30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: Vanishing Voice
title:Nordic Visions
catalog #: IMPREC132
format: cd
upc: 793447513225
release date: February 27, 2007

Nordic Visions was originaly released in a tiny vinyl edition of 525 copies which sold out immediately. Here it is by demand, resurrected as a digital tiki for the original vinyl release.
While Wooden Wand and Satya Sai jammed with the Sky High Band in beautiful California, the Vanishing Voice dug in deep in the frozen northeast. Snowed in with utopian texts and mounting paranoia, Steven The Harvester, Heidi White Diamond Diehl, and Pete Wolfy Nolan joined Nonhorse in an abandoned textile factory, boiling out these ballads of suspended disbelief and hope for the better world.

 

 

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: Vanishing Voice
title: Stone Tablet
catalog #: IMPREC122
format: cd
upc: 793447512228
release date: Feb 27, 2007

Total Can-style audacity from Brooklyn drone stew Edward Goreyian broken house sufic wanderers the
Vanishing Voice.

The Vanishing Voice head down from the mountain for another dip in a lake of elephant seals.
A misty warbling leads down a twisted path where molten earth and crust collide. The beginning of the end of the beginning. Lots has been said bout these brooklyn teen idles:
"They're chasing rainbows!"
"They're graveyard spongeheads!"
"A pregnant poo-bah frolicking in the forest!"
No dice... Whatever Kraut or Swede compatriots that may be a part time relation the Vanishing Voice are mining the sound of the naughties in a subterranean part of brooklyn, as reprehensible as that place might be the beast still roams Gotham and these fuckers got him by the tail.
Stone Tab is a trip to be sure. Mother Mark Ospovat cracks the whip of dogsled Imandi while snarling
bad dog Pete Nolan kept a forward propulsion on skins and molten guitar spew. Mad man Steve J Taveniere of local faves Meneguar lent a cool head and a popular sensibility to the proceedings with skills on the
acoustic axe to be sure. Non horse Crane, magnetic wizard and dj let loose his usual bag of hidden charms and H. "Reality" Diehl,with a voice said to make many a grown man cry, a magik trash harp and the mind
of the other, kept us all in the ethereal realm. Don't worry though, this strange brew rocks out for real and thanks to the folks at Important Records, you can be sure it was recorded in the highest fidelity known to man.

 

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: Baikal
title:Baikal
catalog #: IMPREC19
format: cd
release date: Feb 27, 2007

Baikal is a new burner from Bardo Pond brothers John & Michael Gibbons along with fellow Bardo Pond members Clint Takeda and Jason Kourkonis. This time they ventured down the route of heavy free-improvisation and a Last Exit style hard rock approach coupled with a hard psych bend. With two tracks each weighing in at over 30 minutes in length it's clear that Baikal is a deep voyage underseas with yet another mindblowing Bardo Pond sideproject featuring Bardo brothers John & Michael Gibbons as your tour guide – and it's a heavy trip indeed. Dive in.

 

 

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: Axolotl
title:Memory Theater
catalog #: IMPREC120
format: cd
release date: Feb 27, 2007

 

Memory Theater is an absolutely essential collection of the best of Axolotl's out of print cdrs and vinyl only releases.
Karl Bauer spent quite a bit of time collaborating with Black Dice, Mouthus, Double Leopards and various other acclaimed members of the noise underground before heading off on his own as Axolotl. In the last couple of years Axolotl have released numerous cd, cdr and vinyl releases many of which quickly went out of print and started demanding some serious coin on ebay. Memory Theater collects the best of these out of print releases into one convenient package designed by Karl Bauer.
Axolotl has collaborated with the likes of the Skaters, Magik Markers, Yellow Swans, Inca Ore, Skygreen Leopards, Religious Knives, and Mouthus. Axolotl has toured Europe and the United States and shared the stage with the likes of Animal Collective, Black Dice, Boris, Charlambides, Chris Corsano, Double Leopards, Excepter, Sightings, the Skaters, Terrestrial Tones, Tomutonttu, and Yellow Swans.

