HU VIBRATIONAL Beautiful (Soul Jazz) cd 21.00

HUBBLE Hubble Drums (Northern Spy) cd 14.98
Been meaning to review this for a while now, the debut full length from Hubble, aka Ben Greenberg (Z's, Pygmy Shrews), who over these three longform pieces conjures up his own tranced out modern minimalism, which according to the label is "equal parts shred-fi, cyber-dread and fired psychedelia", which really is a fair description.
The first track here "Nude Ghost", begins as a swirling tangle of guitar melodies, a warped take on Reich / Riley minimalist mesmer, and very quickly, the layered melodies grow more and more dense, the tangles more, well, tangled, the runs of notes faster, until it's a flurry of swirling notes, almost like a guitar version of Lubomyr Melnyk, the same sort of dizzying shimmer, and while we'd be perfectly happy to listen to this head spinning swirl for ten minutes, Greenberg, adds a bit of subtle percussion, and lets the loops shift and slow down, growing more melodic, and strangely more melancholy as well, and as the buried rhythm becomes more prominent, other elements begin to surface, swirls of high end shimmer, more abstract bits of percussion, all manner of drones, but instead of being a huge mess, those other sounds are employed subtly and judiciously, and the track remains utterly mesmerizing, even with the addition of what sounds like synth squelches, the whole thing manages to grow busier, and more dense, but continues to pulse hypnotically.
The second track, the 20+ minute "Glass Napkin", begins with a stretch of droned out shimmer, as some riffing begins to surface, soon the shimmer is gone completely, and we're left with this distorted looped riffage, which sort of reminds us of a more academic abstract Blackwolfgoat, the sound growing more metallic and a bit more shreddy, the sound shifting between muted riffage, and wild tangled boogie and back again, sounding a bit like a modern minimal classical piece composed for Mick Barr and Tetuzi Akiyama. And finally, the record finishes off with the sort of title track "Hubble's Hubble" which drapes looped guitar noodle over a hissy staticky drone, the sound darkening as the track progresses, the static in the background becoming a moaning low end, before nearing the record's end, the notes start to fly fast and furious again, coalescing into a celestial swirl that sounds like some sort of manic looped kosmische bliss out. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Nude Ghost"
MPEG Stream: "Glass Napkin"

HUBBLE Hubble Drums (Northern Spy) lp 17.98
Been meaning to review this for a while now, the debut full length from Hubble, aka Ben Greenberg (Z's, Pygmy Shrews), who over these three longform pieces conjures up his own tranced out modern minimalism, which according to the label is "equal parts shred-fi, cyber-dread and fired psychedelia", which really is a fair description.
The first track here "Nude Ghost", begins as a swirling tangle of guitar melodies, a warped take on Reich / Riley minimalist mesmer, and very quickly, the layered melodies grow more and more dense, the tangles more, well, tangled, the runs of notes faster, until it's a flurry of swirling notes, almost like a guitar version of Lubomyr Melnyk, the same sort of dizzying shimmer, and while we'd be perfectly happy to listen to this head spinning swirl for ten minutes, Greenberg, adds a bit of subtle percussion, and lets the loops shift and slow down, growing more melodic, and strangely more melancholy as well, and as the buried rhythm becomes more prominent, other elements begin to surface, swirls of high end shimmer, more abstract bits of percussion, all manner of drones, but instead of being a huge mess, those other sounds are employed subtly and judiciously, and the track remains utterly mesmerizing, even with the addition of what sounds like synth squelches, the whole thing manages to grow busier, and more dense, but continues to pulse hypnotically.
The second track, the 20+ minute "Glass Napkin", begins with a stretch of droned out shimmer, as some riffing begins to surface, soon the shimmer is gone completely, and we're left with this distorted looped riffage, which sort of reminds us of a more academic abstract Blackwolfgoat, the sound growing more metallic and a bit more shreddy, the sound shifting between muted riffage, and wild tangled boogie and back again, sounding a bit like a modern minimal classical piece composed for Mick Barr and Tetuzi Akiyama. And finally, the record finishes off with the sort of title track "Hubble's Hubble" which drapes looped guitar noodle over a hissy staticky drone, the sound darkening as the track progresses, the static in the background becoming a moaning low end, before nearing the record's end, the notes start to fly fast and furious again, coalescing into a celestial swirl that sounds like some sort of manic looped kosmische bliss out. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Nude Ghost"
MPEG Stream: "Glass Napkin"

HUBBS, STAN Crystal (Companion / Gloriette) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can always count on local reissue label Companion Records to foster the kind of rare hidden musical gem that perhaps won't appeal to everyone, but will get a select group of enthusiasts very excited over the discovery of someone's sincerely unique, but oftentimes misguided musical vision. Companion's specialty has always been cd reissues of vintage private press vanity releases, such as the Luie Luie, Charlie Tweddle, Marc Mundy, and New Creation records, and for their first foray into vinyl, have given us two quite amazing but very different musical visionaries: the spirited orchestral lounge stylings of Michael Farneti (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and the latent stoner mope-psych of Stan Hubbs.
Released in collaboration with Gloriette Records (Nite Jewel, Ariel Pink, and Puro Instinct), Stan Hubbs' 1982 recording Crystal is more out of its time than ahead of it. Recorded in his rural Sonoma County living room, it seems like the band almost can't decide if they're latent hippie stoner boogie-folk, eighties shred-guitar rock or progressively disaffected mope wave, which makes for an unusually intriguing sound that is hard to pin down. Hubb's vocals sometimes sung in a near monotone with female singer Kriss O'Neil can sound as much like a downer Fleetwood Mac as it can resemble some of today's gloomy pop found in Beach Fossils or Crystal Ships. But it's Larry Doyle's kitchen sink electric guitar approach that makes it really out of sync in an amazing way. Using lots of psychedelic effects and sounding like he's eager to show off his shredding licks to anyone who comes along, Doyle shows just barely enough restraint not to overstep the hazy vibe the singers and keyboards are laying down. Imagine if Simply Saucer did a cover of America's "Tin Man", and you'll sort of get the idea. But this is regionalism at its best, taking lots of big musical ideas from different popular styles and making something completely home-brewed, a bit oft-kilter and super genuine. Limited to 500 copies, comes with a full reproduction of the 16 page booklet of lyrics and drawings that came with the original release. Hot Damn!
MPEG Stream: "Joe and Gina"
MPEG Stream: "Let's Go On Back To Camp"
MPEG Stream: "Golden Rose"
MPEG Stream: "Seems Like It's A Rich Man's World"

HUDAK, JOHN Don't Worry About Anything, I'll Talk To You Tomorrow (Alluvial) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
John Hudak remains one of the underappreciated dronologists/lowercase composers, despite a number of really great albums notably "Brooklyn Bridge" and this album. "Don't Worry About Anything, I'll Talk To You Tomorrow" uses as its source material a phone conversation that took place between Hudak and his mother a year before she died. But the voices have been stripped of syllabic content to a bare sonorous abstraction with only the hints at conversational rhythms. Hudak uses these sounds to create a poetic miasma of timestretched insect-like shimmers and delicate tonalities that vibrate above a solemn quietness. A beautiful record that makes the impersonal and sterile Raster-label clickery seem, somehow, lacking.

