The Mighty Blowhole - Here the Sun + Moon Do Battle (2012)

After dragging ass for over 6 years (...16 if you count when some of these tunes were originally birthed), the debut Mighty Blowhole album is available for your free downloading pleasure. 

Bass-centric, analog delay-sodden, trip-hoppity, instrumental post-rock...

 

Track listing:

1. Space Fury
2. As the Rapt Seraph That Adores and Burns
3. At the Bazaar
4. In the Cave of Sex
5. The Masked Dyer
6. Dripping, Pouring... Drowning (A Sketch)
7. Chase, No Straighter
8. Office Party
9. As She Came
10. The Night Naphthaline Magda Rose from Her Grave
11. You Are All Tigers
12. O Kali, Glorious and Terrible (A Portrait)
13. These Hermetic Fields
14. As the Reprised Seraph...

Guest musicians featured are John Brocato (8, 10), Andrew Hamiter (9, 11) + Victor Wilson (3), all of whom provided some truly excellent guitarwork that I'd've never come up with... And oldest + dearest pal Dave Sims was cool enough to let me use his mixing suite + his ears... thanks all around, fellers!

DOWNLOAD IT HERE!

Best Music of 2011 ...so far...

(There's a few links below to click on, if you wanna find out more or hear some stuff...)

Administration Shock Him - 39:03 (blissed out post-rock)
The Atomic Bitchwax - The Local Fuzz (one excellent long-ass stoner-rock riff-a-thon)
Cave - Neverendless (weird + krautrocky)
Charts and Maps - Dead Horse (crazy time-signatures + saxophone-infused math-y post-rock)
Clouds as Oceans - Tides (some dreamy instrumental post-metal with lots of shoegazer-y washes of sound)
Danava - Hemisphere of Shadows (sooooo full of crazy-insane riffs... 70's-worshippin' stoner metal at its finest)

Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light (intense + introspective spaghetti-western metal)
Empire Express - Valleyland (excellent filmic post-rock)
Eternal Tapestry - Beyond the 4th Door (kooky space rock - like Hawkwind trying to play Meddle-era Floyd)
Felipe Arcazas - Induction to the Subconscious (desert rock very reminiscent of some of Brant Bjork's solo stuff... tasty guitarij)
Fire Spoken by the Buffalo - Hiatus (intense guitar-heavy post-rock)
Garage a Trois - Always Be Happy, But Stay Evil (freaky-ass post-rock meets jazz... with vibraphones! And the same drummer as Critters Buggin, if you're old like me...)

Giants - s/t (guitar-driven post-rock with some very pretty moments)
Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the Harvest (absolutely wonderful strippt-down American roots music... Thoroughly recommended!)
Grails - Deep Politics (some of the best trance-inducing space rock ever...)
Long Distance Calling - s/t (amazing post-metal, with top-notch bass + drumwerks; even the songs with vocals are good...)
Lunar Dunes - Galaxsea (future-retro space jazz... this'll be the music playing in the waiting room for your robodoctor in a coupla years)
Mastodon - The Hunter (...it's less proggy than the last one; more heavy, shorter songs... good stuff)

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (typical Mogwai, with epic highs + tender lulls + bashing, crashing, angelic choruses of layered + effected guitars... some truly apotheotic stuff, esp live)
Psychic Ills - Hazed Dream (space rock done right... loads of delay, reverb, sorta-tribal toms... downright psychedelic from git to go)
Radar Men from the Moon - Intergalactic Dada + Space Trombones (instrumental Danish band with a sound that lands somewhere near classic Kyuss; bounces from heavy to brokedown in the best ways)
Riding the Diplodoc - Dilettantes Like Lions (instrumental math-rock at its most frantically spastic...)
Russian Circles - Empros (a departure of sorts, more bass-heavy - + the bass more fuzzy - than previous releases; still a great album, but with the band accessing a bit more noise than in the past, at least on record... seen em get rather noisy live + hope to again soon)
Sonic Youth - Simon Werner a Disparu (this is the soundtrack to some Frenchie movie... but the band put the score together using outtakes from the Daydream Nation sessions, so I perceive this as really more of a bonus disc of those sessions, since it's unlikely that I'm gonna watch the film. If you like Daydream Nation, you should get this right away, cuz it's very much of that same tone, particularly regarding the guitar tones + tunings)

Tommy Guerrero - Lifeboats and Follies (another collection of tasty grooves from our favorite skater-hero... the basswerk is - as usual - ultra-tight + funky)
U.S. Christmas - The Valley Path (another single, album-length track... not as directly stonerific as TAB's new one, but more of a psychedelic journey. Good, but it hasn't snagged me as viscerally as their earlier releases)
White Hills - H-p1 (fucking rawk! trippy + wild + heavy + dripping with effects + incredible!!!)