 

 

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: The Bark Haze
title:untitled
catalog #: IMPREC128
format: lp
upc: 793447512822
release date: Feb 27, 2007

This limited edition lp was pressed in an edition of 500 with letterpressed covers done by Manifesto. These are completely different recordings than the Bark Haze compact disc also on Important Records.
The Bark Haze is primarily a guitar duo of GOWN (nom de plume of one Andrew
Macgregor) and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth etfuckingcetera). Auxiliary
members have been know to include Pete Nolan (Magik Markers, Virgin Eye
Blood Brothers, Cops et al). Their name came from a mis-hearing of the
radical early 70s R+B group the Bar-Kays and from that moment the concept of
mis-hearing and allegiance to presenting the mis-hearing as some open-ended
musical course became The Bark Haze's identity. So far all concerts have
taken place in Western Massachusetts and once in the confines of Cambridge,
MA's Twisted Village record emporium. They anxiously await their debut gig
in the UK at the Nightmare Before Christmas event curated by Moore. As the
heroic and potentially bonkers Carpenters refrained We've Only Just Begun.
Damn straight.

 

 

artist: The Bark Haze
title:untitled
catalog #: IMPREC127
format: cd
release date: Feb 27, 2007

This exclusive CD release is entirely different from the LP release on Important which is also untitled.

The Bark Haze is primarily a guitar duo of GOWN (nom de plume of one Andrew
Macgregor) and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth etfuckingcetera). Auxiliary
members have been know to include Pete Nolan (Magik Markers, Virgin Eye
Blood Brothers, Cops et al). Their name came from a mis-hearing of the
radical early 70s R+B group the Bar-Kays and from that moment the concept of
mis-hearing and allegiance to presenting the mis-hearing as some open-ended
musical course became The Bark Haze's identity. So far all concerts have
taken place in Western Massachusetts and once in the confines of Cambridge,
MA's Twisted Village record emporium. They anxiously await their debut gig
in the UK at the Nightmare Before Christmas event curated by Moore. As the
heroic and potentially bonkers Carpenters refrained We've Only Just Begun.
Damn straight.

 

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: Eleh
title: Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis Volume 1
catalog #: IMPREC125
format: LP
release date: Feb 27, 2007

Eleh was formed to specifically to pay tribute to early experimental minimalist pioneers especially La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros and Charlemagne Palestine. This record is pressed in a deluxe edition of 400 on audiophile quality 180 gram vinyl mastered and pressed at RTI with letterpressed jackets done by Manifesto Letterpress.
Eleh creates highly minimal and deeply spiritual pure analog drone music with emphasis on the physical ultra-low end. Incorporating tones as low as .05 hz (well below the range of human hearing) Eleh is as much of a physical experience as it is an audio one. To be heard and felt correctly the listener must be sitting with ears at speaker height at least 7 feet away. Noise cancelling headphone use is also recommended for the optimum listening experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: Rameses III
title:Honey Rose
catalog #: IMPREC121
format: cd ep
upc:793447512624
release date: Feb 27, 2007

Rameses III are architects of the most beautiful swathes of blissful ambience whose releases have previously found homes on labels like Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Music Fellowship, Scarcelight, MYMWLY, Barl Fire and Type.

On “Honey Rose”, the group’s first release for Important, the South London trio build a bucolic soundtrack to Jon Spira’s mysterious short film “Suityman”. Whilst the influence of Bruce Langhorne, Boxhead Ensemble and much of the 4AD roster can be keenly felt on this six song EP, so too can the wondrous drone narratives that are such a feature of Rameses III’s previous works. More structured and melodious then much of their output, “Honey Rose” is the perfect place for a newcomer to begin exploring the music of one of the finest purveyors of ambient drone operating in music today.

 

 

 

 

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This fascinating record shadows an apparently murderous concept with more than enough themic ambiguity, musical invention and sly humor, to make repeat listens essential, if not exactly desirable.

