for those in the know-but what's amazing to me is how serene this new compilation is, and despite the number of artists involved, how well the entire set flows together. The lead off track is by Birchville Cat Motel, one of my all time faves and more or less the reason i threw down $21 for this disc (Table of the Elements schwag does not come cheap!) and it's a destroyer-"Skies Crimson Tears" is the name of the track and sure enough it makes good on the Slayer reference by using the backing track of "Raining Blood" as it's palette, upon which Campbell Kneale drops all manner of droney guitar lightning bolts. Alas it's only six minutes, as it's fading out you feel like he was really only just getting started, but hey, a good track is a good track and this one is a pretty great little fix of BCM. Blowfly Saint appears next, turning in some damaged electro folk that sounds like a field recording from the sixties, or maybe a more straightforward version of the Dead C (and where the hell are they on this comp?) if they played lullabies. Not as entrancing or destructive as the BCM track but just as lulling. Greg Malcolm appears next, with one of his two tracks that appear on the set, and both are pretty indicative of what he does-a lot like a really stripped down version of the mighty Pelt, using guitars to make a background of cosmic drone over which he fingerpicks/strums/improvs raga-esque figures, just with a more psychedelic/outsider lean. It's liquefying stuff, just check out some of the records he did for Celebrate Psi Phenomena and let yr head get free (i have a bunch of his records laying around here somewhere...). Pumice turn in two tracks back to back next and it's about as close to real actual pop songcraft as anyone on this collection can get, although by Pumice standards these tracks are on the quieter side of things-but still two gorgeous, fractured pieces of heartache full of razor sharp jarring guitar squiggles and a cloud of murk spread over the top. Gfrenzy turns things around in another direction with their short contribution, which sounds like some sort of weird trip hop filtered through a drip press of folk music, like a cup of coffee made thick and sludgy with sawdust. Probably the track that's furthest out as the source isn't really guitars as much as it is cut/paste computer work and a personal take on US hip-hop. Leighton Craig pulls us under next with his piece for droney keyboards, another track that is far too short in my humble opinion. Extremely gorgeous and soothing pulse tones strung together to create a hymne that's not entirely mournful but not very happy either, almost reminiscent of the stuff Tim Hecker did on his Alien8 recording (i forget the title right now, sorry.) Anthony Milton and Peter Wright close the disc out with a lengthy piece each of good old fashioned New Zealand guitar skronk and drone, as feedback piles on top of itself and makes a thick fat cloud of buzzy hissing drone, each artist seemingly out to prove that they can do what the Dead C do just as well as the masters themselves-i like that the disc closes out this way because even though this collection strives to be a documentation of what's going on in New Zealand right now, the influence of what's been happening there for years is obviously felt by everyone involved on the comp. Great stuff all in all and a good introduction for someone just getting into New Zealand noise (although it's got enough appeal to have completists like me drooling all over it, too!)

ATAVIST/NADJA "12012291920/1414101" CD

Maybe it's the tense, nervous weird moods i've been in lately, but this ambient styled heartbreak shit is really sitting well with me right now. And Nadja is so fucking good at it that i can't really give this album anything less than a "jesus christ go buy it right now" sort of assessment. That being said i was actually pretty taken aback by this record's direction. Being that this was a collaboration between Atavist and Nadja, i was expecting some pretty heavy, in fact damn heavy, guitar sludge. Certainly not the misanthropic hate gobs that Atavist toss out on their own record but something veering more towards the doom side of things, with Nadja's fluttering melodicisms and ultra heavy ambience sprinkled on top. Instead we get a very very tranquil, peaceful, quietly gorgeous album packed with little flourishes of sound and whispers that caress your ears and lull you off to some sort of mournful place-but it's not sad, no, it's rather that sort of triumphant melancholy practiced by the likes of Mogwai, Jesu, Final, etc-stuff that makes you feel happy for every experience, be it good or bad. It's the musical personifiication of the cliche "it's better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all.." And even further indicative of the weird moods i've been having is the fact that i attach feelings of love or romance or whatever sort of heart fucked-upedness to this record. I have no idea if that was the mood they wanted to convey with this one, it's just what i get out of it. although Nadja tends to take me to that place every time anyways. Weirdest thing about this record-no drums. Everyone is playing guitars or basses or synths and the whole record is a thick marsh of warm, sweet pillowy drone hum. tons of things going on all around your ears. A record for the headphones, absolutely. It's hard to keep up with Aidan Baker and Nadja-i have to be really selective about which of seemingly endless records i'll shell out for-but i'm glad i picked up this one, even though it was a little pricier (plus Atavist and Nadja together??? it's gotta be pretty damn cool.) So yeah-highest recommendation.

"Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" dir. Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola

"Apocalypse Now" is without question one of the greatest, most fucked up films of all time. It stands in a tie with "Full Metal Jacket" for me as the greatest war film put to tape (although if forced i'd have to choose FMJ, just because i'm a Kubrick loyalist.) The films are similar in the sense that they really aren't about the war at all, instead they are about the way that the war and the ides of war change the protagonists and warp/scar them in deep psychological ways. And both are what i'd call psychedelic films, although "Apocalypse" goes way further down that road than FMJ, getting into some seriously dark, brooding, competely removed mindfuck territory, like the heart of a bad acid trip. So it seems especially weird after seeing this fine documentary on the making of film, as we watch Francis Coppola mirror the road travelled by his protagonist Willard as he attempts to create "Apocalypse" and bring his bizarre, grandiose vision to life. I was enthralled with this film from the beginning-i love to see how things were made in the world of music and film and especially love seeing the process of the creators in the field-and it's just fucking crazy to see Coppola follow the film's path. it's pretty simple: he started out with a script and a true narrative structure (much like Willard starts out with a clear mission in the film) and by the end of shooting, Coppola is not working with a script at all, totally shooting nothing but improvised footage between Brando, Dennis Hopper and MArtin Sheen with no clear idea of an ending or a theme or anything (similar to the degeneration of all reality at the end of the film.) Along the way we get to witness ritual animal killings by native indians and surprisingly funny/candid interviews with people involved, including Dennis Hopper, George Lucas (who makes very apparent the differences between his style of filmmaking and Coppola's) and others. These guys are really upfront about what went on and how they were directed by Coppola and how they got into character (most often: alcohol and drugs-lots of both.) It's pretty amazing to watch Sam Bottoms not even begin to dodge the question of wheteher he acted in the film while on acid (he did.) And it's equally amazing to watch Mrtin Sheen push himself into his nether realms of openness via enormous alcohol consumption and then commit an amazing performance to film. It's almost scary how much this project cunsmumed these people, and how terrified Coppola was that he was making a bad film, a pretentious film that no one would want to see, when instead he created one of the greatest studies of psychology decay and all out psychedelic horror that we as film fans have ever been exposed to. Of course the film's success is it's vindication. It's easy to draw comparisons netween "Hearts of Darkness" and Les Blank's study of Herzog, "The Burden of Dreams"-both directors were absolute creative whirlwinds struggling against every obstacle, themselves included, to bring to life these gargantuan ideas and images because it was in their hearts and that is what they do. I find immense inspiration in Coppola's final words in the documentary, because i think it really says everything that needs to be said about film (and please don't fault me too much-i'm paraphrasing): "...and now with 8mm cameras some fat 8 year old girl in Ohio is going to create this beautiful film and be the next Mozart...and when the professionalism of making films finally gets broken down and destroyed, that's when it will really become art." Magnificent.

