Walker Jr., Barry

Shoulda Zenith

Holy Mountain

The sky goes on forever in Barry Walker Jr.’s Shoulda Zenith, and it’s crackling with unexpected lightning. The Tennessee-bred, Portland-based pedal steel master subverts his instrument’s tradition for lachrymose, innocuous Rootzak™. Instead, he ventures to outward-bound strata more frequently traversed by Sonny Sharrock than Gram Parsons. “So often, the pedal steel is used as a textural flavor,” Walker says, “but it really can breathe fire itself.” Evidence for that claim abounds on Shoulda Zenith. Sprouting out of the strategies Walker used on his 2012 LP of Henry Flynt and Paul Metzger-like fiddle aberrations, Banjo Knife, the music on Zenith goes on similar extravagant tangents—but with pedal steel. Assisted here and there by bassist Scott Derr and drummer Dana Valatka, and others, Walker has synthesized his love for country, New Age, freeform freakouts, and ecstatic music on Zenith. One can hear traces of the laid-back sinuousness of Texas psych-rockers Cold Sun, Fushitsusha’s craggy, acid-rock excoriations, and Doug Sahm’s sprightly melodic sweetness. One may notice “Insect Interlude” adding new colors to Terry Riley’s Rainbow In Curved Air and “Up The Fan, Into The Keyhole” taking Sharrock’s Black Woman to Appalachia. Tilt the head just right and “Shoulda Zenith” and “Trinity Payload” may be the most psychedelic things a pandemic-besieged mind will encounter in 2020. Cosmic country didn’t know it needed its own Inventions For Electric Guitar, but now that it’s arrived, the Gilded Palace Of Sin is starting to seem like a dilapidated bungalow.

Lavender Flu, The

Heavy Air

Holy Mountain

A home-recording project completely open to experimentation but in love with songs, The Lavender Flu is masterminded by Chris Gunn (The Hunches, Hospitals). Their massive 30-song debut double-album Heavy Air was conceived over a period of years and outside of the genre concentration camps. Like Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life remade by the ghost of Phillip K. Dick, it’s psychedelic and dense, projecting sounds as images inside your head, layers and layers yielding new secrets with each listen.  Heavy Air winds a circuitous path through pop songs (“My Time,” “Those That Bend”—with a “Waterloo Sunset” vibe), blasted rockers (“Fingers Like Wounds”), beautiful instrumentals (“Feel the Ground,” “Telepathic Axe”), fractured folk (“Between The Trees”), weirder experimental pieces (“Vacuum Creature,” “La-Bas”), straight-up fried epics (“Transcendental Hangover”) plus a few covers in the mix, including a maximal / minimal take on The Godz’ mantra-like ode to sun worship and a Townes Van Zandt tune that is derailed by a massive panic attack. Lyrics and melodies appear and reappear as half-remembered dreams or reconstructed memories. Traces of Big Star, Royal Trux, Brian Eno, Meat Puppets II and American Beauty are in the DNA but The Lavender Flu is its own beast.  “Stitched together with a ragged twine of thought, the album could prove exhausting to the uninitiated, but those who’ve found room for Gunn’s brand of veiled pop bombast will find Easter Eggs aplenty throughout this release. Out of the clamor and clash rise some beautiful moments of folk pop like ‘Those...

Fukuda, Hiiragi

Dump

Holy Mountain

“Dump” (and its B-side “Don’t Worry Be Slow”) has the massive guitar solos that Hiiragi Fukuda’s masterpiece of late-night mellow My Turntable Is Slow could not contain. Both songs possess an earlier-in-the-evening swagger that make them as complimentary to Hiiragi’s LP as “Suspicious Minds” is to The Memphis Album. The single is limited to 300 copies.

Devil Worshipper

S/t

Holy Mountain

Imagine a version of Julio Cortázar’s The Night Face Up where there is no motorcycle crash and no series of dreams about trying to outrun Aztec warriors determined to capture you for human sacrifice. There is still darkness in this story—the darkness of living in post-Reagan America, existential dread, the futility of living one’s dreams and still waking up every day.Devil Worshipper is the dream that swirls and reflects landscapes in chrome as snakes dance in your spine. Blistering solos that wouldn’t be out of place on a Helios Creed or The Mike Gunn LP draw the night sky as a steady, hypnotic rhythm paints the lines dividing the highway out of here.

