SERPENT THRONE The Battle Of Old Crow (Vessel) cd 14.98
It might be a bit obvious, but it'll get our point across: take a look at this album's cover, an evocative image of a Neolithic stone circle out on a mystic moor somewhere, the stones jutting up into a darkened, dusky red sky. Now imagine the amid the stones also a circle of Orange amps/cabinets, cranking twin guitar jams in a '70s psych/metal style... add a bassist and a drummer who makes a point of also being credited with "cowbell", and you're perhaps getting close to an idea of what Serpent Throne's The Battle Of Old Crow sounds like.
Released by Vessel (best known as the label who previously brought us that fantastic archival release by '70s Pentagram alter ego Bedemon, a few years back), this is the 2nd full-length from these Philadelphia instru-metallists (featuring one of the guitarists from sludge-doom act Otesanek), following 2007's Ride Satan Ride. The concept for -that- album was that it was a reissue of a long-lost soundtrack to an obscure '70s biker film. And it almost could have been, but we think Serpent Throne could have gone further with the idea, like having a repeating "theme" motif throughout the album, interspersing the tracks with made up fake movie dialogue and sound effects, or including a mellow acoustic ballad "hit single" that would have played during the imaginary film's love scene... stuff like that would have made it more like the soundtracks to actual films like Psychomania and Stone. But it was a cool debut anyway, that we should have reviewed but didn't, so we're making sure not to sleep on this one too. The Battle Of Old Crow scraps the movie soundtrack concept and just provides the riffy instrumental rockin', without pretense. Which we could describe as sounding like a stoner rock Fucking Champs, maybe. Or a shut-up-n-play-yer-guitar version of The Sword. In other words, heavy and badass in the guitar dep't. Of which there's two here, guitars that is, bringing the stirring harmonies, trippy leads, and fat riffs. Heck, it's got "guitariness" on par with AQ faves Slough Feg and Hammers of Misfortune. Fans of Earthless ought to dig this too, though the songs here are just that, songs, more concise and less jammy than Earthless's extended improvs. Another fitting comparison would be to fellow Philly instrumental act Stinking Lizaveta, if they were just a bit more overtly on the retro/stoner tip. The '70s heaviness of bands like Sabbath, Scorpions (both cited on the cover sticker blurb), Wishbone Ash, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple and the like is the obvious inspiration here, and Serpent Throne have definitely learned their lessons well.
While not having a singer can sometimes be a good thing (since any given vocalist's voice, not to mention lyrics, can be so subjective a pleasure, or not), the question that usually gets asked about something like this is, well, is it boring? We'd say, no, definitely not. Not if you like tasty guitar and authentically '70s sounding bellbottomed riffage! In that case, having no singer is a plus, since there's no vocals to get in the way of the guitarists doing their thing. Which they do quite well indeed! The rhythm section is pretty tight too.
While often, the solution (or purpose) of some bands doing the instrumental thing is to get ultra-techy and complex, to grab attention that way, Serpent Throne take a different tack, writing songs that are just that, memorable songs, vocals or no. Sure, there's moments where you wouldn't mind your favorite '70s metal vocalist stepping up to the mic. But Serpent Throne's catchy riffs and purely instrumental interplay is plenty enough most of the time - powerful, mesmerizing and melodic. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "One Percenter"
MPEG Stream: "Snakecharmer"
MPEG Stream: "Rock Formation"

SERPENT THRONE White Summer - Black Winter (Translation Loss) cd 13.98
Been waiting for this one for a while! Kinda mysterious, really. Certain sources say that this supposedly came out in 2010, but it never seemed to materialize at any of our suppliers. Last year, a vinyl version was released (and we might still have like one copy left) and so we thought the cd was immediately impending too, and kept waiting for it, and waiting... finally, it's actually available!! And worth the wait, 'cause we LOVE the ripping instru-metal stoner rock heaviness that Philadelphia's Serpent Throne brings, as displayed on earlier albums The Battle Of Old Crow and fake '70s biker flick soundtrack Ride Satan Ride.
White Summer - Black Winter is again a tour-de-force of '70s sounding, twin guitar, heavy riff rockin' psychmetal, sans vocals. For being an instrumental band, they manage to make their songs SONGS, y'know, not just jams, though they DO go off, too. Total chugging doomed out glory, adorned with resounding, heartbreaking harmonies, with titles like "March Of The Druids", "Riff Forest", "Pagan Eclipse", and (the remarkably mellow) "Mushroom Cloud". Damn good, somewhere twixt The Fucking Champs, and Earthless (but like we said, less jammy), and real deal '70s stuff a la Wishbone Ash, early Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, and Poobah.
A few years back, we wrote A LOT about The Battle Of Old Crow, hopefully that enticed you to pick it up then, and you're as eager for this new one as we are. Or, if you're new to Serpent Throne, this one oughtta make you a fan, if you dig folks playing the heck out of their guitars, at Black Sabbath inspired levels of heaviness and riff-mastery (and why wouldn't you??). Folks into fellow Phillies Stinking Lizaveta should also like 'em, Zebulon Pike fans too. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Headed For An Unmarked Grave"
MPEG Stream: "White Summer Black Winter"
MPEG Stream: "Controlled By Lunar Forces"

SERPENT THRONE White Summer - Black Winter (Prophase) lp 32.00
Been waiting for this one for a while! Kinda mysterious, really. Certain sources say that this supposedly came out in 2010, but it never seemed to materialize at any of our suppliers. Last year, a vinyl version was released (and we might still have like one copy left) and so we thought the cd was immediately impending too, and kept waiting for it, and waiting... finally, it's actually available!! And worth the wait, 'cause we LOVE the ripping instru-metal stoner rock heaviness that Philadelphia's Serpent Throne brings, as displayed on earlier albums The Battle Of Old Crow and fake '70s biker flick soundtrack Ride Satan Ride.
White Summer - Black Winter is again a tour-de-force of '70s sounding, twin guitar, heavy riff rockin' psychmetal, sans vocals. For being an instrumental band, they manage to make their songs SONGS, y'know, not just jams, though they DO go off, too. Total chugging doomed out glory, adorned with resounding, heartbreaking harmonies, with titles like "March Of The Druids", "Riff Forest", "Pagan Eclipse", and (the remarkably mellow) "Mushroom Cloud". Damn good, somewhere twixt The Fucking Champs, and Earthless (but like we said, less jammy), and real deal '70s stuff a la Wishbone Ash, early Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, and Poobah.
A few years back, we wrote A LOT about The Battle Of Old Crow, hopefully that enticed you to pick it up then, and you're as eager for this new one as we are. Or, if you're new to Serpent Throne, this one oughtta make you a fan, if you dig folks playing the heck out of their guitars, at Black Sabbath inspired levels of heaviness and riff-mastery (and why wouldn't you??). Folks into fellow Phillies Stinking Lizaveta should also like 'em, Zebulon Pike fans too. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Headed For An Unmarked Grave"
MPEG Stream: "White Summer Black Winter"
MPEG Stream: "Controlled By Lunar Forces"

SERPENT'S KNIGHT Silent Knight...Of Myth And Destiny (Shadow Kingdom) 2cd 17.98
Had to get at least a couple of these and list it. First off, it's one of our pal Brian from WFMU's current faves (and if you've ever heard his radio show, you know he digs the weirdest shit, especially where metal is concerned). Secondly, the other day this was playing in the front of the store, and from the back office, we thought it was freakin' Diamanda Galas... except it was '80s metal, sort of. But the crazy vocals and lo-fi recording quality made it sound like something totally WTF? and avant garde instead.
So, who the heck sings like that? What IS this? Well, the singer wasn't Diamanda. Or even a woman. Serpent's Knight were in fact an eighties metal band from Seattle, and the first disc of this archival double cd set consists of demos circa '83 to '85, when their singer (with the insanely high voice, and, it should be added, an equally impressive mane of platinum blond hair!) was a guy by the name Warrel Dane, best known now as the frontman for currently popular power metal outfit Nevermore. But before Nevermore, he was in a (much better in our opinion) speed metal band called Sanctuary, who debuted in '87 with an album produced by Megadeth's Dave Mustaine. And before that, he sang for these guys, Serpent's Knight, who never made an album - though they provided Sanctuary with their best track "Battle Angels", and both bands also did covers of "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane. Serpent's Knight started off as a high school band doing Sabbath and Priest covers. Writing their own songs, they then moved into even more of a dark and evil-sounding Mercyful Fate influenced occult metal mode, finding a dude (Dane) who could out-screech even King Diamond himself!!
So check this out if you're into some extreme glass-shattering vocal histrionics, heavy metal or otherwise. And/or if you're already a fan of Sanctuary, or Nevermore. And of course if you're just an '80s metal nerd, like some of us! You'll love how the trebly, widdly guitars rip it up along with the vocals...
In addition to the material with Warrel Dane, there's also a couple tracks on disc one with someone named "Father Scorn" on vocals, who is also pretty bizarre. And then there's disc two, a 1989 demo from later lineup of Serpent's Knight, with a Mark G on vox. With songs like, um, "Sick Bloody Cunt" it seems they were trying for a PMRC-baiting, shock rock angle, W.A.S.P. style, though that didn't apparently lead to much success, oh well. Not bad though, more value added for the obscure '80s metal inclined. Furthermore, the 2nd disc contains a bonus 19 minute video clip, grainy footage from their first ever gig in 1984. And then there's a 22 page cd booklet with tons of color photos and EXTENSIVELY detailed band history.
MPEG Stream: "Sorcerer's Apprentice"
MPEG Stream: "Disturbing Your Peace"
MPEG Stream: "White Rabbit"