KTL "2" CD

A continuation of what was began in their first record, released just a few months ago. The music is a companion to a film (i think) that has yet to screen at any US locations, but if it does, i'll be there. KTL is a collaboration between Stephen O'Malley and some other guy who makes noise records for Mego (sorry i don't remember his name but i'm an O'Malley guy anyways.) The first record was supposedely some kind of filtration of black metal ideals into the form of cold, droning noisy soundscapes-the artwork was grey and the whole thing had kind of a faux coldness to it that didn't necessarily translate well into musical form. I recall one stellar track from the first album that actually did seem to come from the nether pools that spawn black metal but otherwise the whole thing was, forgive me, Sunn 0))) people, rather tedious. So curiousity got the better of me and i picked up this new one, expecting more of the same, and i'm very happily surprised. This is a whole different kind of drone spread across four massive tracks, diving into a strnge pool of radiant shimmers and gorgeous glistenings. The high point is the second track, a 27 minute buildup of high guitar whine and electronics that seems like someone is breaking a rainbow into 1000 pieces and shoving the pieces in your ears. It's gorgeous stuff, cut from the cloth of Matthew Bower's Sunroof! project and the always mighty Birchville Cat Motel. I didn;t see this one coming at all-it's a very inviting piece of music and it's pretty damn blissful. The third track goes down a darker path, more or less another 20 minutes of darkened guitar drones but more open and echoey than Sunn 0))). It's good to see O'Malley feeling freed from the confines of the black drone practiced by his main gig and expanding his sonic palette (and really, this is the first project from him where i've ever heard any real or exciting differential.) The final track winds things down with some wind machine style sounds and some lonely melodic guitar lines that wouldn't seem out of place on one of the new records by Earth. All in all a great record that caught me way off guard and just makes me all the more curious about the visual portions it supposedely accompanies.

KLABAUTAMANN "Der Ort" CD

And then there are the black metal bands who totally rewrite the genre and break every "rule" to create something beyond original, something that really has only tenuous links to BM but makes the genre all the better for being included. Klabautamann is one of those bands-after hearing this astonishing record i would have to rank these guys right up there with Leviathan, Xasthur and all the other overlords of BM who are reiventing the way things are done. Klabautamann is a band comprised of members of the amazing post-rock band Woburn House who put an equally astonishing album earlier this year on the wicked awesome Paradigms record label. The Slint styled approach that Woburn House employs shines through in spades on the Klabautamann record. Elements of black metal are certainly there, in the forms of incredibly fast, melodic guitar buzzsaw riffs, furious double bass and rasping vocals but more of the record is ceded to incredibly complex clean guitar figures, on both electric and acoustic and some crushing prog style riffs that wouldn't sound out of place on a record by, say, Tool or Keelhaul. All this paints an incredible picture, one of black metal that is more or less devoid of, or disregards, any sort of outside influence. It's amazingly creative, borne of total insular vision, and for that it towers above most of what comes out. As i said in the Be Persecuted review that preceded this, there's nothing wrong with throwing on the Burzum feedbag and puking up what comes out of your binge, but to creat something like this, that really just has to be heard to be truly appreciated, takes a serious level of talent and commitment. This record reminds me a lot of Ulver's "Madrigals of Night" album, where you're confronted with a band that you know could pretty much do anything they wanted to and have it come out glorious. The last track on "Der Ort" is breathtaking, featuring some little chanteuse singing beautifully over some crushing metallized riffs. I'm left feeling like the sky is wide open and blue and everything is there and waiting for me. And this is a black metal record!! Awesome stuff, totally awesome-gets a serious recommendation from me.

BE PERSECUTED "I.I" CD

I love black metal. I've said it before, i know, but it bears reiteration. Black metal is one of the few genres where bands can write and rewrite the same riffs over and over again and still have it come out sounding amazing and original. It's the familiarity and the knowledge that some tried and true chord progressions just don't get old. And that brings us to this opus from China's Be Persecuted, unleashing their extremely noisy brand of BM on unsuspecting ears. China isn't very well known as a solace for BM acts, i can really only think of a handful, and for some reason they're all super noisy, more so than the average BM album. It's like there's an extra chromosome of aggression in Chinese BM bands and the result ends up being tremendously razor-esque recordings of above average harshness. All this blends in well with Be Persecuted's approach to the dark arts, a very mournful, surprisingly melodic take on the black metal form that doesn't really bring anything new to the table but does an amazing job of working within the set paarameters and crafting an album of epic sorrows and truly mournful sound. The obvious influence here is Burzum and lots of it-Varg wrote all these riffs years ago in some form or another and BP doesn't seem to mind throwing open the vaults and plundering the musical riches inside. Even the guitars sound amazingly Burzumic, albeit a bit more chaotic but totally fuzzed out and almost incomprehensible. The vocals are super extreme, which is great, definetely along the lines of the mighty Urfaust or Silencer, creating windy howls and pained banshee wails over the wall of fuzz torture. The riffs are reptetitive and cyclical and the whole records ends up becoming very very hypnotic and mesmerizing, which is one of my favorite things about black metal. You almost approach a drone, a zen place of hurt and aggression. The only thing that suffers hear is the lyrics, i can't tell if they're sung in English or Chinese but they're all printed in English in the books and due to translation problems they make almost zero sense. But i have to say, i haven't run across many better song titles this year than "Resented for Livelihood." Hilarious. Lyrical confusion aside, this is a great record, it is one that i feel will certainly grown on me, and i hope to hear more from Be Persecuted in the future. it'll be interesting to see how they evolve beyond the Burzum worship, or if they don't, how they continue to work off the formulae and ideas.