Musk

S/t

Holy Mountain

MUSK is the new flesh, or at least what’s secreted from the glands located under the skin. Frontman Rob Fletcher is the last guy in the world you’d think had pheromones; they might work on him, but his voice is definitely in the “let’s get the fuck away from this guy” category, with his undeniable ability to growl, spit, shriek and wretch while the band attacks. Drummer Brendan Leonard is a total canbasher, and bass-player John Laux is sublime. He’s not even there at times, but he is, like the whispers of forced air you heard when you were listening to Tical on wet that one time. Like, is that really there? It feels like it’s been there forever. The weird thing about MUSK is that on top of all this malign beauty—what sounds like the six movies John Saxon made in Italy that nobody except the biggest creeps in the world know about, or Beefheartian blues lurch juxtaposed against that lost ’80s pigfuck clangor—guitarist Chris Owen bleeds reverb everywhere, as if his amp had a heart to be stabbed, but it’s just a cone about to rupture. His leads give off a sick, dusty twang, pained as if in their death throes (which is saying something, because the guy looks like the dad from The Family Circus). Each dying twitch and every belligerent throb was captured by engineer Chris Woodhouse (Oh Sees, Fuzz, Ty Segall, Intelligence). Whether working the muggy Southern Gothic angle or treading knee-deep in NYC’s pungent...

White Manna

Dune Worship

Holy Mountain

White Manna returns to prove just how deep their thrust is. Dune Worship, the Arcata, California, group’s sophomore album, follows in the vein of last year’s self-titled debut, mining another batch of primal, outward-bound jams that reek of eternity.  “Transformation” channels prime-time Hawkwind, evoking that sense of zooming headlong in endless flight with every atom buzzing. Like the best space-rock songs, it intensifies and ascends ever higher as it goes. The staunch, towering riffs of “X Ray” are as foreboding as the next report from the EPA. This is White Manna’s idea of a power ballad… until it accelerates in the last minute and leaves the listener blissfully charred.  The speedy yet smooth “I’m Comin Home” could be the recurring theme for that impossible sequel to Easy Rider, while the ten-minute “Illusion of Illusion” simmers with astral, meditative menace—a massive, billowing specimen of rock that glows like the earth’s inner core. The epic finale, “Solar Returns,” is as majestic and momentous a climax as one would expect from these profound pros, whose singleness of purpose remains irrepressible and righteous.

Residual Echoes

Middle Path

Holy Mountain

In the grand tradition of albums consisting of sidelong tracks, The Middle Path ranks among the best. How great is it? On the level of the latest opus by Decimus (NNCK’s Pat Murano), Tangerine Dream’s Zeit and Ash Ra Tempel’s first LP. Taking collage rock to college, band leader Adam Payne and drummer Matthew Clark present their loftiest contribution yet to the out-rock canon. They let their freak flag fly high, but with a disciplined air. “Bush Pij / Sometimes” starts with a bulbous, stunt-rock charge that evokes first-four-albums Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy and the heaviest parts of Focus’s Hocus Pocus. After working the listener into a lather, Residual Echoes downshift into a bong-breaking interlude featuring Payne’s nonchalant, deep-voiced plaint: “Why does it seem so hard? / … / Sometimes people make a fool out of me.” Such woe is swept away by headbanging passages full of torrid, florid guitar solos and the kind of explosive drumming that makes fans of Bill Ward and Keith Moon paradiddle all over themselves. Later, an ominous tolling redolent of Sonic Youth’s “Halloween” conjures a beautifully haunting, desolate comedown. What a trip. But this is mere warm-up for “A Marriage,” the pinnacle of Residual Echoes’ career and one of 2013’s most excellent and action-packed tracks. It begins like the greatest facsimile of “Hallogallo” one has ever heard (and there have been many): motorik bliss boogie with flute gently fluctuating in the airstream, bolstered by burbling bass, gull-cry guitar and nipple gongs. Around six-and-a-half minutes...