SERPENTCULT Raised By Wolves (Listenable) cd 16.98

SERPENTCULT Trident Nor Fire (I Hate Records) cd ep 14.98
Formerly Thee Plague Of Gentlemen... due to a pretty horrible situation, they had to change the name, and get a new singer... still the same heavy doom metal, now with female vocals. They do a Uriah Heep cover on this debut ep.

SERPENTCULT Weight Of Light (Rise Above) cd 15.98

SERVANTS, THE Youth Club Disco (Captured Tracks) lp 16.98
The Servants were an eighties UK guitar pop band, whose sound was fantastically jangly and polished, super melodic and well produced, bucking the trend at the time to produce lo-fi ramshackle pop (although the group did appear on the C86 comp that pretty much defined that ramshackle pop movement), they even counted members of the Housemartins and the Auteurs among their ranks at one point, and their music was beloved by Belle And Sebastien frontman Stuart Murdoch, who before B&S had tried to form a band with Servants frontman David Westlake. This should all give you an idea of the sound, a little twee, a little precious, earnest and heartfelt, the sort of sound that would most definitely appeal to fans of B&S and the classic sound of groups like The Smiths and nineties NZ pop (The Clean, the Chills, etc.). Cherry Red Records released a compilation called Reserved, which went out of print, and now goes for CRAZY money on eBay, but thankfully, Captured Tracks cherry picked some of the past tracks to put together their own vinyl only collection called Youth Club Disco, and it's a perfect introduction to this band that really didn't get the love or attention they deserved. ALl the tracks here are lilting and melancholy, pure classic indie pop, jangly and dreamy and definitely not for anyone after buzz and crunch, but for folks who like smart, heartfelt pop music, this stuff is pure pop gold.
MPEG Stream: "The Sun, A Small Star"
MPEG Stream: "Loggerheads"
MPEG Stream: "Meredith"
MPEG Stream: "You'd Do Me Good"

SERVILE SECT Eternal Mind (Senseless Empire) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest from this mysterious 'alien black metal' duo whose sound definitely leans way more toward the alien than the black metal. We went pretty nuts for their Stratospheric Passenger record, a dizzying assemblage of psychedelic drones and outerspace black buzz, of dark drone metal and abstract otherworldly ambience. That record still ranks up there as one of our favorite slabs of outsider black metal weirdness, and then recently we got to see them play on THE BUS here in town, transforming an old city bus, parked under a highway overpass, into some sort of smoke filled, ear drum destroying, trance inducing sonic starship.
So here's their latest batch of strange sounds, confusingly packaged in an eye popping almost cartoonish, full color geometric cover, sealed shut with a similarly printed little band-aid style sticker. But inside, it's the same twisted blackened psychedelia we were hoping for. Spidery minor key guitars, field recordings, raspy metallic drones, harsh vokills way off in the distance. Simultaneously meditative and hypnotic, harsh and caustic, abstract and blackened, a sort of post rock black metal drift, warped and washed out and weirdly not all that black metal at all. But that's just the first track. From there on out it's a series of strange soundscapes, analog electronics, treated textural drones, creaks and thrums and moans, wreathed in strange FX and smeared into abstract sounds and shapes, everything bleary and blurry and indistinct, haunting and ghostlike, snippets of samples(?) surfacing occasionally amidst the layered drifts of chordal thrum and soft black buzz. Slow motion melodies unfurl over clouds of shortwave static, ethereal billows of muted shimmer, and delicately swirling textures, malfunctioning machinery, and all sorts of other slowly decaying sonic ephemera, suspended in some sort of rusted out, gauzy dreamworld, bleak and beautiful, creepy and claustrophobic.
LIMITED TO 80 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered.

SERVILE SECT Realms Of The Queen (Ecstatic Peace!) cd 11.98
Finally, another dark missive from this 'alien black metal duo', long time aQ faves Servile Sect, whose ritualist spacepsych dronescapes crackle with black energy, occasionally erupting into full on metallic blackness, but just as often slowly drifting and expanding into sprawling stretches of blurred low end mesmer, laced with chant like vocals and buried bits of melody, mutant otherworldly landscapes of hushed ominous drift and muted psychedelic black ragas.
On past records, the black metal element seemed almost like an afterthought, the records way heavier on the drone and drift, but on Realms Of The Queen, right out of the gate, a blasting lo-fi drum machine rhythm sets the scene, while thick sheets of coruscating guitars and harsh shrieked vokills are laid over the top, but even then, the sound is not so much fierce and grim and sort of hazy and blackly psychedelic, like a black metal blurred into some sort of trancelike black raga, the guitars lush and layered, everything cloaked in a gauze of murky muted swirl.
But soon after, the band dial back the buzz, leaving just the black, a crunchy, distorted almost Wolf Eyesian industrial dirgescape, all mechanical creaks and staticky hiss, but underneath, a mournful piano picks out a barely there lament, a swell of black buzz rises up from the murk, sheets of hiss, like super distorted vocals drift in, the result a haunting funereal industrial doom, that again is not so much heavy and crushing, and moody and atmospheric.
The rest of the record follows a similar pattern, creating lush ritualistic landscapes of distant buzzing drones, SUNNO)))-like avalanches of crumbling distortion, hazy crystalline streaks of almost new age sounding drift, synthy soundtracky tranceouts that sound a little like Zombi or Majeure being played at 16rpm and being broadcast from speakers submerged in brackish water at the bottom of some giant cavern, there are even occasional vocals, deep dramatic croons, way down in the mix, adding a gorgeous dark pop element to certain tracks.
Thick corrosive dins collide with shoegaze-y fuzz, murky avant blackness drifts into hushed minimal shimmer, gnarled black riffage gets tangled up into epic swirling blacknoise squalls, Sunroof!-like ur-drones settle into droned out blackness, culminating in the epic closer, "Universe And Self, Sender And Receiver", which sounds like a prettier fuzzier Wold, noisy and dense and black as pitch, but shot through with subtle melody, with rich layered textures, shifting constantly, a blurred murk that finally explodes into a surprisingly lush and lustrous dreampsych shoegaze softblack blowout that sounds almost like some sort of black metal dreampop, fuzzy and washed out, but still frenetic and fierce. So fucking incredible.
MPEG Stream: "Only The Sky Is Gentle"
MPEG Stream: "Stabbing Through"
MPEG Stream: "Burning Season"
MPEG Stream: "Universe And Self, Sender And Receiver"