AMBER ASYLUM "Still Point" CD

Released by Profound Lore jointly with the new one from The Angelic Process comes a record that stands in stark contrast but is no less weighty or, in its own way, heavy. Amber Asylum are a group of female classical instrumentalists who create very stately and austere compositions with one foot firmly in the world of post rock. Their music reminds me a lot of what Mogwai might be if they were all strings and very little cathartic explosion. Amber Asylum are much more interested in setting a mood and in that manner i guess they have another foot placed in the world of ambient/krautrock/drone music (but that association is a bit tenuous-they're really not very droney.) My first exposure to them came from an interest in exploring the work of AA frontwoman Kris Force-after learning she was responisble for pretty much all the string/cello arrangements on Neurosis's "Times of Grace" (one of my favorite records, ever), i decided to check out her band as well. At the time i wasn't quite prepared but i held on the albums, seemingly knowing that further along my own musical evolution i'd open up to them. I'm glad i did. "Still Point" is a haunting, cold record, but not off-putting-there's just a sort of mortuaryesque stillness to the music that evokes a sensation of patience, grace and a tinge of sorrow-or maybe regret would be a better choice. A lot of the songs feature a band style arrangement with drums and guitars here and there (some courtesy Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, who recorded this record at his own Louder Studios!) as well as some very choral-style female vocals, resulting in pretty much what i said earlier-a sound similar to the 'gwai but with less distortion and more classically derived menace. This one is hard for me to describe but i like it a lot, i think Amber Asylum have done a masterful job creating a certain feeling and certain sense-it seems fitting to me that the record artwork/layout is done all in gray, as the music gives one the feeling of being lost in some unending gray dream, where things are cloudy and rain is coming, but you don't when. You might get soaked and you might get chills and it might just kill you, but right now looking up those gray cloudy skies seems comfortable and right.

THE ANGELIC PROCESS "Weighing Souls with Sand" CD

Whenever i write reviews of records, i find that i use the word "crushing" alot. I truly feel that lots of the stuff i listen to is indeed worthy of that adjective, but then something will come along that makes me rethink if i've really been using the word too freely. Which brings us to this amazing new record from The Angelic Process, a husband/wife duo who bring unwary listeners to their knees with their massive brand of infitely heavy shoegaze powerdrone. I've been into The Angelic Process for awhile-i have a couple of their first CDR's as well as some of their label only stuff (including the beyond gorgeous handmade wooden box they made for the track "We All Die Laughing", which appears on this record)-and it's good to see them working with a label as awesome as the excellent Profound Lore, whose releases i'm pretty much a completist with. So what does this record sound like? well, friends, it's fucking HEAVY. And i'm not just throwing that out there, this record is sick with force, it's like an anvil to the face while you're pinioned beneath about 1000 sandbags. Obvious touchstones would be Jesu and Nadja, but this record goes beyond either-and that's a pretty big compliment, i think, considering that those two are pretty much the best in the biz when it comes to metal/shoegaze. I think part of what makes the AP so dense sounding is the fact that it's all home recorded. Things are way up in the front and the whole recording is clouded over in a thick, slimy layer of murk that just makes things seem more oppressive and more buried. Windblown guitars shriek everyhwre, leaving lengthy paths of whine and mourn behind them in the starry black skies that the Angelic Process create. Drums pound out syrupy simple rhythms as repetition and montotny become hypnotism and transcendental auditory revelations. The vocals are all clean and processed and stretched way beyond their time, ripe and fat with delays and choruses and reverbs. It's a heady sonic stew, indulgent, filling, and so so delicious. Yes- i made a comparison to food. It's like "shoegaze drone cake." And of course it's beautiful, too. Every song steeped in punishing melancholy and a yearning, a truly desperate sense of want and disappointment and failure and everything that ever got fucked up in your life. This record to me is almost perfect. I wish the stuff i did with Dreamless even came close to approaching this. All i can do is lay in awe with open ears and let the music swell up in my heart.

"The Fountain" dir. Darren Aronofsky

Wow. I really fucked up on this one. I had meant to see this in the theaters months ago and just got too lazy. i feel sorry that i did. I just watched this film tonite and i'm utterly blown away. I think i had goosebumps for more or less the entire film. Every shot was something that my body reacted to in a heart tugging sort of way, like Darren Aronofsky was pushing all of my personal aesthetic pleasure buttons. LEt me get this out of the gate right away, in hopes that i don't repeat (although given to my own kind of hyperbole, i'm sure i will): this film is staggeringly beautiful. It's beyond stunning. I can't believe that this is the product of one person, but in another way, i can. I like Aronofsky a lot-i think he's an amazing director, i will even say an autuer-who goes deep into the feelings behind his films. He pulls his images and his mise-en-scene out of some deep primordial emotion pool inside himself and what he comes out with is always amazing, like a painting spilling onto film, completely alive and dancing with you. In "Pi" it was paranoia rendered in stark black and white; in "Requiem for a Dream" it was total emotional and physical devastation in tense/terse, ultra sharp colour; in "The Fountain" it's love and hope breaking down boundaries of space and time, flying through a world that is beyond heavenly and somewhere far beyond the surreal. There are so many gorgeous images in this film, several times i was near tears (i shit you not.) So as a piece of directorial accomplishment, it's breathtaking. But as a film, whole and complete, i have to think of it as something of a flawed masterpiece. Please don't get me wrong-i am not trying to say this is a bad film-it is not-but there are some missteps. Largely, for me, the problem is dialogue and characterization. What conversation there is is incredibly generic and not much deeper than a wading pool, which is unfortunate given the philosophies that the film itself is working with. I guess it's probably because Aronofsky wrote the screenplay and this time he didn't have a magnificent book as source material as he did with "Requiem." The there's the characters. I had a hard time feeling any attachment to them at all, even though they're going through some pretty heavy shit. In "Requiem", again, i felt like i was right there with everyone and watching their lives turn to shit was almost unbearable. Those people were real to me. What was happening was terrifying. In this film we're gievn mere sketches that are supposed to pass as our emotional beacons and footholds and it just doesn't work. The love is supposed to transcend time and space, and while on an intellectual level i know what Aronofsky was going for, he didn't make me really feel it, aside from the wrenching power of the images. Complaints are now over with. I think the beauty of this film is reason enough alone to see it. I bought it, and i'm glad that i have it because i'm certain i will return to it again and again. The art Aronofsky has created will not diminish despite the flaws. I think you should see this movie, i really do...it's achingly beautiful. I haven't seen anything like it in a long time. Maybe ever.

Video from the Uptown and reviving the dead

Hello, here is a bit of video from the Uptown BUNGE projection show. It did not turn out visually optimal, but you'll get the idea.