Plotnick, Henry

Fields

Holy Mountain

Initial contact with Fields may lead one to believe it’s the work of an A+ grad student at one of America’s finest music colleges. On discovering the album’s creator won’t be able to legally drink for another decade, one might wince at the thought of one’s own paltry 11-year-old feats—even if those armpit farts were pretty inspired. Meanwhile, Henry Plotnick sounds like he’s ready for the concert hall. The structural and dynamic sophistication at play in Fields—the way melodic beauty gyres within rigorous academic / minimalist strictures, the manner in which perilous, mordant atmospheres are conjured—are astounding for any musician, age be damned. Seemingly under the spell of Terry Riley’s mesmerizing classic In C, Plotnick engineers ingenious strategies for mental liftoff. It’s as if he’s absorbed the principles and techniques of the 20th-century American minimalist-composer pantheon and injected them with a zeal for greater instrumental complexity and melodic flamboyancy. The two longest tracks on Fields take the listener highest, suggesting that Plotnick is more of a marathon-runner than a sprinter.Just as those who observed LeBron James on the court as a high-school sophomore could predict his NBA superstardom, anyone who hears Fields will be stirred to imagine future concert-goers rendered agog by Plotnick’s phenomenal prowess. Get in on the ground floor of what promises to be a skyscraper of rarefied sonic inventiveness.

Hank IV

Depravity’s Rainbow

Holy Mountain

***Recorded in a lacerating hi-fidelity previously unheard on their other 7-inch singles, Depravity’s Rainbow is something of an alternate-universe rock ’n’ roll pop hit vista for HANK IV. But these songs aren’t any sort of gauzy or hazy faux-California summer jams—this is some straightup TV-MA-LSV shit and the screen’s inside your eyelids. “Depravity’s Rainbow” is a mid-tempo self-loather about moral relativism that grinds three different gears before finally achieving escape velocity for its pummeling climax. Feel free to shout along with the chorus and / or cry along to the verses the next time the crushing weight of your misspent life keeps you awake in the small hours. The flip, “Your Mind Is a Disco,” sports a propulsive skiffle-bounce beat, but lead vocalist Bob McDonald has worn concrete shoes to the dance. His mirrored ball of a brain spins, dazzles and ultimately explodes inside his skull, causing guitar feedback to leak from his ears as he screams the refrain over and over.

Yoga

Skinwalker

Holy Mountain

Holy Mountain is pleased to issue Yoga’s Skinwalker on vinyl, making it widely available for the first time after having being released only on stupidly limited cassettes and split CDs.   “Yoga takes the lo-fi practice-space recordings of the grimmest of the black metal outfits and combines it with the murky, muddy, noise-drenched blur of bands like Wold. But then takes it even further, rendering their sound so muted and lo-fidelity that even when they’re blasting furiously, it still sounds like a busted music box or an old black metal 78. And then there’s the fact that Yoga spends a good amount of their time not blasting blackly, but instead crafting synth-heavy Goblin-style film music, all throbbing bass and buzzing synths, creepy minor-key melodies and tons of haunting ambience. Those songs too are wreathed in a foggy, night-on-the-moors sort of murk, which ties those songs closely to the more blackened ones. “The strange combination of grim and Goblin, the tripped-out fucked-up recording quality, the damaged arrangements, the looped hypnotic quality, turn Yoga into something totally out there, most likely way too abstract and psychedelic and deliriously lo-fi to appeal to folks looking for grim, buzzing blackness, but for the rest of you, if you can try to imagine some impossible mix of Philip Jeck, Wold, Goblin, the Skaters and some of the super weird EEE Records unblack bands, all produced by John Maus and Ariel Pink, then you will flip for this.” —Aquarius