Short + Sweet: Recent Bad-Ass EPs + Singles

 So, here's a handful of recent EPs, singles + demos that I found to be particularly interesting...

And So I Watch You from Afar

7 Billion People All Alive at Once 

:: This single remix of one of the better songs off the newest ASIWYFA Gangs, gets into a very trip-hoppy synth-heavy spot early on, but shifts to a more Errors-style mix of synth-pop + electronica + post-rock. Neat, but only a must-have if you already have + like the full-length... which you should give a listen.

Arms and Sleepers

Digital
 

:: 

A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama
 

:: A pair of EPs of sumptuous sorta-loungy trip-hop. The full-length - The Organ Hearts - is really tasty + perfect for coming down...

Cosmonauts Day

Live Demos
 

:: Russian space-rock-tinged post-metal. Nicely done demo tracks. Don't guess they'll be touring anywhere near the American South, though... dammit. For fans of Russian Circles + Red Sparowes.

Empty Space Orchestra

Dark Matters
 

:: Heavy, distorted bass... tasty guitar-figures dancing over the top of some intense + stop-laden drumparts... and a saxophone. It's heavy, it's instrumental... Musically, it's somewhere, somehow, in a strange soundscape between Pelican and Mr. Bungle... Check it out + see what you think.

Felipe Arcazas

Yardang 

::  

Freedom
 

:: Two long desert-metal tracks, stone-y + psychedelic, with some lovely neck-pickup-toned leads. If you like Brant Bjork or Kyuss, this is waiting for you to crank up while you smoke up...

 

There'll be some more cool musicks spotlighted here over the next few weeks as I start to put together my Best of 2011 recommendations, so peek back soon + let me know what you think of the stuff I've brought to your attention...

What Got Heard: White Hills, John Coltrane, Ghost + more...

As usual, I've been checking out some music recommended to me by friends, enemies, strangers on blogs... +, as usual, there's some good stuff out there, along with some that ain't really all that... Here's a rundown of what I heard this week (* ratings are out of a possible 5, btw):

Administration Shock Him - 39:03 (2011)    *****
Post-rock the right way: instrumental + great for roadtrippin'. I hadn't heard of this band before they showd up on a couple of blogs I follow, but I will be keeping them on my radar from now on. The production is nice, giving this a polish similar to God Is an Astronaut. Music's in that same vein, too, with the big epic swells + tender little passages that keep it interesting + a nod of the head to post-metal's huge walls of guitars alongside some drum programming that tips its own hat ever-so-politely to modern glitch'tronica. The third track ('III' - yeah, it also has the typical post-rock pretentious-ass songtitles...) features a long audio excerpt from the Apollo 11 mission broadcast that adds so very well to some already-beautiful music. Big high-quality sound, solid dynamics... HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!!

Dias de Septiembre - s/t (2011)    ****
Firmly entrencht in the post-rock / post-metal styles, with lots of trilled single-note guitar lines, atmosphere to spare, bass parts that bounce from almost-static foundations to lovely + melodic lines + back, a wide dynamic range dominated in the huge-sounding sections by big guitars, tasty drumming (which synaethesia my wife really dislikes: "Drums are NOT tasty! And they're usually verrrrrry dirty!"). There are some vocals, but they're few + far-between + nicely coucht in the mix (mostly long, held notes with some harmonies, used almost like a synthpart for chordij behind the main musical parts). This band has an excellent capacity for smallifying itself during the more subtle + quiet moments in the music, + also builds back into the epic parts quite well. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Eternal Tapestry - Palace of the Night Skies (2009)    ***1/2
There's a certain something lacking in the production here, like it's a live-offa-one-mic recording, but the music is just so damn'd hypnotic + trippy that I can get past it. There's a callback to classic raga-rock here, with a cyclic building on the basic riff of each song that's allowed by the songlengths (2 outta 3 are around 17 minits) to develop from something sorta simple, or at least unadorned, into something more grandiose + embellisht-upon, before winding back down. I've heard 3 different rekkids from this band + have liked every one of 'em. RECOMMENDED!