HUDAK, JOHN Helene Marie: Reinterpretations (Alluvial) 2cd 15.98
When experimental composer John Hudak began working on his minimalist piece "Don't Worry About Anything; I'll Talk To You Tomorrow," he originally thought it would be released on vinyl, and so constructed two distinct movements (for the record's two sides). The piece was constructed via digital manipulation of an answering machine message left by Hudak's mother a year before her death. However, the subtlety of Hudak's work meant that the surface noise inherent with vinyl would be a problem, so Hudak opted to release an expanded version of one of the two movements on cd. Alluvial, who released that cd, liked the piece enough to commission a double cd of re-interpretations / remixes to accompany the original unreleased movement.
Hudak's work maintains a tenuous relationship with language, in particular the parallel between minimalism and haiku's communication of complex imagery through self-imposed restrictions. "Don't Worry About Anything" is one of Hudak's most evocative pieces, as he has stretched out the syllabic utterances of his mother's reassuring message into a delicate latticework of slow moving crystalline frequencies that exude a restrained sadness. That said, the unreleased movement doesn't really offer much more than the previously available version (which is ok if you don't have that), and neither do the remixes / reinterpretations on disc one by Jason Lescalleet, M. Behrens, Sukora, and Peter Duimelinks. However, disc two is far more interesting, with remixes / reinterpretations by Francisco Lopez, Eric Lanzillotta, Frans De Waard, and Leif Elggren. These four have all pulverized the original source material into granular rumblings and dense textural drones that offer uneasy responses to the delicacy of the original.
RealAudio clip: JOHN HUDAK "Don't Worry About Anything..."
RealAudio clip: FRANCISCO LOPEZ "Untitled #95"
RealAudio clip: ERIC LANZILLOTTA "Balmy Calm"
RealAudio clip: LEIF ELGGREN "Unitited (November 2000)"

HUDAK, JOHN Highway (Edition) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
John Hudak's minimalist sound experiments have often utilized single source materials. But unlike the elemental singularity of Aube where water, flourescent bulbs, and oscilators are transmogrified into almost interchangeable, dense noise fields, Hudak's choices are based upon the metaphoric content of the subject matter as in "Don't Worry About Anything..." which broke apart an answering machine message from his mother before she died. For "Highway," Hudak has extracted a quiet percolation from transient recordings from a freeway overpass. In spite Hudak's concept of turning the banal anger of road rage into a quiet Lopez-esque meditation of sound, the source material -- which could simply be a loose contact microphone bouncing against asphalt as cars rush by -- doesn't inspire any extended listens.

HUDAK, JOHN Pond (Meme) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While the origins for Hudak's sounds are purposefully ambiguous, the high-end shimmering drones appear with a clear organic textural density to them, that could easily be digitally timestretched chirps of crickets, locusts, or other twilight insects. Hudak pushes the envelope of these crystaline sounds close to the pain threshold, but restrains from going into Whitehouse territory for a more trancendental listening experience.

HUDAK, JOHN & STEPHAN MATHIEU Pieces Of Winter (Sirr) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Pieces of Winter was born of two compositions that the sound artists John Hudak and Stephan Mathieu recorded as holiday gifts for their friends during the 2002 Christmas season. Hudak is reknowned for his stone-faced minimalism of deconstructed acoustic phenomenon; and for -his- seasonal recording buried a contact microphone in the snow and captured the sound of the snow turning to ice. Mathieu had composed a piece with Eva-Lucy Mathieu for pump organ and ocarina, which in turn he transformed into calm and exquisitely warm piece of delicate drones. Commissioned by the Portugese label Sirr, the two married their previous recordings into a gentle exercise for minimalist grace, in which the two have removed all recognizable traces of the source material's distinctive qualities and extracted digital fragments that allude to the poetry of winter, snow, and the cold without overtly stating it. Steady cracklings form a steady stream of hushed gray textures, accentuated by crystalline pinpricks of pristine feedback whistlings. Later on, Pieces of Winter glistens with the delicate glitch collages that have become a signature for Mathieu on his celebrated Full Swing album. A word of warning, this album is very quiet, and you really have crank the volume to perceive the amount of detail found within!
MPEG Stream: "01"
MPEG Stream: "08"

HUDAK, JOHN / JASON LESCALLEET Figure 2 (Intransitive) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Figure 2" is the second collaboration for sound artists John Hudak and Jason Lescalleet. Hudak's sound work is an extension of his work with delicate amplifications of emotive sounds which normally exist below the threshold of audibility, sounding like a less composed Bernhard Gunter. Lescalleet explores the expressive qualities of the lo-fi technology of reel-to-reel tape machines, damaged speakers, and ambient found sounds.
On an undisclosed winter night when the first blizzard of the season hit the Boston area, Hudak and Lescalleet were perfoming inside the warm confines of the Lindsay Chapel of the First Church Congregational in Cambridge. The first snow is always a mixed blessing as it offers on one hand the dramatic shift in the landscape from the drab grey of autumn to the blinding whites of early winter, yet on the other the snow obviously signifies the inevitability of cold weather. "Figure 2" subconsciously speaks of these dual emotions conjured by the encroaching winter. Using manipulations of recycled sounds from the dark old chapel itself, Hudak and Lescalleet present a series of slow sub-bass drones punctuated by eerie creakings of the wooden architecture and whistling tones from the wind rushing through cracks in the windows.
RealAudio clip: "Figure 2.2"
RealAudio clip: "Figure 2.5"

HUDSON MOHAWKE Butter (Warp) cd 16.98
For fans of Dam-Funk , Flying Lotus and James Pants. Neo-Electro funk with lots of cheesy eighties synth patches and wobbly beats!

HUDSON, JEFF & JANE Flesh (Captured Tracks / Dark Entries) cd 13.98
The husband and wife duo Jeff & Jane Hudson started out in art-punk outfit The Rentals (not to be a confused with the Weezer side-project of the same name from the '90s). There were a couple of Rentals singles, one of which landed on Beggars Banquet in 1979, before the band broke-up. The Hudsons relocated to New York from Boston, and shifted towards synths, drum machines, and electronics in their collaborative project. Their first ep - World Trade - was released in 1981 through the seminal No Wave Lust/Unlust label alongside Mars, Dark Day, Martin Rev, Lydia Lunch, Z'ev, etc., and the Hudsons had made the rounds of all the punk spaces at the time, opening for Suicide on at least one occasion. Flesh was their second album, one that they recorded at home and released themselves in 1982. There is an insularity to this album that asks something of a chicken and an egg question. Was their self-financing the result of an expressive solipsism, or vice versa?
Regardless, Flesh is a record that didn't have many contemporaries in New York, although if they hailed from San Francisco, the Residents, Snakefinger, and the Psyclones would have all been kindred spirits. Jane and Jeff wrote darkly carnivalesque, post-punk numbers through early Roland synths and drum machines, accompanying bass, guitar, vocals, and a lot of warbling effects. Their flanging, weird sound grafted onto the chicken scratch guitars certainly looks forward to what Blank Dogs would do some 30 years later. So it's no surprise that Blank Dogs' label Captured Tracks would be one of the two two labels releasing this reissue, which comes with a ton of bonus material, including the aforementioned World Trade ep, the "No Club" single, and the punchy art-punk dance number "Special World," originally released as a single in 1983 before the Hudsons transitions from music to video art. Great stuff!
MPEG Stream: "G.S. III"
MPEG Stream: "Pound, Pound"
MPEG Stream: "Special World"