White Manna

S/t

Holy Mountain

White Manna plays space rock using a scorched-earth policy. The Arcata, California, quartet may telegraph where they’re coming from and where they’re going to take you with their track titles, but knowing the itinerary doesn’t dampen the thrill of their excursion into stellar depths. Opening track “Acid Head” is not false advertising. It begins with an amiable boogie-rock amble before tumescing into stentorian, Loop-like riffing. You know that you can count on White Manna enveloping your head in the Asheton brothers’ genius string thuggery and convulsing you with the primordial throb harnessed by the Stooges (and, later, Hawkwind), before sonic irony was invented. For most of White Manna, the group focuses on mantric riffs that accelerate into speed-freak, headbanging frenzies. But on “Don’t Gun Us Down,” they throw a change-up, setting the science-fictional scene with billowing solar winds before shifting into a mantric cruiser over which a wah-wah guitar articulates a hedonist manifesto—something along the lines of “fire all of your guns at once and explode into space.” White Manna don’t dazzle with eclecticism; instead, they’re monomaniacs with the irrepressible ability to soar out of the mundane and into the unknown via tried-and-true methods upgraded to modern 21st century specs.   'Mirror Sky' By White Manna by GOLDSTARPR

Aufgehoben

Fragments Of The Marble Plan

Holy Mountain

The follow-up to 2008’s Khora, Fragments of the Marble Plan adds an electronic carapace to Aufgehoben’s cataclysmic noise-rock foundation. The prevailing sound evokes the Mego label before it added “Editions” to its name and became enamored of American guitar mavericks—back when it purveyed cyclotronic, abstract electronic music that had the centrifugal force of an irrefutable Ph.D. thesis. Such is the overwhelming power of Aufgehoben on the British group’s sixth album that even exposure to the MP3s makes one relieved to have health insurance. Music this apocalyptic has few peers, but some approximate touchstones are the most radically “out” and knotty moments of Norwegian post-jazz ensemble Supersilent, This Heat after realizing that Brise-Glace didn’t pay them a penny in royalties, or Farmers Manual after extensive immersion in Mainliner’s back catalog. Fragments of the Marble Plan is a terrifying force of nature, a Rube Goldberg machine run amok, the sound of civilization atomizing into controlled chaos. It’s so cold, it’s hellish. Although Aufgehoben feels your need for catharsis, they convince you that being ready to jump out of your skin is the new normal. If Aufgehoben prompted clichés, one would say that they “take no prisoners” on Fragments of the Marble Plan. This music is war—with all of the fascinating horrors and grisly casualties inherent in that endeavor. Get a helmet.

High Wolf

Atlas Nation

Holy Mountain

France’s High Wolf possesses a natural-born ability to produce tones most conducive to inducing transcendental states. Prolific without wearing out his welcome, the guitarist and effects box manipulator sets loose fervid streams of fever-dream drones. High Wolf’s tracks sound as if they’ve been sluicing since the beginning of time, siphoned for teasingly brief absorption before they shimmer off to the vanishing point. This elite droneur is one of the few musicians who could title a 7-inch A Guide to Healing without it coming off as an ironic gesture or a laughable boast. (Cop one and try not to get a spring in your chakras.) Atlas Nation—recorded in 2010 after a long trip to India and Nepal—deepens High Wolf’s penetration into the mystic. It evokes an uneasy peace with a new breed of tribal psychedelia shorn of all hokey signifiers. “Fuji Descent” starts the album with what could be a languid, paradisiacal soundtrack to a scrapped Alejandro Jodorowsky film. “The Dawn of Man” is a stark, stoned processional burrowing into malarial climes where guitars squawk in ominous tongues while congas cave in chests and clear brush with a vengeance. “Raagini” magnifies and psychedelicizes Rapoon’s mantric, ritualistic hand-drum patter and tropical-forest drones while hinting at Don Cherry’s jazz-raga peregrinations. High Wolf claims that “Haiti” was “recorded in a couple of hours [on] the day of the big earthquake in Haiti, so it’s the darkest / saddest High Wolf track ever.” It’s a fittingly miasmic, climactic threnody. Think of Atlas Nation as a...