Also, there has been a new discovery! Heart cells don't die right away after a heart attack. There is a new science of recitation emerging. Soon, it will be practical to bring folks back to life, hours after clinical "Death".
Read about it at msnbc: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368186

CULVER "The Witches Ladder" 3" CDR

And here we have the second release i picked up from Small Doses, Culver's "The Witches Ladder." Culver i know a little more about-this is the personal project of one of the guys in ultra death droners Mazuraan, who are simply fucking amazing. Totally misanthropic hateful sludge drone marches to some sort of unpleasant and torturous experience. So i had high hopes for Culver, especially hearing from various sources that this project was even more mean spirited and noisy. While that isn't what this particular recording is, it's fucking awesome. One piece of thick, pulsing unending molasses style drone for a perfect 17 minutes. As with the best drone pieces, if you listen closely and just get washed into the music, you'll hear all sorts of minute changes and little permutations swimming alongside the epoch swath of pulse, and it'll lift you to that nether region of brain activity where you just zone the fuck out. Masterful. Head pounding. Totally crushing, but very relaxing and peaceful in an ultra loud, trance sort of manner. I'm going to track down everything i can from Culver. This reminds me a lot of Growing's finest moments, when the guitars just keep going and going and going, endlessly recycling themselves in a washing machine hum of pure white auditory hypnotism. So damn good.

FENCES "s/t" 3" CDR

I know very very little about this entity, other than the music on the record. I don't know who this is, nor have i heard anything from them beyond this. So we're going in pretty unprepeared. I do know that this comes from a cool label called Small Doses who release, fittingly enough, "small (3") CDR's in very limited quantities (this one was limited to 66, i think.) So what sorta music is it? It's pretty awesome metallized uberdrone, ala the old masters Earth, or maybe the new masters Birchville Cat Motel. This is a massive tower of guitar sludge sculpted into some beautiful silvery shards of sweaty, throbbing feedback. The whole thing twists its shape and contorts in upon itself, only to reemerge anew amdist its own ashes in a globular form of tarry melodocism, like a star bursting apart in some frozen galaxy at negative one billion miles per hour (yep, it's some good slow sludge!). It's stunning stuff and i'm really looking forward to whatever this group (is it more than one person?) puts out next. My only complaint is that it's only 10 minutes long, but a full length might be pretty scary business, as for the 10 minutes that i spent listening to it, my brain pretty much leaked out of my head and oozed away to some primordial oblivion.

BUNGE Exploration video TONIGHT at the Uptown

Live for one night only, I am screening an "Urban Exploration" video of the good old BUNGE.
This evening at the Uptown, I will project beautiful images of the BUNGE TOWER, and the graffiti art within,
onto Minneapolis band "They The Down Low" as they play a live soundtrack.

Theres no cover. Drop on by.
3018 Hennepin Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55408
Tel: 612.823.4719
Please also see the GLORIOUS and shocking photos of it's demolished state here.

MOST recent story
Recent story
Other information.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE/MAMMATUS @ Triple Rock 5/6/07.

Ben and i took in a massive slab of psychedelic indulgence last night courtesy of two of the best acts in the genre, the esteemed Acid Mothers Temple and newcomers (although they have two awesome records to their name) Mammatus. Twas Ben's first time bearing witness to the onslaught that is the AMT and my fourth time, so i was pretty excited by the time concert time rolled around. I'm not a huge concert goer anymore-i think this is the first show i've been to in many many months-but i'm glad i got out for this one as both bands turned in unrepentant, if aesthetically opposed, sets. Mammatus took the stage and immediately busted into a faster psych rocker that was completely unlike the doom influenced Melvins worship they fell into about five minutes later. The riffs became slower and more rock/cliche oriented, all while swirls of fuzz clouds and ultra loud whooses of wah noise filled the room. The drummer was a Dale Crover clone for sure, which is never bad in my eyes, especially when done well, and really the whole thing smacked of Melvins worship, right down to the dresses the members wore on stage and the onstage moves/vocals that their lead guitarist involved himself in. I remember when i was really into the idea of Melvins worship as well (still am to a degree!); i think i might even have the dress i fashioned for myself after seeing them on the Crybaby tour. The other influence that really stuck out at me, besides Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, was Sleep-so Mammatus wasn't really bringing anything new, but they do what they do very well, they write some awesome syrupy sludge riffs and wrap the whole thing in a bag of pysch demolition and guitar extravagance. I liked it a lot-enought to buy a shirt (didn't hurt that it had a wizard on it) and realize that they pretty much blew both of their studio records out of the water on the stage.

And then came the main event, the true heirs to the modern psych throne, the mighty AMT out of JApan. Those who know me know of my devotion to this band-they take up more space on my cd shelves than any other group (i think i have over 100 of their cds/records in my possession, and that's not even th half of their output)-and they have been a huge influence on my guitar playing and generally one of my fave "mind expanders" when i'm "getting into the shit." Their set began with a shriek of Guitar feedback from the mighty Speed Guru and after that it was right into a little 5 minute excesso rock rave up to set the mood. So far so good-and then the set took a strange and unexpected turn. The next track was a plodding, droning piece of crust metal that was one chord for about 10 minutes, along with the folk rock mountain songs of Japan that their bassist can pull out at any time. it was AMT doing doom metal most certainly and it was fucking right on, people, right fucking on! totally awesome. heads were nodding across the 80 people that had gathered and the drone beat us all into compliance. Things followed that route for the rest of the night-the set, while filled to the brim with crazy ass space synth and wailing banshee guitar leads, alongside equally crazed vocals from Cotton Casino's heir apparent-walked a fairly mellow, subdued path (for the AMT, at least.) Things segued into a 30 minute or so three part version of " Pink Lady Lemonade" that broke hearts and reached into the clouds and the night was brought out to a close with a 40 minute (it HAD to have been) version of one of my fave AMT pieces, the mighty folk ballad "La Novia." This was waaaaay different than the last time i saw them, which was an all out rock fest that ripped the jugular right out and left no faces unshorn from heads-definetely crazy compared to this almost mantra-esque performance. it seemed more in line with some sort of Buddhist Temple ritual than a rock show, which is fine with me, and it was cool to see this weirder more complacent side of the AMT juggernaut. Things ended abruptly after "La Novia" finally supernova-ed into the blistering piece of psch insanity that it is and the AMT disappeared from the stage to sell the 30 or so cd's they had brought with them. I snagged a few things that i didn't have, including their newest record, but i was bummed that they didn;t have their upcoming record on Important with them (even though the people at Important swore that they would have the record with them on tour.) Oh well. You can't get everything all the time, and when what i got was this amazing headfuck of guitar armaggedon for three hours straight, i'm not gonna complain.