HUDSON, JEFF & JANE Flesh (Captured Tracks / Dark Entries) 2lp 19.98
The husband and wife duo Jeff & Jane Hudson started out in art-punk outfit The Rentals (not to be a confused with the Weezer side-project of the same name from the '90s). There were a couple of Rentals singles, one of which landed on Beggars Banquet in 1979, before the band broke-up. The Hudsons relocated to New York from Boston, and shifted towards synths, drum machines, and electronics in their collaborative project. Their first ep - World Trade - was released in 1981 through the seminal No Wave Lust/Unlust label alongside Mars, Dark Day, Martin Rev, Lydia Lunch, Z'ev, etc., and the Hudsons had made the rounds of all the punk spaces at the time, opening for Suicide on at least one occasion. Flesh was their second album, one that they recorded at home and released themselves in 1982. There is an insularity to this album that asks something of a chicken and an egg question. Was their self-financing the result of an expressive solipsism, or vice versa?
Regardless, Flesh is a record that didn't have many contemporaries in New York, although if they hailed from San Francisco, the Residents, Snakefinger, and the Psyclones would have all been kindred spirits. Jane and Jeff wrote darkly carnivalesque, post-punk numbers through early Roland synths and drum machines, accompanying bass, guitar, vocals, and a lot of warbling effects. Their flanging, weird sound grafted onto the chicken scratch guitars certainly looks forward to what Blank Dogs would do some 30 years later. So it's no surprise that Blank Dogs' label Captured Tracks would be one of the two two labels releasing this reissue, which comes with a ton of bonus material, including the aforementioned World Trade ep, the "No Club" single, and the punchy art-punk dance number "Special World," originally released as a single in 1983 before the Hudsons transitions from music to video art. Great stuff!
MPEG Stream: "G.S. III"
MPEG Stream: "Pound, Pound"
MPEG Stream: "Special World"

HUDSON, KEITH Flesh of My Skin, Blood of My Blood (Basic Replay) cd 17.98
This long sought after collector's item holy grail finally gets reissued. And while we don't exactly have the same Pavlovian response when slapping this album on the deck as the collecting world at large does, it's an interesting document nonetheless. Primarily it is Hudson's fragile, practically off key, trembling voice baring himself wide open for the whole world that makes this record almost creepy. The production here is standard fare, not as out there as his later Wackies collaboration "Playing It Cool & Playing It Right" which we listed before, and possibly a little too dependent on synthy-sounding keyboards for an early seventies Jamaican release. But still pretty cool.
MPEG Stream: "Flesh Of My Skin"
MPEG Stream: "Darkest Night"

HUDSON, KEITH Flesh of My Skin, Blood of My Blood (Basic Replay) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This long sought after collector's item holy grail finally gets reissued. And while we don't exactly have the same Pavlovian response when slapping this album on the deck as the collecting world at large does, it's an interesting document nonetheless. Primarily it is Hudson's fragile, practically off key, trembling voice baring himself wide open for the whole world that makes this record almost creepy. The production here is standard fare, not as out there as his later Wackies collaboration "Playing It Cool & Playing It Right" which we listed before, and possibly a little too dependent on synthy-sounding keyboards for an early seventies Jamaican release. But still pretty cool.
MPEG Stream: "Flesh Of My Skin"
MPEG Stream: "Darkest Night"

HUDSON, KEITH Pick A Dub (Blood & Fire) cd 16.98

HUDSON, KEITH Playing It Cool & Playing It Right (Basic Replay) cd 16.98
Lotsa folks we know seemed real excited about the prospect of this reissue. Apparently this 1981 album, a collaboration between Hudson and fellow Jamaican turned Yank Lloyd Barnes (Wackies), was reknowned as an especially far-out dub treatment, way gone on the studio fuckery as these things go. Having now heard it, we agree that the production IS a big part of this record's appeal. But it's not THAT experimental, really. We think it's just as great that it's such a sunny n' soulful slice of Jamaican vocal/groove reggae. Sure it's super dubbed out at a times, with sped up/slowed down tapes, massive echo fx, filters, distortion, all that good stuff, but these songs are also really soulful and smooth, funky even. Actually, we're really reminded of the loose, swampy sound of Funkadelic's early efforts. Productionwise, this is druggy, sure -- not as wasted as the LSD-fried production of Funkadelic's "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow", but close at times. Anyway we're talking about dub reggae here, laid back and head noddin'. Dub fans take note, this is a good 'un. It's over a half-hour long but seems kinda short just 'cause it's so good and groovy that you just want it to keep on keeping on...but that's what the repeat button is for. So, excellent call on the part of Basic Channel's new Jamaican reissue imprint Basic Replay for making this album available again!
MPEG Stream: "Playing It Cool"
MPEG Stream: "California"

HUDSON, KEITH Playing It Cool & Playing It Right (Basic Replay) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available on vinyl. Lotsa folks we know seemed real excited about the prospect of this reissue. Apparently this 1981 album, a collaboration between Hudson and fellow Jamaican turned Yank Lloyd Barnes (Wackies), was reknowned as an especially far-out dub treatment, way gone on the studio fuckery as these things go. Having now heard it, we agree that the production IS a big part of this record's appeal. But it's not THAT experimental, really. We think it's just as great that it's such a sunny n' soulful slice of Jamaican vocal/groove reggae. Sure it's super dubbed out at a times, with sped up/slowed down tapes, massive echo fx, filters, distortion, all that good stuff, but these songs are also really soulful and smooth, funky even. Actually, we're really reminded of the loose, swampy sound of Funkadelic's early efforts. Productionwise, this is druggy, sure -- not as wasted as the LSD-fried production of Funkadelic's "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow", but close at times. Anyway we're talking about dub reggae here, laid back and head noddin'. Dub fans take note, this is a good 'un. It's over a half-hour long but seems kinda short just 'cause it's so good and groovy that you just want it to keep on keeping on...but that's what the repeat button is for. So, excellent call on the part of Basic Channel's new Jamaican reissue imprint Basic Replay for making this album available again!
MPEG Stream: "Playing It Cool"
MPEG Stream: "California"

HUG Heroes (Kompakt) cd 15.98

MPEG Stream: "Raido"
MPEG Stream: "Tiny Stars"

HUGHES, LENA Queen Of The Flat Top Guitar (Tompkins Square) cd 14.98
History hasn't always been kind to bluegrass and folk musicians of yore who weren't so lucky to get recording contracts or be discovered by travelling musicologists. Case in point the story of Lena Hughes, a Missouri born fiddler, banjoist and guitarist who specialized in parlor music, a folk form that consisted of renditions of hymns, sentimental songs, 19th century airs and finger-picked tunes of fiddle songs, often played in specialized tunings. She was born in 1904 and died in 1998, and during her long life she only cut one record, which came out on a private press in the sixties. But, she was well-known on the Ozark mountains music circuit that she toured extensively throughout her career. Her finger picking style is magical, often employing an ethereal open tuning technique, on songs that have the sweet sadness of days gone by. Recently remastered, this Tompkins Square rediscovery is truly a joy to behold. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Pearly Dew"
MPEG Stream: "Under The Double Eagle"
MPEG Stream: "What A Friend We Have In Jesus"