SERVILE SECT Realms Of The Queen (King Of The Monsters) lp 25.00
NOW ON VINYL!!!
Finally, another dark missive from this 'alien black metal duo', long time aQ faves Servile Sect, whose ritualist spacepsych dronescapes crackle with black energy, occasionally erupting into full on metallic blackness, but just as often slowly drifting and expanding into sprawling stretches of blurred low end mesmer, laced with chant like vocals and buried bits of melody, mutant otherworldly landscapes of hushed ominous drift and muted psychedelic black ragas.
On past records, the black metal element seemed almost like an afterthought, the records way heavier on the drone and drift, but on Realms Of The Queen, right out of the gate, a blasting lo-fi drum machine rhythm sets the scene, while thick sheets of coruscating guitars and harsh shrieked vokills are laid over the top, but even then, the sound is not so much fierce and grim and sort of hazy and blackly psychedelic, like a black metal blurred into some sort of trancelike black raga, the guitars lush and layered, everything cloaked in a gauze of murky muted swirl.
But soon after, the band dial back the buzz, leaving just the black, a crunchy, distorted almost Wolf Eyesian industrial dirgescape, all mechanical creaks and staticky hiss, but underneath, a mournful piano picks out a barely there lament, a swell of black buzz rises up from the murk, sheets of hiss, like super distorted vocals drift in, the result a haunting funereal industrial doom, that again is not so much heavy and crushing, and moody and atmospheric.
The rest of the record follows a similar pattern, creating lush ritualistic landscapes of distant buzzing drones, SUNNO)))-like avalanches of crumbling distortion, hazy crystalline streaks of almost new age sounding drift, synthy soundtracky tranceouts that sound a little like Zombi or Majeure being played at 16rpm and being broadcast from speakers submerged in brackish water at the bottom of some giant cavern, there are even occasional vocals, deep dramatic croons, way down in the mix, adding a gorgeous dark pop element to certain tracks.
Thick corrosive dins collide with shoegaze-y fuzz, murky avant blackness drifts into hushed minimal shimmer, gnarled black riffage gets tangled up into epic swirling blacknoise squalls, Sunroof!-like ur-drones settle into droned out blackness, culminating in the epic closer, "Universe And Self, Sender And Receiver", which sounds like a prettier fuzzier Wold, noisy and dense and black as pitch, but shot through with subtle melody, with rich layered textures, shifting constantly, a blurred murk that finally explodes into a surprisingly lush and lustrous dreampsych shoegaze softblack blowout that sounds almost like some sort of black metal dreampop, fuzzy and washed out, but still frenetic and fierce. So fucking incredible.
MPEG Stream: "Only The Sky Is Gentle"
MPEG Stream: "Stabbing Through"
MPEG Stream: "Burning Season"
MPEG Stream: "Universe And Self, Sender And Receiver"

SERVILE SECT Stratospheric Passenger (Ecstatic Peace) lp 14.98
This awesome slab of blackened outerspace buzz and drone metal weirdness, originally released as a cd on the amazing Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting, who brough us those killer Gog records, now reissued on vinyl, on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label!
Stratospheric is a fantastically bizarre, and hauntingly beautiful slab of alien black metal. Not sure what else to call it, it's definitely black metal, but it's weirdly blissy and electronic sounding, more like Alcest or Amesoeurs than old school grimnity, but even then, it's still weirder, like it must have been played by robots or insects, or some massive black metal machine assembled beneath the surface of some mysterious moon. You can almost picture some mechanical monstrosity, pieces of human flesh, various organs, somehow built into the machine's inner workings, everything grinding and sparking all in a Herculean effort to produce this glorious droning buzzing blackness. A cloud of black buzz that will eventually drift through space and time swallowing any planets in its path, and extinguishing all life it encounters. Heck, even the cover of the record is the view from some sort of alien lander, looking out and the cold dead ground of some red planet, as if any minute some huge horrible black beast will lurch into view over the horizon, dashing all of our ideas about said planet being uninhabited.
The sound of Servile Sect is epic, and majestic, the guitars glistening sheets of sound, the surface of that sound peppered with bits of electronic shimmer, causing the long drawn out riffery to reflect and refract, tiny little sonic events occurring every second, the surface alive and constantly squirming and changing color, but viewed from afar, it's simply a blown out undulating buzz. Those guitars are digitized and processed, spread into thick smears of warm glowing whir, the riffs barely discernible beneath the constant roar of Servile Sect's sonic swirl
The vocals add just more buzz to the mix, howling and wailing, but stretched into streaks of sonic violence, and drums, assuming there are any, are buried, festering beneath layer after layer of crushing guitar fuzz, emitting noxious rhythms that don't so much blast or pound as they do explode into tiny squalls of still more buzz.
Occasionally, the buzz abates, leaving the guitar to sway lazily, the notes ringing out, the guitars lurking in the distance, but it's never long before the lilting melody is engulfed by a colossal buzzing roar, and the band locks into another extended psychfuzzblackdrone.
Another out of left field immediate AQ black bliss classic.
Fans of the new wave of droned out dreamy metal, black and otherwise: Nadja, Angelic Process, Amesoeurs, Alcest, etc. will dig this, as will dronelords who like their drones heavy and loud and yeah, a bit metallic...
MPEG Stream: "Into The Bloom"
MPEG Stream: "Stratospheric"
MPEG Stream: "Suicide From Verona Rupes"

SERVILE SECT Stratospheric Passenger (Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
From the same label that brought us the amazing Gog records, Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting, comes this bizarre, and hauntingly beautiful slab of alien black metal. Not sure what else to call it, it's definitely black metal, but it's weirdly blissy and electronic sounding, more like Alcest or Amesoeurs than old school grimnity, but even then, it's still weirder, like it must have been played by robots or insects, or some massive black metal machine assembled beneath the surface of some mysterious moon. You can almost picture some mechanical monstrosity, pieces of human flesh, various organs, somehow built into the machine's inner workings, everything grinding and sparking all in a Herculean effort to produce this glorious droning buzzing blackness. A cloud of black buzz that will eventually drift through space and time swallowing any planets in its path, and extinguishing all life it encounters. Heck, even the cover of the record is the view from some sort of alien lander, looking out and the cold dead ground of some red planet, as if any minute some huge horrible black beast will lurch into view over the horizon, dashing all of our ideas about said planet being uninhabited.
The sound of Servile Sect is epic, and majestic, the guitars glistening sheets of sound, the surface of that sound peppered with bits of electronic shimmer, causing the long drawn out riffery to reflect and refract, tiny little sonic events occurring every second, the surface alive and constantly squirming and changing color, but viewed from afar, it's simply a blown out undulating buzz. Those guitars are digitized and processed, spread into thick smears of warm glowing whir, the riffs barely discernible beneath the constant roar of Servile Sect's sonic swirl
The vocals add just more buzz to the mix, howling and wailing, but stretched into streaks of sonic violence, and drums, assuming there are any, are buried, festering beneath layer after layer of crushing guitar fuzz, emitting noxious rhythms that don't so much blast or pound as they do explode into tiny squalls of still more buzz.
Occasionally, the buzz abates, leaving the guitar to sway lazily, the notes ringing out, the guitars lurking in the distance, but it's never long before the lilting melody is engulfed by a colossal buzzing roar, and the band locks into another extended psychfuzzblackdrone.
Another out of left field immediate AQ black bliss classic.
Fans of the new wave of droned out dreamy metal, black and otherwise: Nadja, Angelic Process, Ameseours, Alcest, etc. will dig this, as will dronelords who like their drones heavy and loud and yeah, a bit metallic...
MPEG Stream: "Into The Bloom"
MPEG Stream: "Stratospheric"
MPEG Stream: "Suicide From Verona Rupes"

SERVILE SECT Svrrender (King Of The Monsters) lp 13.98
The latest transmission from this alien psychedelic black metal duo, and when we first got this in, we were convinced we had already reviewed this before. And then realized that it was in fact, a vinyl reissue of the long out of print cassette that was originally released on Handmade Birds as a companion to Servile Sect's Trvth record, but it was something else, something more, and then it hit us, the new cover art was what was so similar, and then we realized, it's actually the EXACT same painting as the cover of the Lumerians' Transmallinia record. Doh! What can you do? It's obvious why both bands picked it, cuz it's a seriously bad ass painting by famous outsider artist Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, all cosmic and swirled greens and yellows, and in some weird way, it suits both bands. In the case of Servile Sect, it definitely taps into their weird alien vibe, and their subtle psychedelic undertones, both of which are present throughout Surrender. Here's what we had to say about the cassette version when we first reviewed it earlier this year:
Released as a companion to the group's recent Trvth record, Svrrender acts perfectly as an extension of Trvth, building on the band's sprawling blackened psychedelia and scorched blackbuzz drones. The record opens with sheets of thick buzzing synths, and swirling electronics, all over strange murky pulses, and laced with strange disembodied voices, before launching into a full bore blast of traditional sounding black metal fury, huge thick squalls of barbed riffage, programmed beats blasting wildly through the murk, the vocals a sick, raspy demonic croak, a blur of chaotic blackness, that manages to meld traditional BM tropes to something much more mysterious and experimental, the group infusing the seemingly traditional sound with all manner of unlikely texture and subtle warped FX. Definitely grim enough for unadventurous metalheads, but as this is Servile Sect, the sound soon shifts to something much more spacey and droned out, total psychedelic cosmic drift, thick undulating swells of crumbling rumbles and sci-fi shimmer, wrapped around chantlike vox and smeared layers and textures, and over the course of the five songs on the A side, the sound veers from that droned out celestial thrum to furious churning black metal blasts and back again, the whole side a dizzying twisted black/drone juggernaut.
The flipside is just as heavy, but in a completely different manner, taking the band's knack from blackened soundscaping, and applying it to a blurred, lumbering ultradoom, sort of SUNNO))) like in its slo-mo glacial heft, but the band's grim psychedelic dirgery somehow manages to take that sound and push it even further, the guitars grinding (or are they synths) and rumbling, streaks of spacey FX and glitched out electronics, not to mention heavily effected vox, swirl above whorls of feedback, and smeared synths, all anchored by a deathmarch ultradoom pound, a caveman creep wreathed in thick downtuned rumble and thrum, super hypnotic and heavy, but also caustic and abject and fucking massive sounding, not to mention somehow totally spacey and psychedelic. Easily some of the best stuff we've heard from these guys.
And like the tape version, this vinyl is also limited to so grab one quick before they're gone!