HOTOTOGISU "Spooked Summer" CDR

Just got this in the mail a couple days ago, listened to it last night as i was drifting off to the nether realms of consciousness. Hototogisu are one of my favorite psych/noise bands going right now, and i've been lucky enough to have caught them pretty much right at the beginning of their career several years ago, so every record is like i'm evolving right along with them. HG is a duo consisting of Matthew Bower (the legend, the genius, the person responsible for the head churining devastation of Skullflower, Total, Sunroof! and Marcia Bassett (of the equally amazing Double Leopards and her own amazing amp destruction project, Zaimph) so of course you know that anything produced by such a union is going to be nothing short of totally brilliant. This new one another dense slab of skree and guitar extremism but it doesn't have the violence that has characterized the majority of HG work (i won't say all, because their have been a couple records that get into some seriously sweet bliss out moments.) "Spooked Summer" tightropes somewhere between the two styles-the feedback and whirring never let up, and there's all sorts of noised up trance shit going every which way, but the overall feel is one of sweet melodicism and dare i say almost a "mellow" vibe. Don't read too much into that-this record seriously destroys, especially if played at the requisitie crushing volumes, but it seems to reference a minimalism practiced by the likes of Conrad or Young, a desire to lift the listener to another realm of mental experience via volume, repetition and an intense layering of overlapping noises. It's like getting your head lost in some thick, choking cloud, but what you're choking on is some sweet sweet oversaturated piece of humming melodic guitar cake...so suffice to say i love this shit, alongside this album i got Marcia's new record as well and i may do another review to see if i can find a division between the two. Highly recommended, as is everything from these two!!

Now I'm Really Broke....

So for those who don't visit me at work all the time, which is pretty much everyone i know, know that i've been given a small space in the store to showcase bizarre/troubling/disturbing books, whether they're novels or graphic novels or art books or whatever. In terms of the art stuff, since i know very little about what's going on in the actual art world, i asked my coworker Gina (who is an artist herself) to point me toward some cool artists/monographs. Pretty much everything she showed me is super cool, like good 'ol Pictoplasma here, and unfortunately, i know find myself hooked on these gorgeous art monographs. I don't have the money for this! Between all the cds and dvds and literary journals and books i'm just fucking finished...it would be different if this material weren;t so goddamned rare and only available for short periods of time. Matt and Ray, i'm guessing both of you are familiar with these sorts of books-toss me some suggestions for things to show off at Barnes & Noble! Recommendations are always appreciated!

Spreading Herself Waaaaay Too Thin

Some news in from the Scarlett J. camp (and you know how close i am to that particular pop culture goldmine.) Seems the gorgeous iconoclast is going to sing backup for the fucking Jesus and Mary Chain at one of their three (?) reunion shows (she's set to appear at the show in Pomona.) This seriously weirds me out- i love Scarlett, i really do, and i try to keep what she does in perspective and not judge her too harshly for what i consider to be "poor decisions" (i.e., making romantic time with Justin Timberlake) but i just can't get behind this. And i won't hold the JAMC unaccountable for their part in this worthless display of crass counsumer opportunism either-this pairing is just fucking dumb. What is either party hoping to accomplish? I can just imagine the Reid brothers sitting around shotting some heroin saying, "How could we really make these reunion shows fucking memorable? I know! Let's get someone with zero muscial talent but tremendous cultural appeal to ruin our songs for us!" I stand by it- Scarlett cannot sing. She's barely adequate-i've heard some of her stuff. Not that the Reid brothers are great singers either, but really, if you need some female vox for your shit, fellas, then just give Hope Sandoval a call. You know she could use some higher profile work. And she can actually sing, and she appeared on one of your albums already. So there. The whole thing is just beyond ridiculous. Waaaaaaaaaay beyond.

"The Road" written by Cormac McCarthy

I'm not a big fan of Oprah, and i'm even less of a fan of her book club. Pretty much anything she hawks on her show, we will undoubtedly blow through 100 or more copies at Barnes & Noble the next day. And the books she picks are usually pretty fluffy nonsense. That being said, this is her new book club pick, and having said that, i had meant to read "The Road" a week or two after it first came out due to recommednations from friends but never got around to it. So a couple weeks ago one of my coworkers, who is into some of the saem shit as me, asked me if i had read this one and went on to tell me it was just bleak beyond bleak and violent and fucked up and pretty much everything i like in a book. So i read it. And i read it fast, because no shit, this book is fucking AMAZING. It's the story of twon unnamed characters, a boy and his father, who together work their way southward across the highway after an apocalypse of some kind devastates America and turns all to ash. As well as turning most men into ghouls who enslave each other and imprison each other for cannabalistic purposes. It's a story full of violence and devastation, of ruined dreams and a past long buried by the will to survive. At the center is the relationship between father and son and how each one copes with the other as well as with the outside world and all its merauders. Cormac McCarthy is a master stylist, the books is written so beautifully and so concisely-there are passages in here that will make you want to cry but it's done with such an economy of language-it's not flowery or overbearing, it's simple, dry, to the point and gorgeous. It reminds me a lot of Bret Easton Ellis' style, but while i love BEE and his ability to say a lot with a little, Cormac McCarthy leaves him well behind. This book absolutely deserved the Pulitzer it was just awarded. I found myself picturing every image in maximum color, it was like i was watching it more than reading it-it's beyond suggestive in its illusory quality and manifestation. I badly want Werner Herzog to make a film of this.

The other thing i want to say about it is that everything here seems as though it could really happen-this is not farfetched, it's close and tangible and this is a very good guess at what an apocalypse might actually be like. I hope that i never have to go through something like this, i'm not sure if i could have the strength or resolve that either the father or the boy has in this story. A wonderful, evocative piece of literature from a true master of letters. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

"Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie for Theaters" dir. Dave Willis and Matt Maillero

So do i really need to even review this? Most likely no. You're either going to see it cuz you're a fan of the show (like myself and pretty much everyone i know) or you don't give a flying fuck cuz you don't care about the Aqua Teens at all. There really is no middle ground with a movie like this. It pretty much delivers in the way you'd expect-it's an episode of the show that just happens to last for an hour and 15 minutes. There's plenty of great one liners, tons of fantastic insults and cameos from the show's best loved personalities, but beyond that there really isn;t anything. Ben and I both expected it to be a little funnier than it was and we both felt that in some parts it was really really pointless and even, dare i say, not so good. But a day later and i still find myself laughing thinking about Master Shake referring to his pythons or Ogelthorpe building a wall of beer cans as a testament to his ability to drink. Or Master Shake playing some weird Civil War game where he's loading an old school musket saying, "Now that's some good pumping!" It's full of crazy funny shit like that, so if you're a fan of the show you're going to dig it. The reviews are pretty dead on-the best part is undoubetdly the opening of the film, the parody of movie theater ads for snack foods that turns into a ripping thrash metal song courtesy MAstodon with an un-fucking-believeable guitar solo by director Matt Maillero-he's got Brendan Small style guitar skills. See it if you like the show-it'll keep Adult Swim aflat and possibly bring more fine films based on our favorite shows to the theaters. Now-where the fuck is the Futurama movie??