Ghost - Opus Eponymous (2010)    **
Extremely-overhypt Eurometal... The whole thing has excellent production, but it otherwise sounds like a lost metal record (maybe Cirith Ungol with a different + somehow worse singr + a Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman wannabe on keyboards...) from 1985. The guitars + bass sound great, but waaaay dated. The drums are really solid, + they're comfortably coucht in the metal playbook, as are the lyrics. But the singr (+ vocal harmonies) + the keyboards are anomalies to the music, sounding way too much like they came from some 1970s prog-rock sessions or an album by Europe ("It's the fiiiiinal countdown!" 'toot-too-toot-toot toot-toot-toot-too-toot)... When I first heard about these guys, vocal comparisons were made to King Diamond; thankfully, that wasn't quite the case, except that, just like with Mercyful Fate, the vocals totally ruint this band for me. I'd love a copy without any singing or keyboards, cuz the rest of the music is straight out of my high-school metal memories. But this is being hypt as some ground-breaking shit, + the only way I see this breaking ground is in a graveyard with a shovel, digging up + defiling some classic metal corpses + putting 'em on an album. Sorry, but just... no. (The album cover's good, though.)

Gnod - Ingnodwetrust (2011)    ***
Oh, good googly-moogly, just look at that fucking beautiful cover... Psychedelic-as-fuck, this two-track 30+minit rekkid has dangerously-throbbing bass + a hypnotic drone-thing going on that sucks you right in. First time that I heard these guys a while back, Gnod + I didn't mesh well. Then I checkt out the Gnod Drop Out with White Hills stuff + decided I should give em another shot (cuz if White Hills likes em, maybe there's something there). I'm glad I did, but I'd only recommend it to my weirdest music-friends (or is that weirdest-music friends?)... Over the throbby, repeated bass-figures surf a range of crazysounds: delay effects on guitars + synths + samples. a knob-twiddling heaven. Raga-licious stuff. If you dig White Hills (see a trend here...?), this one is much stranger, but might also tickle yer pickle.

Henryspenncer - To the Timeless Valley (2010)    ***
This is a strange one, with elements of Krautrock, Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores, prog rock + Bruce Licher's post-Savage Republic desert-instrumental band, Scenic, all bubbling to the top at times. It most sounds like the soundtrack to some non-existent obscuro-cinema-europa film, composed by somebody kickt out of, I dunno, Goblin, maybe? It's good, but it doesn't really grab me like it needs to (especially considering how little space remains here for more music now). Not memorable enough to really recommend, but I definitely suggest checking it out to any fellow deep-catalogue-delvers...

John Coltrane - Cosmic Music (1966)    ****
Some far-reaching + inspired free jazz from a true jazz pioneer here, but not for the faint-of-heart... Alice Coltrane + Pharoah Sanders are also featured players on this one, which will definitely help the already-familiar decide if it's at all up their alley. Trane + Pharoah are really flying free here, building huge walls of sax + then tearing 'em down, though there are some tender + more melodic moments that surface unexpectedly at times, + Alice's trademark modal piano style is on full display. There's even some vocals, an invocation reminiscent of the one that introduces 'Om' shows up on 'The Sun,' which closes the album on a nice piano riff of Alice's that fans of her Journey in Satchinanda album will dig. Recommended ONLY for fans of Trane's free jazz excursions + fans of Pharoah Sanders' + Alice Coltrane's rekkids as bandleaders. (Others will likely think it sounds like a gaggle of geese flying headlong into a woodchipper made of drums + pianos.) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! (but ya gotta read the stipulation above...)

Pyrior - Oceanus Procellarum (2010)    ***
This shit rocks! It's a nice representation of what the young people call stoner-metal nowadays, with some of the quieter moments sounding a bit more post-metal... instrumental + grooving, heavy-as-hell, with chugging basslines + monster drumming + big wah-driven guitars + an obvious love of Black Sabbath. Definitely something I'd recommend for fans of stoner-metal stuff like Karma to Burn, but after a bit, it loses my attention, sitting on some riffs a bit longer than I'd like.