 

Type

The silence is broken by "The Boat Was My Friend" flickering to life with a pronounced sonic electricity; as if hot stones were being dropped onto an overamplified guitar. Then waves of cello combine with furtive percussion to suggest trapped energy, almost untethered. A female voice wordlessly chants something akin to a lullaby, but the feeling is much less hush little baby than cradle will fall. There is little relief ahead as this entire record is steeped in unease. Some ancient force is getting loose and the likely results are to be both hidden and brutal.

The plucked bass notes of "Ocean out of wood" briefly conjure a brilliant and avant-swinging Nordic jazz.. er, ..odyssey, but this is a red herring as "My feet, over there" with it's grinding pace, inhuman ripping and excruciating stuttering sounds, evokes an appalling smothering of hope. In isolation this is a mighty piece, but is ill-placed and might even have been better as a separate 7 inch. Next, the truly unforgetable "Easy on the bones" is the sound of something desperately wrong. In the first series of Twin Peaks, a terror was conveyed by the needle stuck at the end of a record as the incarnation of Bob invades Laura Palmer's house. Svarte Greiner echoes that scene but takes the audio-horror a step further with a repetitive sawing sound as gentle as lapping waves. Waves in a sea of blood and bone fragment, that is.

Several tracks feature a pure, faint, female voice. This keeps a necessary sense of listenable normality to all the ghastly scraping, eerie rustling, startled bird calls, horrible footsteps, suspenseful door openings, and strangled surprises. We feel unease, but could we recognize the long-forgotten scent of human sacrifice, execution, and ship burials if we heard it?

Despite its overtly gothic organ, tinkling bells, synth, stuck needle and vinyl hiss, "The black dress" somehow works. Whether this is a Buffalo Bill sewing machine scenario, a tender necrophilial closeness, or a silly dark wedding, depends upon your imagination. It also features a similar sense of footsteps ripping through long grass that are a central feature of "An ordinary hike." "Ullsokk" is furtively squelchy with more of the pure chanting bringing to my mind either a nearby victim or Lady Macbeth figure, before "The dinner table" introduces a rhythm that Martin Hammett would have enjoyed working on, and maintains an emerging ceremonial atmosphere. Thankfully the ambiguity isn't shattered: Were those dinner bells calling cannibal spirits? Is there to be a sacrifice? Is this scary, or funny? That's a gorgeous voice. What's he building in there?

"Final sleep" sounds like a standard horror shovel scene, though the plane passing overhead smashes any ancient spiritual notions, while it also emphasizes the idea of the proximity of all this to normal life. Snoring sounds are drowned by an operatic peace and soothing swathes of which The Dead Texan would approve. Is that rain, a bottle being emptied, blood or piss?

As David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti ably demonstrate, horror can be brought into sharp relief when set against the beautiful and the bland. Like a shiny, pert blonde and blue-eyed Christian woman casually whispering "We should nuke Afghanistan". The Moors Murderers ( Ian Brady and Myra Hindley) made audio tapes of the torture and murder of their victims partly for, in particular, Brady's later arousal. Nevertheless, I imagine that "Knive" somehow isn't an ideal music for any fictional or factual serial killing psychotic fiends. Consider Fred West who, with his devoted wife by his side, prefered something bouncy and jolly to drown the screams. During his happy decades of abuse, torture, dismemberment and murder in the cellar of his terraced house at Cromwell Street in Gloucester, Fred loved to blast out "Yeh Yeh" by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and I bet he whistled that pop ditty the day he hanged himself in Winson Green prison. Utterly harmless, but horribly apt when cast against his crimes:

We'll play a melody and turn the lights down low / So that no-one can see / We gotta do that, we gotta do that / We gotta do that, we gotta do that / And there'll be no one else alive in all the world 'cept you and me / Yea, yea, yea, yea, yea / Yea, yea, yea, yea / Pretty baby I never knew such a thrill / Just thought I'd tell you, because I'm trembling still / But pretty baby, I want you all for my own / I think I'm ready to leave those others alone....