LEVIATHAN "White Devil, Black Metal" CDR

So let me open this with something that may or may not taint your interest in this review: there is no bad Leviathan recording. Wrest has set the bar so high for all of black metal and has released nothing but an enormously consistent body of work that can only be categorized as genius. So there's no objectivity here, just massive gushing over the work of one of my favorite musical auteurs. This is one of the 12 demos that preceded the release of the massive 2CD "Verrater", which i view as black metal's greatest record, just behind Burzum's "Filosofem." I have to give thanks to Ben for nabbing this fucker for me from one of those torrent sites-crazy that this was floating around out there, but i'm glad it was. I would kill for any one of these demos and this one easily ranks as one of the best. Two or three of these tracks have surfaced, via "Verrater" and "Howl Mockery at the Cross" but for the most part, listening to this today was like hearing a brand new record. And it's amazing. This is probably the most "mellow" Leviathan work to date but it's by no means restarined or subdued, just more gorgeously shoegazey and melodic. Three of the tracks even feature extended acoustic sections that are damaged and fractured and just beautiful, weepy style beautiful-who knew where Wrest was at this point of recording, cuz acoustic guitars on Leviathan shit is a rare treat indeed. The other departure is in the form of a nine minute bass rumble providing framework for a constantly swelling cloud of minor key delyaed out guitar chords, thock with fuzzy distortion and heavy with mournful melody. It's amazing stuff, i was really floored by it-i almost wish i would get more of this stuff from Wrest cuz it's definetely carving out space in the shoegaze/BM hybrid worlds that are popping up now (but hell, seems Wrest was there first on this record, about 5 years ago!) And then there's the black metal-grim, true, buzzing, hateful, painfully and hyper distorted (the vocals are so processed it's almost painful for the ears, the distortion is so grating!). Every riff throned in magnificent majestic splendour, psychedelic guitars floating all around and of course the thin and disorienting sound of the famous V-Drums that Wrest has used on every record (except for the split with Sapthuran, where a real kit was recorded.) So yeah, this record is pretty much essential for anyone looking to keep up with where black metal has to go. It's a fucking crime that this stuff was never released properly-Wrest should authorize some labels to get this stuff out there-there are some Southern Lord reissues that i could actually get behind. Find it if you can, it's obviously out there, and get ready to be thrown into a seriously dark, hateful and fucked up world of blackened metal spacetime. Superb beyond any real review's ability to convey.

"Grindhouse" dir. Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino

Just saw this tonite. I'm not so great at doing film reviews because i'm not a truly serious student of film the way that i am of music-i just can't play "six degrees" as thoroughly in the film universe. But i know a little bit, and i know what i like about the directors i admire, so i think i can wax philosophical about this one for a bit. "Grindhouse" is two films billed together, being R & Q's love letters to the silly gore/exploitative films of an era gone by. Total trashy drive-in fodder done with the eye of an auteur. The two films are actually quite different from one another. Rodriguez's film is called "Planet Terror" and it's pretty much just a zombie gorefest filled with violence and gross outs everywhere. The frames are filled with blood, and it's very very reminiscent of "From Dusk Til Dawn." He's not treading any new ground here, but it's definetely fucking cool, shot to be amateurish (the film is super grainy and out of of focus and there are missing reels and the camera movements are shaky) and the acting is ridiculous in every way. Very hammy and over the top. And oh, the violence-so much beautiful beautiful pointless violence. On the bad side, the movie wears thin kinda quick and it gets very redundant towards the end, and it also becomes very convoluted. Things get hard to follow but i think it's more a case of the story just being really flimsy-which could also be part of the joke.
After the film ends we get hit with three previews for "coming attractions", which are pretty fucking hilarious, directed by Rob Zombie ("Werewolf Women of the SS"), Eli Roth ("Thanksgiving') and someone else who i forgot. There's also a preview right before "Planet Terror", called "Machete", that i wish were getting made into a feature, cuz it looks fucking awesome. Also sad that Roth's movie isn't getting made, cuz it looks as good as any premise he's made. Anyways, on to Tarantino's film, "Death Proof." It's pretty much a car chase film, with plenty of death and adrenalin fueled moments. It features a fabulous Kurt Russell as a washed up stuntracer who is also a stalker/murder of young Hollywood starlets, and he kills them with his fucking car-and the deaths are pretty damn awesome. The high point is the auto duel that compromises the last thrid of the film, but all the other Tarantino trademarks are here-smarmy homages to older films, tons of foot fetish shots, inside jokes galore and of course his amazing dialogue-bordering on inane but always fascinating-i'd say there's more dialogue in this film than action, which is perfectly fine by me. And the ending is one of the best i've seen in a long while-i won't spoil it but it's hilarious. So whose film is the better of the two? It's hard to say, but i'm more of a Quentin kinda guy, so i'd have to go with his contribution. It's definetely a must own, and as a love note to trash film, it works well beyond well. I wish more people were making films like this. What i really wish is that we'd be getting Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving"-but i guess i'll just have to wait for "Hostel-Part II"-coming in June!!!

Unfairly Maligned for a Fucking Lifetime

I've been on a huge Megadeth kick lately, listening to a bunch of the older stuff (as well as some of the newer) and loving every second of it. And it's led up to a need to say yet again-is there anyone who has gotten more of a raw deal than Dave Mustaine? I love Dave-he's one of my true guitar idols and i feel that people don't give him the credit he deserves for really being a musical visionary. The man invented speed metal, for fuck's sake. You can't discredit that. We should bow before him. Slayer wouldn't be here if it weren't for Dave's incendiary guitar trailblazing. If you really wanted to get jiggy with it, you could trace everyone back to Judas Priest-and that would be okay too, but they weren't quite the extremists that Dave is. After his dismissal from Metallica (one of the biggest bitch moves in all of rock history) Dave vowed to be faster, more aggressive, more complex and better. And he succeeded. Every way. Every album. There is nothing in Metallica's catalogue that comes close to be being as fast or as intricate as Megadeth. You can reduce it to this, pretty much: "Battery" vs. "Holy wars", and i can tell you, "Holy Wars" is a hell of a lot harder to play (and i still haven't mastered either song!!) But despite all his successes Dave has been overshadowed by the goons in his former band and attacked for being egomaniacal and self-centered. He's had a shitty run! Cut him some slack-he's a recovering drug/alcohol addict, he beat a crippling hand injury in both arms that doctors were sure would never allow him to play guitar again, and he recently lost his family to divorce. He's been through a shitload of bandmates, some of whom have been amazingly talented (Chris Poland and Marty Friedman) but their comings and goings have never altered the Megadeth sound-and he even bared his soul in Metallica's shitty shitty film "Some Kind of Monster", laying himself completely on the line just to be shit on again by Lars and James. One of the worst, saddest things i have ever witnessed in my life was seeing that film in the theaters and watching the whole crowd erupt in booing when Dave came onscreen. Fucking morons, all of them. MORONS. Dave was the only one in the film who said anything real or of worth at all (except for Jason Newsted) and the idiots of the metal universe just shit on him again without really listening. The music speaks for it all, but everyone's ears seem to be closed. It just makes me really disheartened. So this is in tribute to Dave Mustaine-idol and true musical genius. May the rock always remain!!!