Swiftumz

Don’t Trip

Holy Mountain

The problem with imaginary combinations is that many of them actually already exist. Don’t Trip sounds like a collaboration between Nick Nicely and Eric Hysteric, over which Tony Wilson and Alan McGee would get into a bidding war. Chris McVicker—a.k.a. Swiftumz, famous for penning the fastest selling Hunx & His Punx single—sambas through ’80s Factory singles, afternoon hits of MDMA on the beach, Ibizia before techno, Glaswegian nonchalance, Stolen Kisses and tripping at the Haçienda (the San Francisco one; Manchester’s closed down years ago). Seriously, it’s all present—but like any other great interpreter of Britain’s finest musical traditions, McVicker is just a guy from near Mac Dre’s hometown in Northern California who might laugh if one told him that “More Than Sleep” should be in a Sofia Coppola movie, because he was probably aiming higher than that. Like the best Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk commercial ever, Don’t Trip is your summer jam.

Monosov, Ilya

Sailor Man

Holy Mountain

Utterances into a dictophone from a backdoor man hiding in the closet as the husband arrives home. The tales plod along in whispers, accompanied by defined guitar interplay, punctuated piano and snappy drums. Nearly every accent of guitar seems present. Fragile flamenco plucks, fuzz-to-the-front fumblings onto smooth lyrics of a detective attempting to resolve his own crimes. Vocals and acoustic guitar were recorded by Greg Weeks. The arrangements, instrumentation and production were lovingly handled by Jonathan Wilson. Ilya Monosov is a member of Shining Path and Monosov/Swirnoff duo. While those musics were often meant to be visceral and joyous, Sailor Man presents whispers from one person to another, ruminative meditations on loss of places and people.

Lords Of Falconry

S/t

Holy Mountain

LP VERSION INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!!   Lords of Falconry are a rock group with a spectacular psychedelic edge. Songs blast green, inferno-like hard rock, funneling clouds and stripping away sludge, turning it into the waltz-like sound of mastodons stomping across the tundra. Classic heavy psych is alive in tracks that interweave soft voices and loud guitars that continuously pummel and enchant at every turn like a seven-headed cobra. C.S. Lewis had better watch his step! If psychedelia is quixotically naive, then Lords of Falconry is its 21st-century doppelganger or spectral double wise to the ways of the fallen world. In an era of organized play dates and close parental supervision, there are already enough people ready to cooperate. Lords of Falconry offers what is missing--real rock music. Formed in a quest to find the lost note, Lords of Falconry examines the intersection of a mystical crossroads between the fourth dimension and their own 3-D universe. Since both members are a bit insolent and rather unrealistic about much of reality, the fact that Lords of Falconry even exists is remarkable in and of itself.

Cloudland Canyon

Fin Eaves

Holy Mountain

LP VERSION INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!!   Originally an all-things-not-Panthers outlet for guitarist Kip Ulhorn swapping musical ideas with Simon Wojan (now in King Khan and his Shrines), Cloudland Canyon spent several years interpreting the more structurally-challenged examples of Krautrock, '70s psych of the drone-discovering variety, spots of unnerving (in a good way) improv here and there, and the wonderful '90s bands that started out as head-scratchers and ended up as innovators (first-wave Siltbreeze and Kranky highlights). Fin Eaves, the band's third full-length overall, is the inaugural album from Cloudland Canyon Phase II. Joined once again by significant-other Kelly Ulhorn and a rotating cast of contributors, Kip has crafted a unique take on really, really goddamned loud and noisy. Most important--hinted at on 2008's Lie in Light--are big, unavoidable pop hooks clawing their way out of a pulsating, throbbing thickness of guitar, bass, who-knows-what-type-of-effects and understated but omnipresent drumming. Imagine a Flying Saucer Attack foundation supporting noise on par with the first two Iran albums, or maybe even Jesu, with flowing vocals providing the major pop-hook components. Cloudland Canyon's new creative level is not indebted to, but informed by the aforementioned band. Fin Eaves is an antidote for widespread devastation caused by Creative Bankruptcy and The Arrogance of Assumed Originality--two epidemics of devastating mediocrity that will cause our children to break their own ribs with convulsive laughter. This album will be slobbered over by both cobweb-crotched solitude-enthusiasts and beautiful people alike for years and years, necessitating a barrage of reissue...