Sigmoid Argonaut - s/t EP (2009)    ****
A very math-rock EP (under 25 minits), with the requisite excellent musicianship, + a particularly notable rhythm section - the drummr + bassist are tight + funky + in total control of dynamics. Guitars are tasty + prominent, along with some very prog-flavored synth parts. And the music is badass; points of reference for me include Blind Idiot God, Maps + Atlases, early Trans Am, + even some old Yes or ELP (cuz that synth is soooo damn'd retro sometimes!) + old krautrock... if any combination of those makes yer liver quiver, go hunt this down! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Voice of the Seven Thunders - s/t (2010)    ***1/2
This sounds like some late 1960s heavy psychedelia, with that characteristic-of-the-time fuzztone all over the guitar sound. Not that that's a bad thing... There's an acoustic folk-chedelia vibe here that screams 'Sandy Bull!' at times, along with a lot of sorta-meandering Bevis Frond-y jams with tons of guitarij. I'd think that the folks at the Ptolemaic Terrascope really dig this. RECOMMENDED!

White Hills - H-p1 (2011)    *****
I love this band! This is their newest (double) album, + it's a huge slab of blisst-out psych-rock with their typically-heavy spin + a raga-stylee patience-in-development that lets songs build + fall (over a decent span of time, a few of the tracks are 10+ minits), grow + diminish - all while still recalling or echoing the central riffs. Huge distorted guitars + trippy synth bits + kooky effects-noises ride upon a monster tide of big rock drums + fuzzy bass. The vocals also work well - not a lot of vocals, really... usually some harmonized he + she vox that're not too loud, not buried... just kinda floating inside the mix, intertwined. And don't get the wrong idea; the album is plenty dynamic, with some softer, introspective moments intersperst throughout, drafting a well-crafted ebb + flow to the music. If you like the recent (more Hawkwind-flavored) Mudhoney albums, this is right up yer alley! HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!!!

And that, aside from two sucky recent EPs + an older ambient rekkid that blew chunks, all from artists who shall remain unnamed here, is what got heard here this weekend!
Later!
B*>

A Few Noteworthy New Music Releases

2011 is shaping up to be another good year for music... I've already mentioned some earlier stuff from this year, but more keeps coming out!

The newest Lunar Dunes - Galaxsea - is out now, + like the previous From Above, this is a wonderful trip through spacetime. This is a sort-of side-project for some members of Cornershop + Transglobal Underground that I categorize as space rock; they sound like the lounge band on an retro-future orbiting space station... The atmospheric female vocalizations + wild, wide palette of instrumentation, along with the lightly-jazzy swing of many of the tracks, calls to mind a modern-day interpretation of Martin Denny or Arthur Lyman. Cannot recommend highly enough! Get this shit! Now!



 

The Atomic Bitchwax is back, this time with Local Fuzz, a release that's a single long (40+ minits) stoner-metal riff-festival. Props to the band for keeping the riffage interesting, too, cuz I don't recall any vocals at all. Maybe there were some, but the riffs were too big for my brain to process anything else...










 

White Hills have a new one coming down the pipe, H-p1. The first track, The Condition of Nothing, is available from Thrilljockey as an MP3 freebie. Space rock at its modern finest! Now, if they'll just reschedule a live show for Birmingham, AL, before too long...













 

Valleyland by Empire Express came out of left-field to smack me upside my head. Not a lot of really new ground covered here for fans of guitar-centric post-rock, but they've really nailed the blissful + majestic thing well, with arrangements that sweep nicely from delicate to epic + back again.












 

Eternal Tapestry's newest is Beyond the 4th Door; it's a trippy, serpentine bit of space rock, with the characteristic gyric song structures of the best recent raga-reminiscent rock.
















And a recent reissue of an overlookt 90s Nels Cline Trio rekkid - Silencer. Nels is, of course, in Wilco now; in the 90s, he hosted a New Music night for out + free jazz at the Alligator Lounge in Venice that was often amazing. His original compositions for this rekkid are excellent, as is the lead-off track, a reinterpretation of Gil Evans' Las Vegas Tango that starts out fairly straight before moving into some interesting + innovative reharmonizations...






And that's a few tasty + recent rekkids I've encountered... What'd I miss that I shouldn't've?

The Best Music of 2009 - My Top Twenty-Five...

Another year slips past, leaving us with meager + bare memories of the time that we've lost... until we turn to the best music that was released in 2009, which brings smiley-happy-time to all the world! Here's my personal list of the best music released this year. They're in roughly alfabetical order, since trying to rank them any further than "these are all really good" would be a total snoozefest for me + you both. So, here they are; go download or buy some stuff you ain't heard yet + know that it'll be good ('cuz Unca Igor dun tol'ya):

_________________

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.