HUGHES, LENA Queen Of The Flat Top Guitar (Tompkins Square) lp 17.98
Also on vinyl!!
History hasn't always been kind to bluegrass and folk musicans of yore who weren't so lucky to get recording contracts or be discovered by travelling musicologists. Case in point the story of Lena Hughes, a Missouri born fiddler, banjoist and guitarist who specialized in parlor music, a folk form that consisted of renditions of hymns, sentimental songs, 19th century airs and finger-picked tunes of fiddle songs, often played in specialized tunings. Born in 1904 and died in 1998, she only cut one record on a private press in the sixties, but was well-known on the Ozark mountains music circuit that she toured exstensively throughout her life. Her finger picking style is magical, often employing an ethereal open tuning technique with songs that have a sweet sadness of days gone by. Recently remasterd, this re-dicovery is truly a joy to behold. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Pearly Dew"
MPEG Stream: "Under The Double Eagle"
MPEG Stream: "What A Friend We Have In Jesus"

HUGUENOTS, THE s/t (Hydra Head) cd 14.98

HUKKELBERG, HANNE Rykestrasse 68 (Propeller) cd 15.98
Norwegian singer-songwriter Hanne Hukkelberg's debut, Little Things, was an enchanting collection of delicate instrumentation, fluttering vocals, and sophisticated songwriting. It took more than a few of us here at aQ by surprise and became something of a sleeper hit for lazy sun-drenched afternoons. The same sensibilities that made Little Things so successful are evident on Rykestrasse 68: vocals pushed to the front of the mix, dry, personal and sultry while a kaleidoscope of drips, drops, bells and whistles flutters in the background. However, the darker mood and sense of melancholy on this record make it more suitable for grey days and rain-streaked windows than its sunnier predecessor.
The obvious points of comparison are, of course, artists like Bjork, Feist and Tujiko Noriko -- powerhouse singers who blend fractured acoustic sounds, electronic flourishes and sophisticated songwriting; however, Rykestrasse 68 stands on its own as a beautiful work from a tremendously talented artist who manages to achieve a really engaging combination of naivete and a deliberate, self-aware intellectualism. It's a winning blend, evident in the mix between the toy instruments and found sounds that lend the record a certain childlike quality and the darkness and drama to that comes out in its best moments (take her cover of The Pixies' "Break My Body," for example).
This, much like her previous, will undoubtedly fly beneath the radar, as it falls into that awkward middle ground between something you'd read about in The Wire and cafe-friendly pop. However, give this one a chance and it'll undoubtedly become the perfect soundtrack to some quiet, melancholy moment in your life. Simply gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Berlin"
MPEG Stream: "The Pirate"

HULK Silver Thread Of Ghosts (Osaka) cd 16.98

MPEG Stream: "Elephant Memory"
MPEG Stream: "We Swam"

HULL Beyond The Lightless Sky (The End) cd 9.98
We've been meaning to review this for a while now, record number two from the East Coast post-hardcore sludge pop combo Hull, whose first record positioned them alongside aQ faves Torche, with that sort of extreme heaviness fused to extreme poppiness thing, but on the new record the band have had a serious sonic makeover. The opening track alone, after a brief bit of sludginess, explodes into a furious blasting metalpunk blowout, with shrieked vox, buzzing guitars, slipping into chugging almost-breakdowns, before exploding into a roiling bit of lumbering doom, the guitars super distorted, the band lurching through some cool stop/starts, peppered with wild double kick drumming, and some psychedelic guitar shred, before shifting gears and locking into a super blown out mathy churn, before slipping right back into a strange sort of sing along punk dirge, and heck, the song is 11+ minutes so the band go all out, jamming wildly and flitting from sound to sound, managing to string it all together into something cohesive, and pretty massively crushing.
The rest of the record is just as varied, with the second track getting all spacey and droney, never really metal more a sort of acoustic guitar driven dirge, big drums wedded to some almost Appalachian style buzz, swampy and bluesy, but still dark and heavy, before the title track finds the band launching right back into some bellowed, downtuned heaviness, all angular guitars, and pounding drums, the poppiness of their first record still finding its way into their sound, but more subtly, with this new sound being much more about texture and mood, riffing and metallic pound, but it definitely suits them, in fact in some ways, while this new sound is still beholden to many that came before, it's a much more original sound, and one they've definitely made their own, and one we're still exploring after repeated listens. Epic and varied, sludgey and thrashy, melodic and mysterious, and most definitely psychedelic, this is the kind of record that should hit the spot for heavy music obsessives of all stripes. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Earth From Water"
MPEG Stream: "Just A Trace Of Early Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Beyond The Lightless Sky"

HULL, SCOTT Audiofilm I (Crucial Blast) 3" cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Silence... thunder... shudder... shadow... those are some of the things evoked even by the first minute or so of this isolationist dark ambient piece crafted by the multi-talented Scott Hull, best known as the guitarist of grind heroes Pig Destroyer, also of Agoraphobic Nosebleed fame. The whole thing, which mostly just gets darker and more disturbing as it flows on, is about 12:36 in length, one track fitting neatly on a 3" cd (not cd-r, cd). We love it when we get actual 3" cds! Though we really like it when they come in those tiny little jewel cases (like tUMULt's Bathtub Shitter and Professor 3" releases). Whereas this is packaged in a cardboard sleeve. Looks good though, with appropriately atmospheric graphics by Seldon Hunt.
Titled Audiofilm 1, this is presumably the first in a series of limited edition 3" cds on Crucial Blast. Hull's "audiofilm" is a scary one. Dramatic, sudden percussive clashings. Dronological whoosh. Nightmare heartbeat pulsations. The hiss and gurgle of some malevolent monster. Waves of whispery electronic terror... Don't worry, it's just a little 3" cd. It can't really hurt you. And some of it is actually lullingly beautiful, as with the gentle bell sounds tinkling about 7-8 minutes in.
LIMITED EDITION. 1000 copies only (which seems like a lot, but Pig Destroyer are pretty popular). We only got a few, and don't know if we'll be able to get more. (But we also have a Scott Hull solo full-length on Relapse, another imaginary soundtrack styled ambient effort, to be reviewed in future.)
MPEG Stream: "Audiofilm 1 (excerpt)"

HULL, SCOTT Requiem (Relapse) cd 15.98

HULL, SCOTT Requiem (Relapse) lp 15.98

HULTKRANS, ANDREW 33 1/3 Series: Forever Changes (Continuum) book 9.95
Back in stock! This amazing series of books seems like just what we (and all you fellow music geeks) have been waiting for. A whole mess of amazing records, Love's Forever Changes, the Smiths' Meat Is Murder, Neil Young's Harvest, Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and loads more. All written about by folks who love them, or whose lives were changed by said records. An unlike most music writing, these novella length tomes are not about the artist so much as specifically about the records, the making of, the thinking behind, and all the stuff surrounding the creation of these essential albums.
Unlike Joe Pernice's fictional approach to the Smith's Meat Is Murder reviewed last list, Andrew Hulktrans dives factually deep into Forever Changes, Love's masterpiece from 1967. Very deep. Hulktrans is the former editor of Bookforum and it shows. This reads a lot like a book review, dense, insightful, rife with psychology, philosophy and musicology. No Rolling Stone style pop journalism here. The Watts Riots, The Sunset Strip Riots, Vietnam are all examined as crucial pieces of the curious puzzle that is Arthur Lee, a paranoid outcast convinced that his death was imminent. And driven to make Forever Changes before it was too late.