SERVILE SECT Svrrender (Handmade Birds) cassette 8.98
Released as a cassette-only companion to the group's recent Trvth record, also released on Handmade Birds, Svrrender acts perfectly as an extension of Trvth, building on the band's sprawling blackened psychedelia and scorched blackbuzz drones. The record opens with sheets of thick buzzing synths, and swirling electronics, all over strange murky pulses, and laced with strange disembodied voices, before launching into a full bore blast of traditional sounding black metal fury, huge thick squalls of barbed riffage, programmed beats blasting wildly through the murk, the vocals a sick, raspy demonic croak, a blur of chaotic blackness, that manages to meld traditional BM tropes to something much more mysterious and experimental, the group infusing the seemingly traditional sound with all manner of unlikely texture and subtle warped FX. Definitely grim enough for unadventurous metalheads, but as this is Servile Sect, the sound soon shifts to something much more spacey and droned out, total psychedelic cosmic drift, thick undulating swells of crumbling rumbles and sci-fi shimmer, wrapped around chantlike vox and smeared layers and textures, and over the course of the five songs on the A side, the sound veers from that droned out celestial thrum to furious churning black metal blasts and back again, the whole side a dizzying twisted black/drone juggernaut.
The flipside is just as heavy, but in a completely different manner, taking the band's knack from blackened soundscaping, and applying it to a blurred, lumbering ultradoom, sort of SUNNO))) like in its slo-mo glacial heft, but the band's grim psychedelic dirgery somehow manages to take that sound and push it even further, the guitars grinding (or are they synths) and rumbling, streaks of spacey FX and glitched out electronics, not to mention heavily effected vox, swirl above whorls of feedback, and smeared synths, all anchored by a deathmarch ultradoom pound, a caveman creep wreathed in thick downtuned rumble and thrum, super hypnotic and heavy, but also caustic and abject and fucking massive sounding, not to mention somehow totally spacey and psychedelic. Easily some of the best stuff we've heard from these guys, which means you best get one quick, cuz this is LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!

SERVILE SECT TRVTH (Handmade Birds) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
How does he do it? R. Loren of Pyramids, Sailors With Wax Wings and White Moth launched his new vinyl only label mere months ago, and already has a catalog that puts most labels who have been up and running for years to shame, releases from Blut Aus Nord, Celestiial, His Name Is Alive, Key, Evan Caminiti, Der Blutharsch (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), with forthcoming releases from Black Boned Angel, Blood Of The Black Owl, Circle Of Ouroborus, Human Quena Orchestra, Crooked Necks, Jasper TX, Our Love Will Destroy The World, Lovesliescrushing, Panopticon, Sutekh Hexen, Locrian, White Ring, Tenhornedbeast and TONS more, a mix of reissues and brand new records, and it wouldn't be so bad if everything wasn't so good, but if you're like us, you want them ALL.
Including this, a brand new release from black metal psych drone duo Servile Sect, formerly of Arizona but now split up with one member in Humbolt, the other in NYC, but the distance doesn't seem to have made much of a difference, with TRVTH taking up right where their last full length left off, a sprawling expanse of drugged out blackened psychedelia, programmed rhythms, buzzing lumbering dirges, thick guitars blurred into washed out streaks, harsh vokills that seem to hover wraith like within ever swirling clouds of dark effects and slowed down riffage, the sound shifts from blurred murk, to smoldering black effulgence, from grinding churning crunch to hazy abstract drift, SS's version of black metal less about the blast and buzz, and more about the vibe, the sound, the tone, the texture, the ambience, the mood, the feel, the duo crouched behind their duct tape adorned synths, a holy mountain of gear, hiding these alchemists as they unfurl sprawling soundscapes equal part haunting blackness, and druggy dreamy shimmer, each grim missive a controlled chaos of black hole dopesmoke drift and blackened ritualistic ur-drone buzz.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!

SESAME STREET Old School Vol. 1 (E1 Entertainment) 3cd 22.00
Yeah, we're bustin' it out super old school. No joke, the three records in this set were released four decades ago! Each remastered album comes packaged in a cardboard sleeve with its original cover art, and all three are bundled together in a slipcover. We only wish they'd included a booklet of some sort, but alas, 'tis not to be. Oh well, since these Sesame Street treasures have never been previously released on cd, this is still a very welcome reissue! Anyhoo, let us stress that while we're for sure having some warm nostalgic fuzzies, we're definitely not on some irony-laden trip here. Although the show was originally meant for preschoolers, anyone who is young at heart will surely find the music delightful. It's silly and playful and educational, but not vacuously happy nor excessively simple. The television show's musical staff featured some totally exceptional musicians and some totally ace hook-writing composers. Of course, the latter was ideal for the purposes of facilitating the learning of mathematics, language skills, social studies, geography, science, art, and of course music, but it also just makes for a super fun listen! Musical styles run the gamut from straight-laced Welk-ish orchestrations to ragtime follies to banjo jamborees to kicky bass'n'tambourine funkiness and beyond.
The first album from 1970 starts with (what else but) the theme song sung by the original cast of kids, then slips right into a meeting of Gordon (the first "Gordon" Matt Robinson), Susan, Big Bird, and the alphabet (note: this song also appears on the second disc for reasons that become readily apparent). The nineteen songs touch on a well rounded variety of youngster focused subjects, and in true '70s album fashion, The Sesame Street Record works just as well as a single start-to-finish listening experience or broken up into individual tunes. It's definitely the most traditionally educational of the three, but inarguably the standout tracks are Oscar The Grouch's "I Love Trash" and Ernie's "Rubber Duckie".
1974's Big Bird Sings (love the cover!) is next, and despite its title it features fourteen songs not just sung by the giant yellow feathered friend, but also duets with Oscar, Snuffleupagus, Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster and others friends from the neighborhood (including the second "Gordon" Hal Miller). While this record didn't have any obvious hits, it did have a subplot about Big Bird and his poetic endeavors. Think of this one as the Sesame Street sleeper!
1975's Bert & Ernie Sing-Along follows with yes, a sing along! The cast (including "Gordon" #3 Roscoe Orman) all squeeze into the bathroom for the tuneful festivities while Bert is in the tub because as Ernie states "everyone sounds better singing in the bathroom." The twenty one song selections on this album include a mix of Sesame Street originals like "C Is For Cookie", "What's The Name Of That Song?" and "Bats In My Belfry" (yes, it's sung by The Count!), as well as some old standards such as "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" and "Row Your Boat".
With the recent flurry of fine'n'dandy children's albums by contemporary artists such as They Might Be Giants, Jon Langford and Kelly Hogan's Wee Hairy Beasties or Duplex from Vancouver, it's really great to be able to visit (or revisit) some of the O.G. purveyors of the genre. The upstarts come close, but who can hold a candle to the Sesame Street gang?! We have a sneakin' suspicion that these albums were a prime source of inspiration for them as well as for countless other 40-ish (non-kids-related) music artists back in their own formative years. Recommended for young'uns and older'uns too. We can't wait for Volume 2!
PS: And for those of you wondering why we are singling out the Gordons? Well, somewhat puzzlingly, there was never any explanation given for each casting change. Did they think no one would question it? Little Cup sure did!
MPEG Stream: "I Love Trash"
MPEG Stream: "The Number Five"
MPEG Stream: "Y'All Fall Down"
MPEG Stream: "What's The Name Of That Song?"