International Hello

S/t

Holy Mountain

International Hello is the perfection of California psychedelic rock in all its ecstatic glory. Grady Runyan's guitar playing is as fantastic, spacey and heavy as ever, as is Scott Derr's always-pertinent bass throb. Drummer and singer Rubin Fiberglass is just perfect as a screaming maniac who can actually keep time while Doug Pearson's electronics consistently enhance the dominant power-trio rock that swirls in the sky like some kind of creation myth. In case you don't recognize the names, these guys were the prime movers and shakers behind the band Monoshock. Does it sound like them? Yeah but it's way back there, and this is about a new place they're going. And it's good. You'll see."[Monoshock were] three of the most clued-in musical minds I've ever met or observed, and they breathed in and coughed out a whole host of killer influences. Starting with the most obvious: Hawkwind, The Stooges, Can, Black Flag, Pere Ubu, Pink Fairies, Von Lmo, the MC5 and Chrome. Later in their flickeringly brief career they trended more toward heavy Japanese-style PSF psychedelia and outre space rock experimentation a la F/i, Vertical Slit and any number of barefoot Germans from the 1970s. I'm not sure where they'd have ended up had the band not petered out in 1995--it appears from the direction they were trending on... that it was into a heads-down, dark and deep spastic noise murk rather than back to the bull-rushing primitive fuzz-punk squeal of these earlier recordings."--Jan Hinman, Agony Shorthand

Voice Of The Seven Thunders

S/t

Holy Mountain

VINYL VERSION INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!!   To purchase this release on CD or MP3 download, click here   Named after an 1870s tome of lectures on the Apocalypse, Rick Tomlinson's Voice of the Seven Thunders distills years of divergent musical exploration that followed his much-acclaimed Voice of the Seven Woods debut (Twisted Nerve, 2007). This time around, multi-instrumentalist and sound sculptor Tomlinson has assembled a full-fledged rock group. On their self-titled new release, infernal and primitive energies mingle with the bucolic reveries that won him previous acclaim. "Open Lighted Doorway" begins the album with a glimmer of the pastoral sounds that mark Tomlinson's earlier recordings, soaked in reverb as if corrupted by time; the monolithic "Kommune" follows with rolling guitars and rhythmic layers of primal percussion. "The Burning Mountain" erupts like flames from an Anatolian mirage--a tide from the East. The purely acoustic "Dry Leaves" offers the listener a momentary respite before "Dalaelven" breaks the spell with its vertiginous howl. This blinding acid haze is broken only by the stripped-down vocal harmonies of the introspective closer "Disappearances." Voice of the Seven Thunders is already drawing comparison to the heyday of '70s acid rock and the likes of Amon Duul II, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Japan's Flower Travelin' Band, early Pink Floyd, the Velvet Underground's drone jams, the electronic kosmische of Cluster and the unhinged organic grooves of International Harvester. The album was recorded in just three days in the spring of 2009 at Andy Ramsey's Stereolab studio with engineer Jimmy...

La Otracina

Reality Has Got To Die

Holy Mountain

Since 2003, La Otracina has been hell-bent on creating highly visionary music that melds sonic ideas from the outer reaches of heavy and weird. The Brooklyn group has released three full-length albums and twelve mini-albums, along with a slew of splits and compilation trackss on labels including Holy Mountain and band founder Adam Kriney's own Colour Sounds Recordings. They have completed eight US tours and one Italian tour, in addition to countless shows in their hometown. Their tireless work ethic and far-reaching musical abilities have earned them a devoted cult following in the underground psychedelic / heavy music world, and their live shows leave fans screaming and fist-pumping in ecstatic awe.La Otracina's new double-album is the first to feature drummer Kriney as lead vocalist, which catapults the trio into their most cohesive and focused release to date. Reality Has Got to Die showcases the band's mind-blowing ability to evoke the timeless space-rock magic of Hawkwind, the prog-improv wizardry of King Crimson, the fuck-yeah of early Metallica, and the synthesizer mind-warp of Tangerine Dream, all fused in a Krautrock state of mind. This musical journey through deep and heavy sound worlds envokes images of the emerald beyond and the darkest future alien universe, while also staying rooted in the tradition of rock 'n' roll's ever-winding history. But don't confuse this for faux-New-Age blabber--this is street-wise and from the gut, straight from the minds of three men living their art, sacrificing everything and manifesting a boundless sphere of music, ideas, and...