HUM OF THE DRUID Norse Fumigation (Snse) lp 22.00

HUM OF THE DRUID Norse Fumigation (Snse) lp 22.00

HUM OF THE DRUID Raising The New Wing/Braided Industry (SNSE) lp 10.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Record number two from the mysteriously monickered Hum Of The Druid, and as we mentioned in the review of the first lp, that's exactly what you'll hear, some serious druidic hum, which is just something we made up so you'll just have to take our word for it. The follow up takes the already intense and heavy caustic drones of the first lps and takes it even further. Darker, filthier, heavier. At times it almost sounds like field recordings of a construction site chopped up and assembled into something slightly more musical, at others it sounds like Earth, circa 2, overdosed and slumped against a wall of Sunn amps cranked to 10, and at still others, it sounds a bit like someone spinning Masonna records on a busted Victrola. Indeed.
Massive swells of sound, all low end, and we mean VERY low end, super blown out, crumbling, Merzbowian, vast expanses of speaker destroying rumble, giving way to stretches of sound much more tranquil, like Masami Akita mixing Wolf Eyes. Sheets of murky industrial drift wreathed in corrosive buzz and wallowing in downtuned tectonic filth. Some parts sound like wind blowing on a microphone, but cranked to danger levels, other parts sound like a million turntables with the needle stuck in the run off groove of some super scratched up old record, peppered with the clatter and clank of some alien machinery, it's almost like a stereo test record, but instead of tones, it's a series of long, sprawling slabs of super intense drone, and speaker shredding grind and buzz. It's all very deep and abrasive, caustic and corrosive, but actually strangely mesmerizing.
Gorgeous and super creepy cover art too! We only have 15 copies and then it's gone for good...

HUM OF THE DRUID Societal (Snse) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Hum of the druid indeed. Rarely does a band name so perfectly capture the essence of a band's sound. Societal is just one massive LP length druidic hum. The name may be spot on but the cover is a bit misleading, with its creepy evil Rudimentary Peni style cover, it definitely smacks of some obscure doom metal record, or when you also figure in the name, some sort of neo folk new weird America whatever. But no, Hum Of The Druid is indeed about THE HUM, which is essentially THE DRONE, which means this is definitely going to hit the spot for drone obsessives. However, unlike the slowly shifting static quality of a lot of drone records, Societal is a thick and roiling sonic stew, about as unsmooth as you can get. Static, crackle, hum, fuzz, the sound of ocean surf, radio interference, white noise, pink noise, record run off, it's as if HOTD took every naturally and un-naturally occurring source of hum and constructed this gorgeously thick layered chunk of squirming, twisting, shifting hum. It's ambient sure, but an impossibly grinding ambience, like some long lost Japanoise record with all the edges sanded off, or like listening to My Bloody Valentine, through the one remaining blown speaker on your car stereo, with the bass all the way up and the treble all the way down, rendering everything a warm mewling rumbly hum. Imagine listening to your favorite record with EVERY single cord and cable connecting your stereo components and speakers, pulled out far enough where they're just barely in there, the connection so tenuous, that your favorite record becomes an orchestra of bad connections, with only the occasional glimpse of the melody and music beneath the suffocating smear of glitch and crackle and indeed hum!

HUM OF THE DRUID / FIRE IN THE HEAD split (Audio Immolation Industries / Cipher Productions) lp 15.98
We recently reviewed a full length lp from Hum Of The Druid, Raising The New Wing..., a mighty caustic slab of noise drenched drones and fucked up ambience. For a record that harsh and harrowing, we really couldn't stop listening to it (and yeah, we have a few copies left). So we were psyched to discover a new record by them (him?), a split with another noisemaker we dig, but have yet to review anything by.
The Hum Of The Druid side is more of what we've been hankering for. A dense sea of crumbling distortion and blown out grit, a spray of grizzled amp buzz and all manner of hum and crackle and glitch. There are brief interludes of abstract ambience, laced with bits of feedback, but those are merely brief respites from the relentless onslaught. The HotD side ends with some super creeped out blackened drones, lots of distorted in-the-red low end, and tortured anguished howls buried way down in the mix, culminating in a super jagged speaker destroying crunch and glitch outro.
Fire In The Head most definitely hold their own, opening with slithery slowed down guitar drones, underneath creepy fucked up samples, plenty of buzz and glitch, all over a thick sea of processed rumbles and whirs, there's definitely an old school industrial vibe, intense and haunting, lots of vocal samples. It all builds to a seriously fired filed of static, underpinning cool super effected demonic vokills, doused in distortion and reverb. Super super creepy. The side ends with some awesomely distorted blown out rhythms, all stuttery and chopped up, like some damaged metallic noise dub. Cool.
Super nice packaging. Thick black sleeve with paste on covers on each side, and Rudimentary Peni fans take note, the Fire In The Head side features original Nick Blinko artwork! Also includes a printed insert / lyric sheet, and of course, it's ultra limited, and we only got a handful.

HUMAN BEAST, THE Volume One (Sunbeam) cd 16.98
Heavy-ish prog/psych power trio action outta Edinburgh, Scotland circa 1969, here's the sole album by this obscure but well-regarded band. This is its first fully official cd reissue, done with the help of the band members themselves, and boasts a 16 page booklet full of vintage photos, lyrics and reminiscences. This moody Beast was apparently much heavier in live performance than on this comparatively tame studio recording (a common problem for bands back then, lamented in the liner notes by bassist Ed Jones, who claims that only about 45 seconds of the record really reflects their earbleeding live sound). Even then, Volume One isn't without, well, volume. And power. Explosive electric guitar breaks and urgent rhythms, alternating with plodding and poetic dreamscapes. Wah-wah'd chicka chicka chicka guitar with Eastern-inflected melodies wending around and around. The first song is called "Mystic Man" and indeed the entirety of The Human Beast's album evokes a mystic, almost creepy feeling, accentuated by cryptic lyrics, lines like "We celebrate the feel of human meat" and "Mind escapes you, flies to freedom / Leaves your hollow gargoyle kingdom". There's certainly a special weirdness to The Human Beast, a peculiar, pagan freakiness. Their cover of The Incredible String Band's "Maybe Someday" fits right in. Very effective.
And while the production never lets them get quite as Beastly as they wanted to be, for 1969 this is still pretty badass. These guys probably never heard Randy Holden's Population II, but they probably would have liked it. And they'd certainly heard their share of Jimi Hendrix and Iron Butterfly... While more '60s psych than '70s proto-metal (at their heaviest here, closer to Cream than Sabbath), we'd certainly rank 'em in alongside the likes of High Tide, Sam Gopal, NSU, The Dark, Arzachel, and Andromeda...
MPEG Stream: "Appearance Is Everything, Style Is A Way Of Living"
MPEG Stream: "Maybe Someday"
MPEG Stream: "Reality Presented As An Alternative"