SET FIRE TO FLAMES Sings Reign Rebuilders (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98
Halfspeed! You Grey Bureaucrat. Something like 6 members of this 13 piece ensemble are part of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and Set Fire To Flames does little to hide their connection to that band, producing the same theatrical crescendos for glide guitars and string quartets, and found spoken word elements backed by dark drones. While this is obviously nothing new, Set Fire To Flames have produced an album that is way better than the last Godspeed album, "Raise Your Skinny Fists..." Definitely for fans who can't get enough of GSYBE!, A Silver Mt. Zion, etc.
RealAudio clip: "track 3"

SET FIRE TO FLAMES Sings Reign Rebuilders (Alien8 Recordings) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Halfspeed! You Grey Bureaucrat. Something like 6 members of this 13 piece ensemble are part of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and Set Fire To Flames does little to hide their connection to Godspeed, with the same theatrical crescendos for glide guitars and string quartets, and found spoken word elements backed by dark drones. While this is obviously nothing new, Set Fire To Flames have produced an album that is way better than the last Godspeed album, "Raise Your Skinny Fists..."

SET FIRE TO FLAMES Telegraphs In Negative / Mouths Trapped In Static (Alien8 Recordings) 2cd 17.98
Cut from the same collectivist French-Canadian cloth as Godspeed You Black Emperor, the thirteen members of Set Fire To Flames take a slightly more experimental approach to creaTING INSTRUMENTALS THAT MAY at times approach the epic scale of GYBE in track length, but occupy a much less theatrical and grandiose territory in scope. "Telegraphs in Negative..." was recorded almost entirely in a collapsing barn, with instrumentation including cello, bass clarinet, guitar, saw, french horn, marimba, glockenspiel, music box, gutted two-track motors, tapes, contact mics and faulty electronics. The barn itself heavily inflects these recordings, as bits of field recordings as well as in the way the recording process captures not just the sounds of the instruments but also their interaction with space and architecture. It makes for a record that's very intimate not neccesarily in an emotional sense, but in the way it involves the listener with a very specific mood, location and group process. Opting for tangents into extended drones, collages and improvisation rather than reaching for epic melodic climaxes, the sound is sparse, crumbling and dark, but not entirely melancholy. Spread over two discs (edited and reconstructed from hours of recordings), it's also a little long to be constantly engaging. But still pretty cool.
MPEG Stream: "And The Birds Are About To Bust Their "
MPEG Stream: "Holy Throat Hiss Tracks To The Sedative Hypnotic"
MPEG Stream: "When Sorrow Shoots Her Darts"

SET FIRE TO FLAMES Telegraphs In Negative/ Mouths Trapped In Static (Alien8 Recordings) 2lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now On Vinyl!
Cut from the same collectivist French-Canadian cloth as Godspeed You Black Emperor, the thirteen members of Set Fire To Flames take a slightly more experimental approach to creaTING INSTRUMENTALS THAT MAY at times approach the epic scale of GYBE in track length, but occupy a much less theatrical and grandiose territory in scope. "Telegraphs in Negative..." was recorded almost entirely in a collapsing barn, with instrumentation including cello, bass clarinet, guitar, saw, french horn, marimba, glockenspiel, music box, gutted two-track motors, tapes, contact mics and faulty electronics. The barn itself heavily inflects these recordings, as bits of field recordings as well as in the way the recording process captures not just the sounds of the instruments but also their interaction with space and architecture. It makes for a record that's very intimate not neccesarily in an emotional sense, but in the way it involves the listener with a very specific mood, location and group process. Opting for tangents into extended drones, collages and improvisation rather than reaching for epic melodic climaxes, the sound is sparse, crumbling and dark, but not entirely melancholy. Spread over two discs (edited and reconstructed from hours of recordings), it's also a little long to be constantly engaging. But still pretty cool.

SETE STAR SEPT / WATCH ME BURN / DOT[.] Yaminabe Holocaust - 3 Way Split (Shifty) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK!!
Killer three way split, two parts Japanese, one part USA. Essential for Sludge doom fanatics, as this features a brand new unreleased track from Japan's mighty, unsung doomlords Dot [.]. Maybe it's the weird spelling, maybe it's the paucity of available material, but Dot [.] are every bit as cool and weird and heavy as Boris or Corrupted and this track proves that once again. But the big surprise here are the two bands we have never heard of before. both amazing, one quite possibly our new favorite band!
Up first are Japanese black thrash outfit Sete Star Sept who spew forth 4 tracks of super downtuned, blackened thrashing grind metal insanity, super low cookie monster growls, furious riffing, massive blown out production, thick swaths of shrieking white noise. Like a killer old school UK crust band super charged and run through some cracked Japanese blackgrind filter. So cool.
But holy fuck, Watch Me Burn just totally and completely knocked us on our asses. So heavy, so weird, so utterly damaged and freaked out. Imagine the Boredoms circa Vision Creation New Sun, mixed with later tripped out trancier spacerock Solar Anus (even though they're American), then imagine that band playing some super schizophrenic what-the-fuck grindcore, with tons of totally unhinged studio weirdness, random snatches of Swedish death metal guitar leads, swirling drifts of acoustic guitar and garbled beats, bizarre ambient stretches peppered with hand drums and guttural vocalizations, abstract percussion super tripped out malfunctioning studio FX, occasional plodding processed death metal chug, super spastic drum machine, bits of slowed down doom groove, weird jangly guitars, super processed slabs of rhythmic interference, blinding super brief blasts of Merzbowian face melting grind and too much other confusional fucked up randomness to even begin describing. Like Soilent Green or Brutal Truth chopped up and reassembled by a very high jungle DJ with two broken turntables. So fucking amazing.
And finally Dot [.], who give us just what we need, an absolutely crushing slow motion stoned doom drone groovescape. Starting out more Church Of Misery than Corrupted, the band sways and swings before stumbling into a druggy glacial lurch, a sick Eyehategod dirge, that crawls and slithers, wrapped in thick peals of feedback, a harsh, rasped super demonic vocal over gloriously murky downtuned sludge. Absolutely essential.
MPEG Stream: SETE STAR SEPT "D-Thred Suicide"
MPEG Stream: WATCH ME BURN "Short Attention Span"
MPEG Stream: DOT [.] "Brind Spot"

SETE, BOLA At The Monterey Jazz Festival (Verve) cd 12.98
'66 live set from famed Brazilian Afro-jazz acoustic guitarist Bola Sete (real name: Djalma de Andrada).