She's a Motherfucking Princess

Have you heard the new Avril Lavigne single? Holy shit. I don't think i've heard a more infectious piece of candied up pop fluff in a loooooooooooong time-whoever wrote this thing is a genius. It's called "Girfriend" and it's a crazy three minutes of schizo hyper over digitized beauty, wrapped up in a ridiculous putrid sheen of crunchy guitars and sickly sweet vocals. Avril sounds likes she's about 15 in this song which seems about right, since the song is about some obvious high school crush bravado (i.e., Avril hears you've got a crush on here, she wants to be your girlfriend, the girl you've been making time with now is stupid, and yes indeed, Avril is a motherfucking princess-it's all in there.) But the lyrics, ridiculous as they are, especially since Avril is a married woman, aren't the sickest part of the song-it's the drum hook. She's reached right into the Toni Basil bag of tricks and plucked out the only one in there, the simple back and forth schoolyard drum beat that Gwen Stefani recently brought to the fore in "Hollaback Girl" (but to be fair, Avril works a lot more wonder with it.) The only thing i can compare this song to is Kelly Clarkson's defining moment, "Since U Been Gone," but where Kelly was at least feigning integrity and you got the feeling that the song might have meant something to her, Avril makes no such efforts. She knows she's delivering a piece of addictive garbage and she's knows that we're gonna fucking love it (i do!) and makes no apologies. She goes so over the top in this song on every level-by the time you get to the final anthemic chorus and you're hearing a million digitized Avrils telling you how much she wants to get with you you almost belive her. You want to hold Avril tight in the middle of a crowd of goony disdainful high schoolers and tell the world how awesome this relationship is really gonna be-seriously fucking awesome. Could i listen to this song ten times over? Probably not, it's just too insane, but having it thrown at me for three minutes at unhealthy volumes once a day could do me a lot of good.

http://www.myspace.com/avrillavigne

A quick addendum: a short visit to Avril's myspace page has revelaed that she now has a signature Fender guitar. Jesus fucking Christ indeed.

R.I.P BUNGE

Rest in peace BUNGE Silos. (Or more accurately, unrest in pieces)

Housing redevelopment - PPL is planning to remove all of the hazardous materials from the site in March. They will then begin the demolition of the silos parallel to 12th Ave SE in April. This demolition will last for approximately two or three months. The next step will be to start construction on the road, the sewer and the first building in July of 2007. That building will take about one year to complete.

MONARCH "Dead Men Tell No Tales" 2xCD

What to tell you about Monarch? Well they're from France, which is good, because France to me is responsible for the BEST outsider metal music. They have an amazing little chanteusse for a singer, who screams like hell is erupting from her lungs but looks like the timid little indie goddess i wish would fall in love with me. They play SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW and agonizing doom metal in the vein of Khanate, Atavist, Burning Witch, etc. And of course, they're pretty damn awesome. I don't say this lightly, especially within the very limited confines of the extreme doom metal genre, cuz there really isn't that much variety among any of these bands. You get slow, atonal/chromatic riffs and some pretty harsh screaming, and that's about it. What i enjoy about Monarch's delivery is the urgency of it-there are no tricks in the recording or their setup-they tune down, yes, but they're not overloading the recording in bass or tracking a thousand guitar layers for the added heaviness-they're just plugging in and exorcising some doom demons through caustic death sludge. This is a reissue on Crucial Blast consisting of two out of print earlier vinyl releases, which i actually don't possess, so it was a welcome release from the Blast. Alas alas Monarch have broken up now, but this early pairing definetely shows you a band that really had mastered the genre pretty quickly and perfected it a few albums later-their last record consisted of one astonishing 60 minute song that is very difficult listening indeed. It's just oppressive, even for me, and i enjoy this sort of thing. Here Monarch deliver five songs unto thee, all of them hovering in the 20-25 minute range, and all save for one fuzz slabs of hateful, epic doom. One of the tracks takes a quieter ambient approach and allows you to cuddle up to the very pretty accented voice of the little French girl who fronts the band as she whispers some sort of horror story about mythical things or seajourneys gone wrong or some sorta weird Melville-esque rant along those lines. Totally essential listening for those bored of Sunn 0))) (and jesus christ, who isn't by this point) and those lamenting the dissolve of Khanate, or maybe for those people like myself who wish that Charlotte Gainsbourg was into more metal.

http://www.crucialblast.net/

TROUM & ALL SIDES "Shutun" CD

Gloriously gorgeous collaboration between dream droners Troum and All Sides, whom i know nothing about. No doubt a simple googling would provide some answers but i'm too damn tired right now to worry about trivialities such as an artist's identity. What we have here is a really really beautiful piece of crystalline guitar shimmer, run through about a million effects and transformed into fragile swells of saddened drone tears. Troum have long been one of my favorite groups making ambient music and this is another notch in their belt of fine releases. I can't think of a bad one in the bunch! This record is one 60 or so minute piece that morphs and changes and mutates throughout its course, but always keeping one foot firmly planted in the garden of sadness that Troum eternally tends to. What i like best about Troum is that everything is done live-there isn;t any after the fact processing, all the sounds that they make come from their guitars and effects as they're played, which is an odd thing for this sort of music, and a fact which makes it all the more amazing. Sure, Tim Hecker creates equally beautiful and placid lakes of melancholy sound, but he runs everything through computers to achieve the desired results. Call me a purist but i like the live bent of Troum's stuff. Towards the end of this record the effects start to fade out and we're left with a good 15 minutes of Mogwai style delayed guitar melodies, repeating over and over until things quietly crumble and fade away. It's the sort of record that you wish went on forever! Pretty swanky packaging too-comes in a metal box with screened printing on the top. Minimalist but maximalist at the same time-just like the sounds on this wonderful album.