HUMAN BEAST, THE Volume One (Sunbeam) lp 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now also reissued on vinyl...
Heavy-ish prog/psych power trio action outta Edinburgh, Scotland circa 1969, here's the sole album by this obscure but well-regarded band. This is its first fully official reissue, done with the help of the band members themselves. This moody Beast was apparently much heavier in live performance than on this comparatively tame studio recording (a common problem for bands back then, lamented in the liner notes by bassist Ed Jones, who claims that only about 45 seconds of the record really reflects their earbleeding live sound). Even then, Volume One isn't without, well, volume. And power. Explosive electric guitar breaks and urgent rhythms, alternating with plodding and poetic dreamscapes. Wah-wah'd chicka chicka chicka guitar with Eastern-inflected melodies wending around and around. The first song is called "Mystic Man" and indeed the entirety of The Human Beast's album evokes a mystic, almost creepy feeling, accentuated by cryptic lyrics, lines like "We celebrate the feel of human meat" and "Mind escapes you, flies to freedom / Leaves your hollow gargoyle kingdom". There's certainly a special weirdness to The Human Beast, a peculiar, pagan freakiness. Their cover of The Incredible String Band's "Maybe Someday" fits right in. Very effective.
And while the production never lets them get quite as Beastly as they wanted to be, for 1969 this is still pretty badass. These guys probably never heard Randy Holden's Population II, but they probably would have liked it. And they'd certainly heard their share of Jimi Hendrix and Iron Butterfly... While more '60s psych than '70s proto-metal (at their heaviest here, closer to Cream than Sabbath), we'd certainly rank 'em in alongside the likes of High Tide, Sam Gopal, NSU, The Dark, Arzachel, and Andromeda...
MPEG Stream: "Appearance Is Everything, Style Is A Way Of Living"
MPEG Stream: "Maybe Someday"
MPEG Stream: "Reality Presented As An Alternative"

HUMAN BEING Live At The Zodiak - Berlin 1968 (Nepenthe) cd 14.98
Krautrock and weird music fans all around the world MUST being living right, to earn up the good karma required for something this cool and unexpected and downright uber-historic to drop into our laps. A previously unreleased, live concert recording from a pre-Cluster (and pre-Kluster) krautrock ensemble featuring Hans-Joachim Roedelius, from way back in 1968. Wow. Who knew? Maybe not even Roedelius, who apparently not long ago just received a tape of this in the mail from an "anonymous donor", someone who'd lugged recording equipment to the underground (literally) music club Zodiak several decades earlier and captured this show, then filed it away like a sonic time capsule of late '60s Berlin freakdom, i.e. Human Being, an amorphous collective of (mostly) non-musicians, a sort of "noise orchestra" that found a home at the Zodiak (a club co-organized by Roedelius's comrade Conrad Schnitzler), touring also all the way to Morocco we're told, but never releasing a record... until now!
This rare document consists of one lengthy track, 56 and a half minutes long, of utter loud "early industrial" featuring guitar, organ, drums, saxophone, cello... and tons and tons of electronic FX, lots of echo and delay, feedback and tape loops, and what sounds like shortwave radio static... proving that there's nothing new under the sun, once again, THIS WAS DONE OVER 40 YEARS AGO FOLKS! Sounds like something we'd be selling on a cd-r from some floorcore noise-drone outfit nowadays!
20th century avant garde meets the anarchic spirit of the freeform psychedelic rock scene, with murky droning pulsations and percussive clatter building building into an insistent heavy throb by the end of the piece. It's abstract out-there stuff indeed, difficult to describe (the deep foghorn like rumbles remind us of Yoshi Wada's Earth Horns, if that helps). But you should experience it for yourself, especially if you're into the more droned out, free improv, experimental side of krautrock (or of anything)!
Given that it's cool this is available at all, we really shouldn't complain about anything, but we will say the digipack doesn't look quite the way we'd like it to... the cover illustration and cd booklet frankly seem a bit cheesy to us, in fact we almost ignored this as a result when we first saw it (don't judge a book by its cover, all right all right) just 'cause, well, it's too modern generic computery designy lookin', those fonts, that art, yuck. But, the text of the extensive liner notes is informative anyway, and besides it's really the music that STILL matters, 40+ years on from when Human Being originally hit the scene, now thanks to this release more than just an obscure footnote to the career of the very much still musically active (in Cluster, solo, and other collaborations) Hans-Joachim Roedelius.
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 2"

HUMAN BEING LAWNMOWER #3 magazine 6.00
Zines not dead! Here's the third ish of this excellent underground music fanzine in the grand old tradition. Covering proto-punk, power pop, glam rock, and other good stuff in that vein and/or of that vintage, Human Being Lawnmower (named after the MC5 song) comes across like a cross between Galactic Zoo Dossier and Savage Damage Digest. It's in the same format as the latter, 7" x 8 1/2", and features contributions from both SDD's Cory Lindstrum and GZD's Plastic Crimewave in fact. Graphically, Human Being Lawnmower is a treat. There's lotsa cool comix in here - several drawn by this zine's editor, Avi Spivak. But plenty of text too. Bands, some pretty darn obscure, covered here include: all-female rock pioneers Fanny, bubblegum punk Laurice, aQ fave fuzzsters Index, the Equals, The Troggs, The Sidewinders, The Hurriganes, Plod, Iron Virgin, Cock Sparrer, and more. Plus, a couple pages of reviews of current releases and reissues, mostly in the garage rock idiom. And, there's a hilarious "buyer's guide" to a bunch of iffy Lou Reed albums, mostly from the '70s and '80s, though last year's ill-conceived collaboration with Metallica, Lulu, gets an entry - you can tell where the writer is coming from when he says "This record stinks, there is nothing good on itÉ However this is still the best Lou Reed album in 30 years and the best Metallica album of all time". Can't agree, but ha!
HBL#3 is not all fun and games and music though - one piece, illustrated by Spivak, tells the harrowing true-life tale of David Millstein's visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in 2004.
All in all, 76 pages of pure fanzine goodness for anyone hip to it.

HUMAN BELL s/t (Thrill Jockey) cd 15.98
Underrated gem of a record from this band that features Nathan Bell of Lungfish fame. Think recent Earth, Grails, Gary Lucas, a more restrained Explosions In The Sky, and the expansive desolate side of Ennio Morricone. This one slipped under the radar but damn is it great!
MPEG Stream: "A Change In Fortunes"
MPEG Stream: "Hanging From the Rafters"

HUMAN EYE 4: Into The Unknown (Goner) cd 13.98
The return of these noise rock sci-fi garage glam blooz punk weirdos, fronted by Timmy Vulgar, formerly of aQ faves Timmy's Organism and frontman of the Clone Defects. But in Human Eye, Vulgar and his cohorts whip up a dizzying collection of warped, whatthefuck, outsider psychedelic space rock garage punk, or something like that, it's heavy, spacey, garagey, bloozey, definitely psychedelic, and definitely kinda punk, all swaggery and groovy, the sound slipping from Stoogesy stomp to Hawkwind style space out, and from organ driven garage rock vamps to brooding almost echo drenched fuzz pop, there are organs whirring all over the place, the drumming is wild and chaotic, everything wreathed in wah wah guitar, with pounding piano, and clouds of FX. The vibe is definitely glammy, and there's all sorts of weirdness going on, bloops and bleeps, analog synths, blorping bass, Human Eye coming off like some alien glam rock combo, and in many way reminding us of the Lee Harvey Oswald Band, the same sort of irreverence coupled with crazy catchy songs, anthemic and hooky as hell. But it's noisy and grimy and sorta slithery and dark too, the sound is dense and dangerous, laced with extreme poppiness, but that poppiness often underpinned by a shadowy sonic malevolence. But just as often, the shrug off the darkness completely and kick out some impossibly poppy jam, or disregard any sort of musical gravity and go careening into the stratosphere, all blissed out and prismatically druggy!
MPEG Stream: "Gettin' Mean"
MPEG Stream: "Alligator Dance"
MPEG Stream: "Immortal Soldier"
MPEG Stream: "Faces In The Shadows"