- Lord of the Underground: Vishnu and the Magic Elixir

Evidently, Hawkwind + Pink Floyd got loaded together + had a baby. A rock orchestra baby. A Japanese rock orchestra baby... And that baby was midwifed + nursemaided by Sandy Bull... Rocking riffage, swirling + trippy synths, dronee-stylee, tribal drumming... now we now where Syd Barrett + Nik Turner are!

_________________

Bardo Pond - Peri

Yet another busy year for Bardo Pond! If you haven't heard em, think of them as the "you got Your peanut butter in my chocolate" genetic experiment gone awry that'd happen if Brundlefly stuck Jessamine + Sonic Youth into one of his wacky transporter pods... Lots of stony riffs, weird noises that could be synths or waaay treated guitars, he + she vox that float just under the music. In addition to Peri, which I see as kinda their "main" record of the year, BP also released three other following notable records:
Gazing at Shilla
Volume VII
Game Five and a Half
...as well as three super-freaky drone-laden side-projects:
Moon Phantoms - Moon Phantoms
Alumbrados - Monochord
Alasehir - Torment of the Metals
...(I'm always a sucker for alchemy-themed records...)

_________________

Baroness - Blue Record

Badass! Big powerful riffage that doesn't stay the same til boredom. Metal without being one-dimensional, with lots of nods to classic rock + early metal, and some more modern stoner metal stylings.




_________________

Caspian - Tertia

(At times quite heavy) instrumental post-rock, with walls of guitar sound that evoke prime My Bloody Valentine-era Kevin Shields; shimmering chords + tons of delay! The quiet passages are well-placed + provide great soft spots to build the songs back up from.


_________________

Cougar - Patriot

Instrumental post-rock, with clever drummage + intricate/delicate guitarwork that build + swell to immensities before resolving back down again. Extremely neat production, with extra crispy drums. The more I listen to this one, the more I love it; it's rapidly easing its way toward best album of the year... along with the new If These Trees Could Talk!


_________________

Dinosaur, Jr. - Farm

If at times it seems that J. Mascis' guitar solos are overabundant + superfluous to the songs, then it must be Tuesday + we must be listening to Dinosaur, Jr., with lots of heavy + beautiful guitar melodies + solos beefing up some clever pop songs. Somehow, 20 years after You're Living All Over Me + Bug, DJ's original lineup is still mining fertile ideas for new music, though the vein remains the same... And Mascis has possibly my favorite guitar tone, which is thick + grabs hold of ya!


_________________

Do Make Say Think - Other Truths

instrumental post-rock. this time, it's 4 tracks from DMST, each highlighting a different aspect of their music; you get some light + ethereal along with your cinematic + expansive. Best album of the year candidate...


_________________

Dysrhythmia - Psychic Maps

Instru-metal three-piece... I hear (the good kind of) influence from classic King Crimson, as well as lots of frantic metal riffage + thoughtful arrangements of some brutal tracks.


_________________

the Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Yet another highly anticipated release from one of the greatest bands ever. Can't hate on a single album they've put out in over 20 years, and this one's no exception. I haven't completely assimilated it all yet (there's a lot to take in), but I like. A lot. Even if it's not my favorite 'Lips record (yet... so far, that's still 1987's Oh My Gawd - the first 'Lips musicks to ever kiss my ears), it's still striking. This band continues to evolve with every release, staying frickin' neat-o the whole time!
 
_________________

If These Trees Could Talk - Above the Earth, Below the Sky

Instrumental post-rock that often leans toward heavy. Maybe my favorite record of the year. Hypnotic + cinematic!


_________________

Isis - Wavering Radiant (+ the Ephemeral EP)

Some vocals waft into range from time to time, but the more impactful moments of the new Isis releases (a full-length + an EP) come during the instrumental passages, which quickly shift from beautiful to ominous throughout. Powerful stuff.


_________________

Kylesa - Static Tensions

Tribal + brutal stoner metal band (from Georgia?) that weaves an unrelenting web of intricate guitar + basslines over powerful tom-heavy drumming. Great driving music!



_________________

Maserati - Passages

Kinda sounds like 90s Trans Am records, especially since this album contains some delicate post-rock, some overt Krautrock + Kraftwerk influences, some driving + moving moments. Broad + varying styles bump against each other, but without being too disparate to gel as a cohesive album.