SETE, BOLA Ocean Memories (Samba Moon) 2cd 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Long overdue CD reissue of one of the seminal solo guitar albums -- in any genre -- ever recorded. Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete (Djalma de Andrade) settled on the West Coast in 1959. Throughout the '60s he toured widely with various jazz artists and recorded for such labels as Verve, ABC-Paramount, Fantasy and Columbia. In 1972 he recorded Ocean, a departure so far afield from anything else he'd ever done that Fantasy declined to issue it. In 1975 Fahey purchased the tapes and issued the album on his Takoma label. A second volume drawn from the same sessions was planned but it never materialized. Ocean Memories (issued by Bola's widow, Anne Sete) restores to print the complete Takoma album (CD 1) and the eight previously unissued songs that would have comprised Ocean II (CD 2). I could listen to this music forever -- it's deathless, perfect, ecstatic. It's interesting to compare how different Bola is from Baden Powell and some of his more technically accomplished Brazilian brothers: he's more of a sensualist, a fantasist, and he's looser -- more rock 'n' roll." -- Glenn Jones. The following is a quote from an article John Fahey wrote about Bola Sete in 1976: ""Few living people have had such an enormous influence on my life, my music, my soul, my religion -- you name it -- as has Bola Sete. I first saw him playing -- solo -- in early 1972 at David Allen's Boarding House in San Francisco. That night, I was high on drugs as I had been for several years, and -- as also had been the case for years -- I felt that I was one isolated example of an experimental species that God had forgotten about (I was wrong here). I felt I had been -- and was still -- walking and talking among shadows: 'People' who had no depth, who were not related to themselves, did not know anything about themselves -- endless, phony, shadow-people. And I was one of them. Bola played for about 45 minutes and grimaced and grunted through the whole set. Something was wrong. He couldn't 'get it out.' I knew how he felt, and I understood. Something was wrong. I was intrigued by his obvious frustration having felt that way myself almost all my life. The performance had been mediocre so far. However, the audience gave him a long ovation, and he reluctantly got up and started to play an encore, still looking frustrated, impotent, mad, seething. I knew that feeling well. But then suddenly he got hot. He got so cooking, he played song after song for another 45 minutes, forgetting (or not caring) that he was doing an encore, playing many of the same songs he had just played. My first impression that night, as I told a friend at the time, was this: Here is a man who has lived through hell and somehow miraculously got out of it. I went back to the Boarding House several times that week. I found that Bola's sets have an interesting 'plot.' They all begin and end with songs whose emotional contour is pretty, happy, light, peaceful, or ecstatic. But after the first two or three songs, the terrain gets rougher and darker, heavier and weirder. By the middle of his set, Bola is giving you pictures of hell, memories of perdition, demonic music. But then Bola gradually lightens up the spectrum of feeling and leads you out of the cave and into the sunlight, and life is paradise. Only now, one is so changed that one is temporarily aware that life really is paradise after all, the world is an ocean, etc. It is like a breath from the 19th Century or before; a breeze from times when people had passion and significance and were not mere shadows. It is as though something has finally changed. I talked to Bola's wife (I was too shaken to speak to him at the time). 'How does he keep from going crazy,' I asked her, 'when he has so much energy and tension? You can hear it in his music -- a lot of passion and tension. How did he get out of hell?' ('How can I get out of hell?' That's what I really wanted to know.) His music is so good it's eerie -- eerie because it comes from a different time, a different place, when men felt different things that we can no longer love or experience except as an echo or phantom in the best of art works. Most of Bola's music is eclectic and nongeneric. Take a song like 'Black Mommy.' Now, if you didn't know anything about Bola . . . what musical tradition, period, or era would you guess this song came from? Tasmania? Easter Island? Next door? It comes from everywhere and nowhere. The subconscious really is universal. Bola Sete's music is the best reminder of this that I have ever heard. He is a man of great spirit and great depth. Bola plays percussively, vertically, with a very heavy and insistent thumb. His playing is very masculine (the word is an anachronisism). He plays erratically and restlessly like Boll Weavil Jackson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, or Bill Monroe. But he also has inner peace and breadth . . . rhythm and dynamics are constantly changing. Bola's playing gives the impression (and like my playing it is a false impression) of being very improvisatory. His songs, on the other hand, tend to be very short and terse (unlike mine), without undue repetition. But like me, he tries to recreate each song each time he plays it, which is in effect to destroy it. . . . The only elements of a song, which change from one performance to the next, are the number of repetitions of each idea. The order of the ideas stays pretty much the same. But the speed and intensity at which they are played may vary; if Bola doesn't like the room he is playing in, or the people he is playing for, he tends to play lousy. I do the same. We both play the way we feel, but within a rigid structure. We play that way because we have to -- we can't do anything else. God help us." -- John Fahey, from the article "Bola Sete, The Nature of Infinity, And John Fahey," Guitar Player, Febuary 1976.

SETE, BOLA Shambhala Moon (Samba Moon) cd 14.98
Reissue of a 1985 recording by Brazilian new age / jazz guitarist Bola Sete. Pleasant soft fingerpicking. Plays well at those little tourist shops in sleepy beach communities. Produced by George Winston.
RealAudio clip: "The Sun Pours Through The Darkness Gently, Gently"

SETH Divine X (Osmose Productions) cd 14.98
I think French people have a different idea of what is scary. Take for example the French black metal band Seth. Makes you wonder if there are other French black metal bands called Todd, or Josh, or Erik, or Simon. Who knows? How about these song titles: 'Addicted To Psychotropic Angeldust' or 'Into The Spheres Of Spirtuality' or 'The Sons Of Seth'. Not so scary. But Seth do play some mean and -very- scary black metal. Fast and furious, with a really strange production (almost industrial at times) and some really weird playing/parts that make Seth stand out from their black metal contemporaries. Definitely fits comfortably next to your Immortal, Emperor, and Marduk records.
RealAudio clip: "Evil-X"
RealAudio clip: "The Sons Of Seth"

SETHERIAL Death Triumphant (Candlelight) cd 12.98

MPEG Stream: "The Limbo Of Insanity"
MPEG Stream: "Death Triumphant"

SETHERIAL Endtime Divine (Regain) cd 12.98

MPEG Stream: "Crimson Manifestation"
MPEG Stream: "The Underworld"

SETI-X Scrambles Of Earth (Seeland) cd 13.98
If you're anything like us, you've always been fascinated by aliens and outerspace and all that science (fiction?) stuff, X-Files, In Search Of, Star Trek, Cosmos, art, TV, movies, magazines, with every move forward, every discovery, every shuttle launch, every planned mission to Mars, the world comes on step close to becoming what humans once only dreamed of, and wrote about.
One of those epochal science moments, happened in 1977, when we launched a gold record into space, encoded on it were all the various things that make humans human, music, and math, voices, and languages, recordings of heartbeats, whatever scientists could think of that might help an alien species that discovered the record be able to understand and maybe communicate back (assuming they had turntables!).
Similarly, we've always been a bit obsessed with SETI, the Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence project, a group who monitors the sky for communications from space, and perhaps from alien beings. In all the time SETI has been active, they have not received a single confirmed alien transmission. Which brings us to the similarly named SETI-X, Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence in Exile program, who supposedly received transmissions, that were believed to REMIXES (!) of those records we sent into space. SETI-X meticulously reconstructed these very sound files here from the various transmissions, bits and fragments, snippets and shards of sound. Scientists were of course skeptical, so SETI-X set out to contact the micronation of Sealand, who were well known for supporting controversial and radical science, might step in to help, but a typo when searching in Google resulted in them contacting Seeland Records, Negativland's record label, and they were of course more than willing... now wait a minute...
So yeah, this incredible 'scientific document' is in fact absolutely and certainly alien remixes, NOT some elaborate and brilliantly conceived and executed musical art hoax from a band who exists to fool the foolish. The sounds begin with a twisted greeting, which then explodes in a grinding squall of distortion only to unveil a warped bit of classical music, and the greeting we originally sent skyward, and from there on out, Scrambles Of Earth is a dizzying assemblage of collaged sound, beats and rhythms, strange loops, disembodied voices, textures and drones and truncated melodies, twisted bits of pop, slowed down classical music, voice in many languages, snippets of various musics, usually wrapped around weird voices and glitched out electronics, lots of hiss and buzz, lush swells, super blown out corrosive crunch, gorgeous hypnotic bits of kosmische electronics, all manner of mysterious production, squalls of competing sounds sweeping back and forth through the stereo field, bits of jazz, blues, calypso, and so many voices, surprisingly, it's a really great listen, flowing like some twisted sonic travelogue, as if this is how the aliens see us, based on how we represented ourselves. Cool and strange. Oh, and absolutely real.
Includes extensive liner notes, with a history of the Seti-X program, a description of each track, lots of photos and diagrams, oh and did we mention that this was released on Negativland's label Seeland, but is not Negativland, but in fact actual alien remixes? Good.
MPEG Stream: "Pulsar Plus"
MPEG Stream: "Thin Dark Night"
MPEG Stream: "Ill-Tempered Wedding"
MPEG Stream: "Rushing Streams"
MPEG Stream: "Fifth Dysphony"
MPEG Stream: "Interleave"

SEVEN MILE JOURNEY The Metamorphorsis Project (Pumpkin Seeds In The Sand) cd 11.98
Ambient post rock bands are a dime a dozen these days, and bands who sound more like Godspeed that Godspeed ever did at this point probably outweigh the legions of Neur-Isis clones. But every once in a while, bands manage to remind us just why we fell in love with that sound in the first place. Danish quartet Seven Mile Journey definitely take that sound to whole 'nother level, brooding, epic, cinematic, like post rock without the rock, a sort of abstract filmic chamber music constructed from rock instrumentation.
Slow building, slow burning, so tense and intense, moody and mysterious. The drums are kept to a minimum much of the time, more for propulsion and flourish than actual beat making, but when the drums do come in, they come in hard and then drive the song, while the other instruments weave lush tapestries of sound, minor key swells, lilting overcast melodies, buzzing strings, simple piano parts draped over keening moaning minimal soundscapes, jangly guitars drifting amidst warm whirring lowercase drones, in some cases the songs build to incredible climaxes, like staring into the sun, everything blinding and chaotic and exploding like some sonic supernova, others just smolder, glowing from within, never quite easing up on the built up tension.
Fans of the usual post rock culprits - Godspeed, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky - will have very likely just found their new favorite bands, although for us, the band are at their best when they mix it up, removing the drums, spreading out the sound into impossibly emotional and moving imaginary soundtracks, ratcheting up the tension, building and building and building. Epic, transcendent and beautifully cathartic.
MPEG Stream: "Theme For The Elthenbury Massacre"
MPEG Stream: "The Catharsis Session"