Despite a weird recognition factor perhaps brought on from too many Hammer Horror films, I prefer to think that the sounds on Knive which seem to depict the slow emergence of a brutal horror and a subsequent peace, couldn't possibly be what I imagine they are. What's more, how could I recogize that which I've never heard?  Either they must have been part of some dream,  an inherited genetic unconscious, or the snoring was tryptophan induced and the whole thing was some pro-turkey vegetarian art-terrorism. Just in time for Christmas.

samples:

• Final Sleep
• Easy on the Bones
• The Boat Was My Friend
  

Read More

30 November 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

By my account, both at the time and retrospectively, List of Lights and Buoys was the best album of 2004.  This follow-up reprises that exquisite debut's delicate melancholia as minimal, often radical, re-interpretations of classic and, at times, even sacred material.  How well it accomplishes that is another story altogether.

Rune Grammofon

As before, Susanna Karolina Wallumrød's lovely voice quivers with an enthralling fragility through the peaks and valleys of obscenely eclectic track selections from such disparate artists as Kiss, Prince, and Scott Walker.  Morten Qvenvild takes more than just liberties with his sparse, subtly decorated arrangements, though some of these compositions come across as more surprising than others.  Joy Division's eternal "Love Will Tear Us Apart" has suffered in the feeble, fumbling hands of countless moody impersonators and descendants, with the Magical Orchestra's take slogging along predictably, as does Qvenvild's saggy, dreary stab at the equally overexposed Depeche Mode staple "Enjoy The Silence."  Conversely, AC/DC's fist-pumping rock n roll warning, "It's A Long Way To The Top" transmutates into the bitter lament of the road-weary, hardened soul, its once-anthemic lyrics made infinitely more harsh than the late Bon Scott would have envisioned.  Along those lines, Wallumrød magnificently reclaims Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" from the gooey depths of Shrek's CGI schmaltz, showcasing the highest heights of her vocal range over Qvenvild's ascetic organ tones.

Still, the strongest and most beautiful material on the duo's first Rune Grammofon record wasn't the creative covers of Leonard Bernstein and Dolly Parton songs, but rather heartbreaking originals like "Hello" and "Believer."  As such, Melody Mountain deflects lyrical honesty, behaving much like a depressed girlfriend on the other end of the telephone, singing other people's songs into the receiver for fear of speaking of her own pain and heartache.

samples:

• It's A Long Way To The Top
• Love Will Tear Us Apart
• Enjoy The Silence

 

 

Read More

28 November 2006

Scott Mckeating

Albums and Singles

Although this Heatsick release starts out nice and normal, it doesn’t take that long before it gets taken over by the warped half of sole member Steven Warwick’s brain; melodic acoustic guitar work gets layered and then drowned.

Alcoholic Narcolepsy

This c30 release (in vampiric black and red) layers acoustic details on top of each other, all the while preparing the listener for the inevitable absorption into Heatsick world. These simply layered parts keep their backbone for a while, refusing to urn to liquid, landing in clockwork patterns of strums. The magic of this single piece is the way the mechanical mouse organ styled build of notes begins to take on a sort of halo. The chimes set in motion droney moving rings which in turn heralds circling whistles appear along with freer pitches around the song. This other world begins to try and steal the song’s focus creating an intentionally glorious coming together of two teased-out worlds.

When the second side picks up the hard to hold thread of “Pre-Cum Fog Ballet,” the guitar parts have been lost. The mazes of drones have guzzled this instrument down in murmuring hums, a disintegrating swarm of Möbius Strips. Listening to the second side of this cassette is like arriving at the fairground on expensive glue and having to choose which half-broken fairground attraction to ride on. The sounds spin just below the point of overwhelming, like a séance that only attracts pissed-up drunken spirits that all want to talking at the same time. The gap between side one and two feels like a part of this buckled metamorphosis has been lost, but that’s probably partially my fault for having equipment that requires me to get up to flip the tape. Despite the sometime insanity of the music, Heatsick’s explorations are never mentally wearing; god only knows what it’s doing to my ears though.

Read More