_________________

Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Mastodon's series of concept albums continues with the aerocentric Crack the Skye. This one is much more musically diverse than previous Mastodon albums, with more than a few moments of sheer progrock shining through the metal. This isn't my favorite Mastodon release (that'd be Leviathan, just for the record), but it's still an awesome + mighty album.


_________________

Mooncake - Cast the Route

Instrumental post-rock. The only bad thing I can say about this is that, unlike previous Mooncake releases, this EP is a mere two songs, clocking in at under 20 minutes. Word is, they're from Russia; don't know, but I am glad for the internet - else I'd've never found out about em (same with the similar post-rockers Deepset, from Indonesia).
 
_________________

Nile - Those Whom the Gods Detest

Brutal + with a penchant for ancient Egyptian themes (+ scales, evidently). Metal as fuck. machinegun drums. gravelly grave-vocals. outstanding! The deathiest death metal of all... like, what if Dethklok was a real band... they'd be scared of Nile, thass what!




_________________

Pelican - What We All Come to Need

Huge + menacing, Pelican's music often evokes giant monsters + huge mechs wading into cities, destruction-bent. Looking forward to seeing this display of aural delicacy + brutality live when they come to the Birmingham area in December (esp cuz I misst em -with Isis!!!- during the summer)...


_________________

Russian Circles - Geneva

Heavy instrumental post-rock three-piece. Got to see em live in October + was blown away by their sound. Lots of textural guitars + thunderous basslines, tribal drumming, + clever songwriting.


_________________

Slayer - World Painted Blood

More new Slayer! This ain't as jaw-dropping as God Hates Us All was on first listen (it's up there for me right behind Reign in Blood), but is as solid as or even better than the more recent Christ Illusion. No surprises, but no disappointment, either. Lots of dive-bombing guitars, thunderous riffs (the bass is even mixd a bit louder, it seems), angry screeds... Yay!


_________________

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Another excellent release from one of the most influential bands of the 1980s + 90s. Namecheckt by almost as many bands as have flat-out rippt them off, Sonic Youth has managed to maintain a solid presence in the scene for over 20 years now. This new record does a lot of the same stuff expected from the band: some twistd angular reworking of pop-stylee rock, some beautiful + unearthly sounding guitars, thumpy bass, poundy drums.

Like former labelmates Dinosaur, Jr., who're also on this list, SY hits with a new slab that evokes their classic SST records while still being fresh + relevant-sounding. How very cool that SY, Dinosaur, Jr., Slayer, and the Flaming Lips, all of whom had records in my top releases of the year lists in 1986/7 are all still represented + creating solid music after alla these years...


_________________

Sunn O))) - Monoliths and Dimensions

This record will sound best when played ridiculously loud. Through headphones. While loaded. And sitting in the dark. Beautiful, scary, huge, ominous... drone-thick, distortion-driven almost-ambient metal that is perfect lullaby music... next-gen volume + distortion experimentation that'd prob'ly well suit fans of the same from My Bloody Valentine, Sleep, Spectrum, E.A.R., etc... and they even sneak a little electric Miles Davis stylee in for good measure...


_________________

Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures

A supergroup comprised of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones... Lemme just say that this is waaaaay better than the reality show Supergroup with Anthrax's Scott Ian trying to stay reasonable + polite while faced with idiots like Sebastian Bach + Ted Nugent... This slab sounds a lot like one of the Desert Sessions records, so if you like those at all, y'know you'll enjoy this one!


_________________

Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship

I've already said my piece about this one when it came out [LINK]... An excellent + diverse group of songs + a swell bunch of guys. Go see their in-studio live set + interview with Chris Douridas from sometime this summer (8 July 2009, actually) on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic [LINK]. The Remixes 12" is also a neat little find, with a pair of kooky-wild DnB sides.


_________________

Valis - Dark Matter

Another slab of high-grade stoner metal from a group who had to check out, since their name is taken from the title of a classic super-paranoid Philip K. Dick novel... three albums in + they still do not disappoint!




_________________

J.G. Thirlwell - The Venture Bros. Soundtrack

WOW! All over the dial, from spaghetti western + classic spytones to retrofuturo + beyond. If you love the show, you need the soundtrack. If you don't love the show... fuck you, buddy, and the goat you rode in on!