SEVEN SISTERS OF SLEEP s/t (Southern Lord) cd 12.98

SEVEN THAT SPELLS Black OM Rising (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 26.00

SEVEN THAT SPELLS + KAWABATA MAKOTO Cosmoerotic Dialogue With Lucifer (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 17.98

SEVEN THAT SPELLS + MAKOTO KAWABATA The Men from Dystopia (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 16.98
*Acid Mothers Temple Alert*
Seven That Spells is a psych rock outfit from Croatia. But they sound a heckuva lot like Japanese kraut-channellers Acid Mothers Temple. And guess what? They've got AMT guitar guru Makoto Kawabata on hand as a special guest! He obviously feels right at home jamming with these Croatian freaks, together stirring up billowing smoke-clouds of droning space rock, the babbled and chanted vocals giving this the feel of some sort of medieval folk ritual, zapped with swirling electronic FX. And when it comes time for the guitar solo (and that time comes often) Kawabata and co. hold nothin' back. Spaced OUUUUUUT maaaaaan.
Packaging is sorta swank: the cd rests on a foam numb affixed to the inside of a heavy-duty gatefold kind of sleeve, adorned with busty, naked hippie ladies (again, in the Acid Mothers Temple tradition!).
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 3"

SEVEN, LARY Rotation Cassette (The Tapeworm) cassette 7.98
Latest strange sonic missive from aQ beloved UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one from a multi media artist/musician/filmmaker/soundscaper named Lary Seven, who most of us here had never heard of, but who we discovered is a bit of a NYC fixture, a legendarily cantankerous maker of art, both audial and visual, there's very little in the way of details about the sounds here, other than they were recorded live in 2001 and 2004 in different spaces in New York. The first track is a gorgeous bit of looped minimal buzzing, darkly rhythmic, and strangely hypnotic, quiet enough that you can still hear the conversations in the room, which makes for a strange collage of random voices, textured electronic crunch and stuttering blurred glitch, impossible to determine the sound source, but it does seem to essentially be a collection of whirs and hums, clicks and chirps, very machinelike and robotic, like an ungrounded speaker or an instrument with the cable just barely plugged into the jack, creating a strange array of fluctuating statics, which are then sculpted into something that sounds a bit like a way more lo-fi home brewed Raster-Noton recording.
The second side / set again features the room sound, footsteps, voices, throat clearing, sneezes, various scrapes and shuffles, until finally, Seven introduces some electrical buzz, which then undulates, pulses and thrums, extremely minimal, lushly layered but in the context of a live performance in a big room, almost like a symphony of appliance hum, eventually, Seven does crank up the voltage, creating another framework of skeletal rhythmic skitter, the electronic fields swirling around a dark, throbbing industrial thud, like some sort of weirdo mad scientist primitive house music, being performed with an array of malfunctioning Tesla coils. Again, pretty dang cool, and another weird and wonderful set of sounds to add to the Tapeworm's twisted canon.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, with cover art by Savage Pencil (see more SavX art and various other Tapeworm cover art in the Art Of Worms book, that's reviewed elsewhere on this week's list!).

SEVENTEEN EVERGREEN Life Embarasses Me On Planet Earth (Pacific Radio Fire) cd 12.98

SEVENTEEN EVERGREEN Life Embarasses Me On Planet Earth (Pacific Radio Fire) lp 14.98

SEVENTH SONS Raga (4 A.M. at Frank's) (ESP-Disk) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SEVERED HEADS Adenoids 1977-1985 (Vinyl On Demand) 5lp 149.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Anyone familiar with the Vinyl On Demand label is probably well aware of how utterly amazing their releases are, how well researched, gorgeously packaged, and of course how limited and difficult to track down. We managed to get three titles, all of them amazing, we only have one copy of each, and wanted to give some of our mailorder folks a shot and snagging one of these. So a brief description follows, and we only have a single copy so first come first served.
Another collection of rarities unearthed by VoD, all of the earliest recorded material from the legendary Severed Heads, recorded between 1977 and 1981, as well as some unreleased bonus material from 83-85. Five lps, housed in printed hand numbered sleeves, pressed on thick vinyl, all in a gorgeous printed embossed box.
WE HAVE ONLY ONE COPY!!

SEVERIN, STEVEN Codex Astra: Circles Of Silver (Erototox Decodings) cd ep 13.98
Circles Of Silver opens Steven Severin's four-part limited edition Codex Astra cd series based on quotations by the infamous Aleister Crowley. On the inside of the digipak is inscribed, "I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning." Although a familiarity with the occult figure and his writings may offer the listener some insight into the former Banshee's inspirations for these recordings, it does not appear to be a prerequisite to be able to listen to (and enjoy) these instrumental compositions. A penchant for well-crafted drone music might be just as handy!
Creeping clouds of smotherous tones fill every crevice while vaporous hisses drift over top. A somber, beautiful 17-minute aural shroud that's sure to pique the interest of dronescape lovers far and wide.
FYI: The second volume of Codex Astra titled Hours Of Gold, the third Idols Of Glass, and the fourth Wand Of Flame will follow shortly. Each volume will be a limited cd pressing of 777. So be sure to get them while you can!
Note to those who prefer records to cds: the four volumes will eventually be compiled and re-released on vinyl as Codex Astra: ABRAHADABRA (release date tba).
MPEG Stream: "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Part 2"

SEVERIN, STEVEN Codex Astra: Hours Of Gold (Erototox Decodings) cd 13.98
Steven Severin's Codex Astra odyssey continues with Hours Of Gold. The compositions were inspired by the words of Aleister Crowley. On the inside of this release is inscribed "Ordinary mortality is only for ordinary people." The all too fleeting 18-minute ep features two tracks of sumptuous dronescape. The first offers some light, glistening with an echoey underwater feel. The second stand in marked contrast as it closes in like a creeping, fog-drenched shadowy form. A lingering ghostly roar. Beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Part 2"

SEWER GODDESS Disciples Of Shit (Black Plague) cd 9.98
Sadly, rock has always been a bit of a boy's club. Sure most things are, but rock especially. And it only gets worse as you move toward the heavier and darker side of the sonic spectrum, metal, industrial, noise, women are few and far between. That's not to say there aren't woman making serious noise in those realms, there most definitely are, maybe none more fearsome than Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose who traffics in some of the darkest, heaviest, filthiest sludge, blackened doom and abstract industrial we've heard, and whose particular brand of abject blackened noise is on full display here, a collection of various live performances over the years 2009-2010, and finds Rose, backed up by a full band, and engaging in some seriously harrowing soundmaking.
The opening track begins all thick bass buzz and keening feedback, soon industrial percussion emerges, and Rose's echo drenched wail, the bass buzz coalescing into sludgey dirgey riffage, while all around it guitars and samplers and effects fill the blackened sky with all manner of blackly psychedelic noise, the sound lumbers and lurches, before shifting gears in a flurry of horror movie shrieks, becoming more of a blackdrone, all layered hiss and skree and rumble, chaotic but weirdly hypnotic. The second track, the relatively brief "We Ate Their Eyes", introduces more of a groove, albeit just barely, more like a monstrous dirge, rhythmic and grimly propulsive, buried beneath an avalanche of shrieked vox and caustic low end crumble, before giving way to "Mother Agony" that channels Laibach and Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten into a Swans like creep, all hazy and washed out, the sound laced with streaks of high end, of sonar like pings, of gristly crunch and super distorted buzz, there's a definite Wolf Eyes vibe too, and then the vocals swoop back in, hysterical and terrifying, curdled with effects, it manages to be the most mesmerizingly hypnotic track here, while still retaining an unhinged mania.
The epic "Chained To The Cage Of Existence / A Lifeless Dreaming" seems to be the centerpiece here clocking in at 16+ minutes, and again begins as a blackened rumble, all buzz and blur, peppered with strange industrial clanks and clunks, before erupting into another grinding dirge, Rose's haunting deathlike vox adding a serious creep factor, the song a droned out rift, that seems like it might go on like that forever, until it splinters suddenly into a full on drum driven chunk of blackened noise metal crush, lurching, lumbering, shrieks and atonal riffage nestled amidst swells of black buzz and pounding rhythms and lots of feedback, before slipping right back into a sonic death march that continues until the end of the track, loping and minimal, laced with some cool metallic melodies, again slathered in feedback, and Rose's vox, that here remind us of the hysterical shrieks of black metal horde Bethlehem. And then finally, "Slavepiece" finishes things off, the most metal of the bunch, but sounding like it was recorded on a wax cylinder, the sound brittle and blown out, the band locked into a super in-the-red, feedback drenched riff heavy dirge, that sounds like an even more unhinged take on Brainbombs / No Balls. Fucking awesome, but most definitely only for the iron eared.
Fans of other blackened filth like Gnaw Their Tongues, Aderlating, Demonologists, Gorgontongue, and Hallowed Butchery as well as classic industrial / noise / blacknoise weirdness will be in heaven...
MPEG Stream: "Condemned Is The Unborn One"
MPEG Stream: "We Ate Their Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "Slavepiece"