KEVIN DRUMM "Sheer Hellish Miasma" CD

This is a short one, but i felt the need to say a little about this being that it's just been reissued. This is my favorite noise album of all time. EVER. Nothing comes close to the pure destructive essence of this record, and nothing ever will. It's the ultimate expression of what a pure noise record should be-no relent, no salvation, just pure, dense speaker-destroying shards of white hot brain eviscerating horror. Kevin Drumm knew exactly what he was trying to accomplish on this record. Nothing in music tops this, not even supposed noise legends like Merzbow, Aube, JoJo Hiroshige, etc. This is in league with maybe Haino, but even he doesn't get this punishing. The influence of this record is felt across the genre today, and how sad it must be for even amazing sound sculptors like Prurient or The Rita to know that no matter how corrosive their own aural symphonies may be, they will never match the power inherent in "Sheer Hellish Miasma." There's no point in talking about individual songs here because they're irrelevant, the whole record just grabs you by the throat and bludgeons you endlessly for an hour. The last track provides some brief respite but even it's fucking noisy by most people's standards. What i really like is that Kevin never really tried to repeat this either, even his other noise records-nothing is as sonically whole and enveloping as this record. I love this album-it's definetley in my top 20 of all time and it's essential to anyone interested in noise. My favorite memory of this is listening to it with Ben and his ex wife Margaux in a car as we drove somehwre that was quite a distance away. As Ben and i just zoned out and took in the terror in an awestruck manner Margaux was in pain-which doesn't surprise me because this record is PUNISHMENT for people who aren't familiar with noise. And yet we listened to the entire record, no stops, no reprieve-part of me feels bad for making Margaux suffer through it, but i think somehow she's better off having had Kevin Drumm in her life. So this is Drumm's masterful love letter to noise and black metal (the more outer strains of it in sound, but completely devotional to black metal in its aesthetic) and it's a must have for anyone even feigning an interest in noise-if you don't love this record then the concept of noise music will never be grasped. Thumbs down to Editions Mego for reissuing this and including a pointless ambient bonus track-this record's sole prupose is terrorism of the ears. Double thumbs down for jumping on the bandwagon and paying Stephen O'Malley money to basically redo the original cover art in a less impressive package. I mean, seriously, all he fucking did was shrink it down to the size of a jewel case and move the "KD" over a bit. Way to go, Mego. Boo and hiss.

LIFELOVER "Erotik" CD

There's a difference between sad music and depressing music. To me, sad music is more about the actual sounds and melodies. Bands like Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine and Slint deal in certain kinds of emotional triggers, and while much of music created may indeed be mournful or melancholic, there always is that ladder climb to an intense, triumphant catharsis-this music makes your skin prick up and you feel elated and hopeful and filled with a love of just being here and exisiting. And then there's a band like Lifelover, who i can truly call depressing becasue listening to their music makes me feel like they must have felt when they created it. This is music that has so much power and gravity that it pulls you into its painful nether and just keeps pushing down until you feel what it actually is- tortured confessions of regret and sorrow and failure. This is why black metal is the music i love the most -no other music is able to pull me so close and envelop me and make me identify with the actual emotions involved in its creation. That's why Lifelover are so amazing to me as a band, and also why it really isn't fair to simply label them black metal. Sure, the roots are there-there's the ultra fuzzed out guitars and the thick dense drum machine sounds thudding your brain into ooze, and of course there's so many different style of grating, shrieky vocals and suicidal melodies from tinny, caustic guitars. But there's also gorgeous and muddy clean delayed guitars, hypnotic swathes of melodic murk and backwards looping tapes and sprinkles of high end pianos leading the way to despair. And the lyrics-of what's in English (two songs, the others are in Swedish, i believe), it's simply some of the most honest and beautiful lyrics about frustration that i have ever heard. These are songs of loss and hopelessness, dripping with self loathing and anger at having made so many mistakes, and scorned by memories that will never ever be recaptured. The prevalent theme is of loss, of self, of identity, of hope...the artwork is shot through with blurry images of colorful nighttime city scenes and intense splashes of violence and blood, making you feel the abandonement that one feels when you're completely alone. The world is huge, and empty, and with no one, there really is a sense of coldness and dread. The fear will always grow, knawing away at the person you were until all that's left is a wrecked paranoid shell subsisting on what once was and what could only have been. This is an absolutely visionary record, more honest than anything i've heard with maybe the exception of Mark Kozelek (another artist who can actually draw you into his psychoses), and i don't think that i will hear anything as gorgeously defeatist as what Lifelover have created. This is a new mark for black metal, ultimately surpassing even their own spectacular debut record and setting themselves alongside such revered practitioners as Shining, Forgotten Tomb and Xasthur. This is a record of true and frightening feelings. You can't be unaffected by this. Powerful, powerful music is being forged. We're lucky to be allowed into Lifelover's world.

http://thr666.horde.se/
http://www.goatowarex.org/
http://www.autumnwp.com/

Don't even tell me a simple record review and google bans your adsense?? That is BS.

ZODIACS "Gone" CD

Welcome to pyschedelic noise scuzz hell, scum. This CD is serious and is not forgiving of nonbelievers. A "power trio" comprised of main minds behind Wooden Wand, Hush Arbours, and Sunburned Hand of the Man, Zodiacs are out to destroy yr fragile mind and everything it holds earthly. This is powerful incensing destructo rock from deeper corners of drug altered minds, grabbing the sun in two hands and throwing it down to earth in fiery storm of fuzzed out shit guitar, crashing drums heavy on the cymbals and wandering bass completely forging it's own path. Make no mistake- this is heavy beyond words in every sort of way and totally wasted, drowning in its hallucinations of rock majesty. Four epic tracks of utter void with no attention to melody, production values or structure, just pure, improvised electric guitar-led waste. Completely outstanding and frightening, wah-ed out guitars paying homage to darker gods while listless rhythyms pound your psyche into oblivion. To me, this collective work surpasses everything these three guys have done in their own work and that says a lot, because i love Wooden Wand as well as Hush Arbours (check out their contribution to Three Lobed Records' "Modern Containment" series for an equally mind melding dose of crippling psych guitar, preceded by a whole record's worth of fragile dryad/forest depths psych.) Don't worry-it's not all free form "reach for the sky" guitar heroics-Zodiacs lock into a groove in every track and these grooves will carry you the fuck away-it's very reminsicent of the equally fucking amazing Residual Echoes (and how very surprising that the two entitities share a label, the incredible Holy Mountain. ) This record is gonna go down in the annals of modern psych history as a massive document of three major powers in the underworld forces of psychedelics and with good reason-it's powerful like Fushitsusha, loud and scuzzy like Boris' most damaged moments and interested in nothing other than griding your mind into pulp. Waste away.

http://www.holymountain.com/

http://www.threelobed.com/tlr/