Crazy Dreams Band

War Dream

Holy Mountain

LP VERSION INCLUDES FREE DOWNLOAD COUPON!!! War Dream, the second album from Baltimore's Crazy Dreams Band, is saturated with heaviness, psychedelia, pomp and grit, and noticeably lacking any nostalgia hang-ups. This rock music is refractory and satisfyingly off; put on a slide, manipulated and projected on a screen, or felt through a chain-link fence. Lost love, genocide and forgotten histories collide with raw-dog vocal thundering, slippe ry bass frequencies, adventurous percussion and seductive guitar ripples. Opener "Feels So Good" is a swirling dirge that could be a half-figured-out version of "Carouselambra"; "Awkward for Everyone" showcases recent addition Jorge Martins of Lisbon duo Fish & Sheep playing what sounds like a deflating blow-up Les Paul copy that actually has strings--you've got to hear the killer solo! The side-long "Life Is the Knife" is like a secret ritual from an unreleased Billy Jack sequel where he went back to Vietnam and built a temple that bled the purest opium. Here, Jake Freeman's adventurous sub-frequencies and Nick Becker's saucy space wanderings shine on to break the dawn in half.  War Dream was recorded in three days at Beat Babies in Woodstock, MD, by Chris Freeland (OXES, Frenemies, Long Live Death, Baltimore Rowdies Collective) with heaping platefuls of assistance from his brother Mickey (Bow 'n' Arrow, Height with Friends) and a cat that looked like a dirty snowman.

Doronco Gumo

Old Punks

Holy Mountain

Doronco Gumo is led by Doronco, a bass player most well known for his stints with Les Rallizes Denudes, Suishou no Fune, and Keiji Haino. Translated as "Mud Cloud," the name is actually poetic in a Zen beggar / wandering monk kind of way. On Old Punks, Doronco is joined by members of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, a Frenchman, and an additional female vocalist.  The band uses vocals, bassoon, and trumpet over a see-sawing battle of piano / guitar shrill balanced against warm rhythms. Their avant bar-rock style is not unlike Cinderella's Revenge recorded in the same studio as Vintage Violence with the conscious heartbreak of something like Even Serpents Shine. A bright-to-bummer-and-back-to-bright narrative flows throughout the album's nine songs. Resequenced to include an additional track not on the Japanese CD version, Old Punks nails down something for you didn't know needed to be nailed down.

Yoga

Megafauna

Holy Mountain

Understand this: Yoga dispenses a sinister frailty of howling swells in hissing static that combusts into crawling shock heaps, to the effect of Mayhem performing Twin Peaks incidentals in a prairie recorded by The KLF. A brief description casts them as black metal's answer to Throbbing Gristle. The texture-based rendering of their compositions sails them on a strange sea between song and sound effect as it bobs along the waves like a dead man's bottled message. Aspects of Goblin rehearsals in dead hills is interrupted as Monster Zero carves mountain sides with lightning breath. Oscillating leads pummel into churning riffs as if "Caledonia" was performed in an echo chamber near Lodi, New Jersey. The extrinsic properties of this work may result in disambiguation. Aquarius Records said the follow about their last CD (which was only an EP): "The sound of Yoga takes the lo-fi practice space recordings of grimmest of the black metal outfits and combines it with the murky, muddy, noise-drenched blur of bands like Wold... even further, rendering their sound so muted and lo-fidelity that even when they're blasting furiously, it still sounds like a busted music box or an old black metal 78. And then there's the fact that Yoga spends a good amount of their time not blasting blackly, but instead, crafting synth-heavy Goblin-style film music, all throbbing bass and buzzing synths, creepy minor key melodies, and tons of haunting ambiance. Those songs too are wreathed in a foggy night-on-the-moors sort of murk [that] ties those...