HUMAN EYE 4: Into The Unknown (Goner) lp 16.98
The return of these noise rock sci-fi garage glam blooz punk weirdos, fronted by Timmy Vulgar, formerly of aQ faves Timmy's Organism and frontman of the Clone Defects. But in Human Eye, Vulgar and his cohorts whip up a dizzying collection of warped, whatthefuck, outsider psychedelic space rock garage punk, or something like that, it's heavy, spacey, garagey, bloozey, definitely psychedelic, and definitely kinda punk, all swaggery and groovy, the sound slipping from Stoogesy stomp to Hawkwind style space out, and from organ driven garage rock vamps to brooding almost echo drenched fuzz pop, there are organs whirring all over the place, the drumming is wild and chaotic, everything wreathed in wah wah guitar, with pounding piano, and clouds of FX. The vibe is definitely glammy, and there's all sorts of weirdness going on, bloops and bleeps, analog synths, blorping bass, Human Eye coming off like some alien glam rock combo, and in many way reminding us of the Lee Harvey Oswald Band, the same sort of irreverence coupled with crazy catchy songs, anthemic and hooky as hell. But it's noisy and grimy and sorta slithery and dark too, the sound is dense and dangerous, laced with extreme poppiness, but that poppiness often underpinned by a shadowy sonic malevolence. But just as often, the shrug off the darkness completely and kick out some impossibly poppy jam, or disregard any sort of musical gravity and go careening into the stratosphere, all blissed out and prismatically druggy!
MPEG Stream: "Gettin' Mean"
MPEG Stream: "Alligator Dance"
MPEG Stream: "Immortal Soldier"
MPEG Stream: "Faces In The Shadows"

HUMAN EYE They Came From The Sky (Sacred Bones) cd 14.98
Remember the "blurry noise-rock-space-garage distorto rock off kilter groove damaged glam trash blooz" of the weirdly named Timmy's Organism that we listed a while back? A twisted slab of schizophrenic warped what-the-fuck from Michigan, the product of a very disturbed musical mind, one belonging to a fella named Timmy Vulgar (who fronted the Clone Defects once upon a time). Well Timmy is back, this time with a band in tow, that would be Human Eye, and they take the twisted sound of Timmy's Organism, and rev it up, giving it the full band treatment, creating a riff heavy chunk of psychedelic spaced out drug drenched outsider noise rock, that manages to be riffy, hooky, heavy, and occasionally totally and completely fractured and fucked.
Take the awesomely titled "Brain Zip (Kickin' Back In The Electric Chair)", which begins all synth laden garage rock space buzz stomp, with snarly swaggery vox, and some of THEE most distorted guitars ever, totally blown out, and all twisted up, the various sounds somehow restrained and molded into some seriously tripped out post Stooges / pre Hawkwind space garage weirdness, until the guitar solo comes in, WAY up in the mix, and SUPER distorted, a wild melodic squiggle that relegates the rest of the song to a hushed background buzz. "Impregnate The Martian Queen Pt 2" is a glammy stomp, with Butthole Surfers style processed vox, not to mention a weird watery splash sound that seems to wreathe all of the sounds, there are even bongos and some acoustic guitars, like Ziggy Stardust on a SERIOUSLY bad (or good?) trip. "Junkyard Heart" somehow channels both Van Halen AND Monster Magnet, through a short sharp blast of drum heavy uber distorted effects drenched garage dirge crush. And so it goes, song after song of twisted fractured fucked up confusional new wave / space rock / glam garage / psych punk weirdness that we're digging more and more with every listen.
MPEG Stream: "Alien Creeps"
MPEG Stream: "Brain Zip (Kickin' Back In The Electric Chair)"
MPEG Stream: "Impregnate The Martian Queen Pt 2"

HUMAN EYE They Came From The Sky (Sacred Bones) lp 21.00
Remember the "blurry noise-rock-space-garage distorto rock off kilter groove damaged glam trash blooz" of the weirdly named Timmy's Organism that we listed a while back? A twisted slab of schizophrenic warped what-the-fuck from Michigan, the product of a very disturbed musical mind, one belonging to a fella named Timmy Vulgar (who fronted the Clone Defects once upon a time). Well Timmy is back, this time with a band in tow, that would be Human Eye, and they take the twisted sound of Timmy's Organism, and rev it up, giving it the full band treatment, creating a riff heavy chunk of psychedelic spaced out drug drenched outsider noise rock, that manages to be riffy, hooky, heavy, and occasionally totally and completely fractured and fucked.
Take the awesomely titled "Brain Zip (Kickin' Back In The Electric Chair)", which begins all synth laden garage rock space buzz stomp, with snarly swaggery vox, and some of THEE most distorted guitars ever, totally blown out, and all twisted up, the various sounds somehow restrained and molded into some seriously tripped out post Stooges / pre Hawkwind space garage weirdness, until the guitar solo comes in, WAY up in the mix, and SUPER distorted, a wild melodic squiggle that relegates the rest of the song to a hushed background buzz. "Impregnate The Martian Queen Pt 2" is a glammy stomp, with Butthole Surfers style processed vox, not to mention a weird watery splash sound that seems to wreathe all of the sounds, there are even bongos and some acoustic guitars, like Ziggy Stardust on a SERIOUSLY bad (or good?) trip. "Junkyard Heart" somehow channels both Van Halen AND Monster Magnet, through a short sharp blast of drum heavy uber distorted effects drenched garage dirge crush. And so it goes, song after song of twisted fractured fucked up confusional new wave / space rock / glam garage / psych punk weirdness that we're digging more and more with every listen.
MPEG Stream: "Alien Creeps"
MPEG Stream: "Brain Zip (Kickin' Back In The Electric Chair)"
MPEG Stream: "Impregnate The Martian Queen Pt 2"

HUMAN FLESH Pretending To Be Pseudo Code (Plinkity Plonk) cd 15.98
More minimal wave weirdness from the archives of Alain Neffe, who was responsible for the huge archive of Insane Music tapes which were released back in '80s with all sorts of death disco rhythms, caterwauling electronics, and Cronenberg allusions to sex, death, and the demise of modern culture. Earlier in 2012, we discovered Neffe's recordings as Cortex, with cooing French female vocals and cosmically baroque electronic ambience. Given how much we (and quite a number of you as well!) were smitten by the sidereal radiophonic explorations of Cortex, which we went so far as to make a Record Of The Week, we've found yet another of Neffe's early projects - Human Flesh. Throughout the '80s, this was pretty much a solo project of his, although the entire Insane Music catalogue finds Neffe working with a small cadre of vocalists and electronic tinkerers. Pseudo Code was another of Neffe's projects, featuring Guy-Marc Hinant (who later founded Sub Rosa Records) and Xavier S; and this trio was quite active recording and performing from 1979 to about 1983.
One day in 1982, Neffe had set up the studio for a session of Pseudo Code recordings, waiting for Guy-Marc and Xavier to show up. Instead, a friend from a distant Belgian town arrived at the studio unannounced. This fellow was named Guy de Bievre, and the two decided to use the all of the settings on the synths, sequencers, and drum machines originally for the Pseudo Code sessions to create something for Neffe's Human Flesh project. The Pseudo Code sound was much more dialed into the Cabaret Voltaire ethos of electronics with minimalist sequencing and plodding rhythms that inspired dread and horror. Neffe and Bievre add expressivist blooping electronics, scattered guitar distortion, and some punk-poet barking to the rhythmic sequences, that could almost be a Richard Pinhas & Chris Carter duet from that same period, if such as thing could be imagined. A single track of snaking electronic rhythms, splattered with cold melodies, haunted blurting noises, and those occasional vocals that all come together as a fine piece of industrial mesmerism. Limited to 300 copies!
MPEG Stream: "Playing With Another Guy (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Playing With Another Guy (extract 2)"