SEWER GODDESS Verdigris (Baseborn) 7" 8.98
Elsewhere on this week's list (in fact, probably right above this review) you'll find the Disciples Of Shit cd, a collection of live recordings from blackened industrial noisescaper Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose, a seriously brutal, but blackly beautiful collection of caustic live performances. Now that you know what Rose is capable of on stage, here's a glimpse of what she can do in the studio, and as you might expect, it's not to far removed, if anything, it's darker, heavier and LOUDER. But otherwise the same sort of droned out industrial crush, a bleak cinematic blackness that definitely reminds us of Gnaw Their Tongues, lots of industrial clank and clatter, a keening distant high end tone that seems to drift atop monstrous hissed vokills and streaks of blackened sound, the long stretches of buzz and crush infused with mysterious melodies.
The flipside is more riffy and dirgey, with some seriously creepy (and weirdly sexy) whispered vox, the buzz thick and corrosive, all tethered to a lurching mechanical rhythm, all within thick clouds of hiss and hum and whir, the vibe moody and murky and very soundtracky, but still bleak and menacing and seriously harrowing, shades of Wolf Eyes too, but the more we here from Sewer Goddess, the more we're beginning to think she really sounds like nobody else.
SUPER LIMITED, comes in a cool silkscreened jacket with a printed fold out insert.

SEX CHURCH Growing Over (Load) cd 16.98
When we first heard about a band called Sex Church on Load Records, we were pretty much expecting a wild costumed troupe spitting out gouts of speaker shredding cacophony and grinding metallic noise, and while there is a certain amount of noise and cacophony going on here, these guys traffic in something wholly different, a gloomy post punky sort of downer pop (much like Daily Life, who also had a record on Load), all clanging minor key chords, pounding dirgey rhythms and buzzing swirling synths, the opening track sounds like a slightly noisier take on some lost Joy Division live jam, or some classic goth group revved up and supercharged. And then when the vocals finally kick in, all deep and dramatic, wreathed in echo and delay, the mood grows dark and doomy, the drums pounding out a tribal rhythm, the bass lurching and lumbering in throbs and thrums, the sound building to explosive psychedelic crescendos before slipping back into slithery deathrock grooves or loping postpunk crunch. Fans of outfits like Naked On The Vague, Crystal Stilts, Total Control, Soft Moon and the like should go apeshit for these guys, and while they definitely borrow heavily from the gloom/goth classics, think Kommunity FK, the Mission UK, Birthday Party, Sisters Of Mercy, Wipers, Scientists, Bauhaus, Fields Of The Nephilim, once those sounds are filtered through a more noise rock / post punk aesthetic, it ends up pretty heavy, hooky, noisy, darkly poppy and sorta irresistible.
MPEG Stream: "Put Away"
MPEG Stream: "Waking Up"
MPEG Stream: "Dull Light"
MPEG Stream: "Bleed Me"

SEX CHURCH Growing Over (Load) lp 16.98
When we first heard about a band called Sex Church on Load Records, we were pretty much expecting a wild costumed troupe spitting out gouts of speaker shredding cacophony and grinding metallic noise, and while there is a certain amount of noise and cacophony going on here, these guys traffic in something wholly different, a gloomy post punky sort of downer pop (much like Daily Life, who also had a record on Load), all clanging minor key chords, pounding dirgey rhythms and buzzing swirling synths, the opening track sounds like a slightly noisier take on some lost Joy Division live jam, or some classic goth group revved up and supercharged. And then when the vocals finally kick in, all deep and dramatic, wreathed in echo and delay, the mood grows dark and doomy, the drums pounding out a tribal rhythm, the bass lurching and lumbering in throbs and thrums, the sound building to explosive psychedelic crescendos before slipping back into slithery deathrock grooves or loping postpunk crunch. Fans of outfits like Naked On The Vague, Crystal Stilts, Total Control, Soft Moon and the like should go apeshit for these guys, and while they definitely borrow heavily from the gloom/goth classics, think Kommunity FK, the Mission UK, Birthday Party, Sisters Of Mercy, Wipers, Scientists, Bauhaus, Fields Of The Nephilim, once those sounds are filtered through a more noise rock / post punk aesthetic, it ends up pretty heavy, hooky, noisy, darkly poppy and sorta irresistible.
MPEG Stream: "Put Away"
MPEG Stream: "Waking Up"
MPEG Stream: "Dull Light"
MPEG Stream: "Bleed Me"

SEX PISTOLS Never Mind The Filthy Lucre, Here's The... (Suck My Filthy Dot Com...) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"We Don't Care" The Sex Pistols in San Francisco Jan 14, 1978 a one hour special with highlights from the winterland concert (their final date) plus the KSAN Radio interview.
RealAudio clip: "Radio Interview"
RealAudio clip: "Pretty Vacant"

SEX WORKER The Labor Of Love (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98

SEX WORKER Waving Goodbye (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
The best way we can think of to describe Sex Worker, the solo project of Daniel from Mi Ami, is like a lo-fi, lysergic pop Prince, the music is minimal and electronic, slipping from James Ferraro like warped tropical loopscapes, to super minimal dubbed out house, to eighties disco by way of Ariel Pink, to lo-fi 4-track electro, the perfect back up tracks for Daniel's sexy crooned falsetto vox, but there's more to Sex Worker than faux soul, shit gets pretty fucked up throughout.
Sure, much of the record is spent slithery sexily through dimly lit neon soaked eighties nightclubs, crooning in dark basement underground discos, and speeding along empty roads with tinted windows and the top down, but the sound definitely gets weirder than all that, brooding and ominous and almost sci-fi here and there, super distorted and blown out elsewhere, the vocals an anguished howl over buried beats and warped looped melodies, loopy squelchy playful electronic skitter butted up against, skittery, stuttering almost skipping sounding soundscapes of warped FX drenched buzz and warbly glitched out crunch, before finally settling back down for the final 10 minute workout, "Honeymoon Babylon", haunting and electronic and minimal, the beats crumbling and distorted, laced with ghost like melodies, and all sorts of creepy effects and twisted production, and after a brief bit of falsetto crooning, the song devolves into an awesomely fractured futuristic electro jam, all droney and woozy and seriously druggy and psychedelic.
MPEG Stream: "Tough Love"
MPEG Stream: "Rhythm Of The Night"

SEXSMITH, RON Blue Boy (Interscope / spinART) cd 15.98
If you have a particular penchant for balladry that has the power to move you to tears, please do yourself a favor and check out the wonderful Canadian singer/songwriter Ron Sexsmith! Highly lauded by critics and notable fellow songwriters - Elvis Costello, John Hiatt and Paul McCartney to name a few - but criminally underappreciated on this side of the border. Often sounding as though he's on the brink of being crushed under the weight of his melancholia, he's reached his fifth finely crafted album of brooding sincerity. This time around, he's got Steve Earle in the producer's seat. Now, don't get me wrong, this music isn't a complete downer. No, not so! Tempo-wise, he does perk things up a bit from time to time - heck, some of the melodies are positively bouyant - but his low, plaintive vocals remain an anchor to the wistful woes. Mr. Sexsmith's composing pen has also been busy co-writing songs with the likes of Neko Case and Glenn Tilbrook (of Squeeze), performing duets with Ms Case and Jules Shear, and he's even had a song covered by... Rod Stewart! As we've mentioned before, definitely for fans of quality songwriting particularly that of Nick Drake, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley and maybe even a tad of Roy Orbison and Chet Baker.
RealAudio clip: "Foolproof"
RealAudio clip: "Thumbelina Farewell"

SEXSMITH, RON s/t (Interscope) cd 12.98
Canadian loner Ron Sexsmith is a master of the melancholic. Beautiful, subdued songs that'll leave you with a lingering cloud of woe. You may already know his voice from the songs he co-wrote and sang with Neko Case on her 'Furnace Room Lullaby' album. Definitely for extra-downer fans of Rufus Wainwright, Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley.