A quick warning ahead of time – do NOT put this in your hi-fi stereo system. Love 666’s latest album is about as lo-fi as it gets, and considering the audience chatter, this has to be a live recording. The music is harsh, brutally in-your-face noise-rock that bands like Les Rallizes Desnudes or some of Keiji Haino’s side project fans are going to be very much into.
Words fail to describe the beauty of this release, even if it is an acidic beauty. Harae are a band run by beloved friends, and both innovative musicians in their own right. Combined, however, they have made magic, especially if you like a harsh wall of noise cascading over you like molten steel in an industrial factory. The vocals are frightening, which works seamlessly with the music. It’s a harsh but rewarding listen. I cannot wait to hear more from them!
For those of you who prefer a hard copy of the release, you can order a mini-CDR edition from 999 CUTS by clicking here.
You can click on Bandcamp, Instagram and Facebook to follow the band’s exploits.
Boston’s Skyjelly are a bit of a revelation for me. They sound like a post-punk band infused with the power of Krautrock bands like Faust or the British trio This Heat. One of the best of the year so far!
Kassyus Clay come to us from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and sound nothing like samba or bossa nova. Instead, they bring a brutal instrumental sound that crosses post-rock with Sonic Youth.
Li Xing is a Shanghai-based psychedelic noise-rock guitarist who produces a sludgy, powerful album which is reminiscent of Keiji Haino’s mid-period guitar noise era.
Ramble Records out of Australia have published a unique album here – one that should be seen as a modern psychedelic rock masterpiece. From their Bandcamp site:
“Shūko No Omit, the name of the band, featuring Yonju Miyaoka on guitar and Vocals, his older brother Taiju Sugimori on bass and chorus,and his cousin Yuya Yamazaki on drums and chorus, is a mix of Japanese and english. Yonju told me he came across the word omit while reading an old English dictionary. Shuko (終古) is old Japanese. A word no longer used. One lost to time.
The characters 終 + 古mean end and old, but, he says, when put together, they mean something like “eternity, timelessness, from ancient to forever”; The の “No” character in the middle means of. Like omit of Forever.
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As far as names as descriptors go, Shuko No Omit is pretty good. There is decay and damage in this music. And pain and sadness and the dangerous but essential fascination required as you stumble through that damage to the unknown whatever that lies ahead.
The music feels like it is on the edge. There is desperation that you hear from the opening moments. Most of the looseness comes from Yonju. The Rhythm is slow and steady. Yonju says there are many mistakes. The parts of it that people generally want to omit. It sounds to me like a raging fire. Blazing up one minute and smoldering the next. “
Heavy listening.
You may wish to lower the volume a bit for this one. Gold is a magnificently harsh noise-rock band out of Leeds, U.K., whose brutal take at experimental music is both ear-blasting, yet strangely soothing at the same time. A full album is coming in November.
A post-punk/ethereal gem has been bestowed upon us by our friends at Lost Tribe Sounds. Arrowounds tie together influences from bands like, “Can, Bark Psychosis, Young Gods, Slowdive, Durutti Column, Seefeel and much of early 4AD,” according to the band bio, but there is an element that makes this band something apart. Noise-rock, post-rock, and a more eerie feeling than their influences betray sets the band apart.
Rural Track are a band out of Japan who do heavy shoegaze rock, so those of you who miss My Bloody Valentine’s peak moments would do well to check this track out.
The indie world lost a giant on April 21st with the passing of Mark Stewart. In his honor, I share a compilation album featuring the crème de la crème of alternative, industrial, reggae and dub music coming out in full force to remix and cut up Stewart’s works. Featured on this compilation are Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, K.K. Null, Stephen Mallinder and Eric Random among others. From the release’s Bandcamp site:
“VS. is a unique collaborative project helmed by Mark Stewart, a vocalist, producer and songwriter who’s been an anarchic, pioneering figure on the frontiers of Post-Punk, Industrial, Avant-Dub and Electronic music since the Punk era. Each track is a forcible mash-up that pits Stewart against an artist either who originated, propagated and/or currently upholds the incendiary aesthetic, cultural and socio-political intentions of that era including members of Cabaret Voltaire, Consolidated, Pan Sonic and the MINUTEMEN along with the late Lee Perry, Adrian Sherwood and KK Null among others. This music is meant to resonate with, “The raw stardust in your bones – the ancient heat in your blood.””