HUMAN GREED Fortress Longing (Omnepathy / ICR ) cd 16.98
Michael Begg's name first came to our attention through those beguiling Fovea Hex albums which smeared and obsfucated the tropes of British Folk with a crushed velvet ambience, although it was hard to discern who might have been responsible for such activities given the heavy hitters that dot the Fovea Hex line-up, including Brian Eno, Clodagh Simonds, Colin Potter, and Andrew McKenzie. Begg was obviously a very good artist to recruit for Fovea Hex as he pursues an aesthetic of extracting a beautiful melancholy from any number of acoustic and electronic instruments. All of this is majestically on display here in his Human Greed project with Deryk Thomas. Fortress Longing is a nocturnal album through and through, with subtle melodic passages coming in and out of focus through a shimmering, gauzy sheen that wouldn't be out of place on the arrangements for any given Current 93 album. Violin, psaltery, piano, bells, and wordless female vocals all enter the Human Greed smears of post-classical ambience and obscurant sound design that cross back and forth between the Caretaker's weepingly nostalgic crackling and emotionally draining yet placid interludes found in Godspeed! You Black Emperor.
MPEG Stream: "Malagathens: Hotel"
MPEG Stream: "British Museum"
MPEG Stream: "Anxiety"

HUMAN INSTINCT Burning Up Years (Sunbeam) lp 24.00

HUMAN INSTINCT Kiwi Psych Heads : Singles 1966-1971 (Groovie) lp 32.00

HUMAN INSTINCT Pins In It (Sunbeam) 2lp 34.00

HUMAN INSTINCT Stoned Guitar (Vintage / Rockadrome) cd 12.98
So as soon as we dove into the extensive liner notes of this seriously awesome reissue of New Zealand's heaviest (and only??) psych band Human Instinct, we realized that despite their failed commercial success, these dudes were really way ahead of their time. After relocating to the UK in the late sixties and undergoing a handful of line-up changes, Human Instinct hit the local bar circuit with an original formula of heavy ripping psych played at blistering, amp melting volumes. Inspired by Hendrix and other dudes pushing the limits of the newly evolved electric guitar, Human Instinct developed a sound that was completely unique and possibly influential on the heavy bands that followed. While we wouldn't exactly call this stuff proto-metal, more like heavy psych, it definitely was a major step in reaching the heavy blackened riffage that bands like Sabbath and Pentagram would later perfect. That said, the album definitely has songs worth listening to over and over and over, buuuuuut there are a few tracks ya might just want to skip over. Oh and did we mention these dudes were known for having a lead singer who ALSO plays drums standing up!!?? Yes its true, Maurice Greer not only has a wicked sweet voice, but his drumming style is truly unique!!
Track number one kicks things off with an awesome version of Dennis Wilson's "Black Sally". Definitely a track you can headbang to, it's easy to hear how their slow grooving heaviness could one day become the essence of doom. Needless to say, these guys were way ahead of their time, I mean according to the liner notes, they starting playing together in '58!! Crazy! "The Jugg-A-Jugg Song", our second favorite track on Stoned Guitar, starts off with a wall of psychedelic fury, blaring, amp frying guitar, rampant drum chaos, destroying eardrums and anything else that stands in the way! So good!! "Midnight Sun" follows with stoney (obviously), repetitive riffs layered with atmospheric fuzz solos that seem to launch into the sky, really kraut-like and hypnotic, not unlike Parson Sound or Wooden Shjips, sorta.
So this is basically the complete package, four bonus tracks, killer liner notes with photos and basically the entire history of this underappreciated heavy psych gem! Stoned Guitar is fried out, in-the-red type blues perfection for fans of the recently reviewed Jerusalem, Bedemon, or even Flower Travelin' Band. We even hear some similarities to new psychedelic jammers Magic Lantern or Eternal Tapestry too. Take our advice and don't miss out on this super influential piece of psych glory!! And maybe Rockadrome/Vintage will follow up with reissues of the other two Human Instinct albums, we used to have all three as imports but they've been AWOL lately.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sally"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Sun"

HUMAN INSTINCT Stoned Guitar (Sunbeam) 2lp 34.00
NOW REISSUED ON VINYL!! Here's what we wrote about the cd version we listed a couple years back:
So as soon as we dove into the extensive liner notes of this seriously awesome reissue of New Zealand's heaviest (and only??) psych band Human Instinct, we realized that despite their failed commercial success, these dudes were really way ahead of their time. After relocating to the UK in the late sixties and undergoing a handful of line-up changes, Human Instinct hit the local bar circuit with an original formula of heavy ripping psych played at blistering, amp melting volumes. Inspired by Hendrix and other dudes pushing the limits of the newly evolved electric guitar, Human Instinct developed a sound that was completely unique and possibly influential on the heavy bands that followed. While we wouldn't exactly call this stuff proto-metal, more like heavy psych, it definitely was a major step in reaching the heavy blackened riffage that bands like Sabbath and Pentagram would later perfect. That said, the album definitely has songs worth listening to over and over and over, buuuuuut there are a few tracks ya might just want to skip over. Oh and did we mention these dudes were known for having a lead singer who ALSO plays drums standing up!!?? Yes its true, Maurice Greer not only has a wicked sweet voice, but his drumming style is truly unique!!
Track number one kicks things off with an awesome version of Dennis Wilson's "Black Sally". Definitely a track you can headbang to, it's easy to hear how their slow grooving heaviness could one day become the essence of doom. Needless to say, these guys were way ahead of their time, I mean according to the liner notes, they starting playing together in '58!! Crazy! "The Jugg-A-Jugg Song", our second favorite track on Stoned Guitar, starts off with a wall of psychedelic fury, blaring, amp frying guitar, rampant drum chaos, destroying eardrums and anything else that stands in the way! So good!! "Midnight Sun" follows with stoney (obviously), repetitive riffs layered with atmospheric fuzz solos that seem to launch into the sky, really kraut-like and hypnotic, not unlike Parson Sound or Wooden Shjips, sorta.
Stoned Guitar is fried out, in-the-red type blues perfection for fans of the recently reviewed Jerusalem, Bedemon, or even Flower Travelin' Band. We even hear some similarities to new psychedelic jammers Magic Lantern or Eternal Tapestry too. Take our advice and don't miss out on this super influential piece of psych glory! FYI, also in stock but not yet reviewed, vinyl reissues of Human Instinct's other two albums, Pins In It and Burning Up Years.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sally"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Sun"