Cloudland Canyon

Silver Tongue Sisyphus

Holy Mountain

Recorded in Brooklyn, Germany, and Memphis, Silver Tongued Sisyphus follows Cloudland Canyon's well-received Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004 released on the Tee Pee label. The album's secular calls to prayer with humming, looping, and loping ambient passages are interspersed with bursting rhythmic energy and agitated guitar lines. Pulling influences from the foggy ether of generations past, the band stakes their claim to the shadows of the cult musical culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s German underground scene. Live shows sound like unauthorized soundtracks to netherworld versions of The Swimmer or The Scorceror. Originally released on vinyl in an edition of 96 copies, Silver Tongued Sisyphus is now available once again. "... a stunning neo-psychedelic experience where the musical spirits of This Heat, Ash Ra Temple, and The Mahavishnu Orchestra are evoked, celebrated, and absorbed inside Uhlhorn and Wojan's shifting cloud-formations of sound." --The Wire "The group's debut album Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004 is a starry-eyed psych-rock opus with mystical aspirations and a Ph.D in minimalist-drone composition. It's as if they have read the world's great religious tomes and studied drones under master minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Terry Riley." --Alternative Press  "Bolstered into a deep, mystical vein of sonic poetry and rare melodic beauty, they make most freak folkies sound like fey daisy-pickers." --The Stranger

Monosov, Dj Ilya And The 21st Century Punks

New Music

Holy Mountain

Like the best bit of bacon wrapped around the best cut of beef pinned with a handcut toothpick, these four sets of collage arrive pressed to vinyl--eliminating the potential confusion about how many multiple media players have been running. Grunts and gurggles hump circuit-bent glitches in the way an inhuman claw might select a fannypack from the racks of Forever XXI. The fact is: only one hand is needed to clap on a drum machine.  DJ Ilya Monosov & the 21st Century Punks are too rhythmic to call noise, too chaotic to call music. This four-track 12-inch is nothing like Nurse With Wound while sounding like an American counterpart. Akin to Plunderphonics without obvious gags. Best guess, this is what spying Martians hear coming from Earth.

Ferraro, James

Clear

Holy Mountain

Clear and Discovery were originally released as two companion CDRs by James Ferraro (of the whole Skaters / Lamborghini Crystal / 90120 / Splash / Nirvana axis) and comprise the August 1974 (Taj-Mahal Travellers) of his discography. Both albums contain absolutely beautiful whirling hall-of-knives-style synth drone that makes one want to reference Klaus Schulze or Bobby Beausoleil. Clear bursts with flam beats and a cluster of melodies muffled like a calliope wrapped in a soggy tarp, while Discovery is comparable to Daft Punk's album of the same name but played in reverse at 16 rpm through a boombox in a boiler room.  These two records contain the sounds of pulling out with tapping beats of fluid dropped on a soft convertible top (open), much like those fictitious Giorgio Moroder songs for the upcoming Olympics in Atlantis or a reworking of that award-winning song from Revenge of the Nerds--or is it "Wonderwall"--into a theme for a future ski jump at the Great Pyramids. Are you ready for the lizard people to compete? Now available as mastered vinyl LPs with a digital download.  "Ferraro creates a new age for the new agers. You know that crazy Pillsbury commercial where the dough boy lies back and drifts across this white background with ecstatic floating music sweeping him along? Well it's not far off, at least in effect. It all meets somewhere between Arvo Part, Terry Riley, and the Healing Sounds of Crystal Bowls, only as interpreted through immense draperies of washed-out production." --Ear-Conditioned Nightmare

Ferraro, James

Discovery

Holy Mountain

Clear and Discovery were originally released as two companion CDRs by James Ferraro (of the whole Skaters / Lamborghini Crystal / 90120 / Splash / Nirvana axis) and comprise the August 1974 (Taj-Mahal Travellers) of his discography. Both albums contain absolutely beautiful whirling hall-of-knives-style synth drone that makes one want to reference Klaus Schulze or Bobby Beausoleil. Clear bursts with flam beats and a cluster of melodies muffled like a calliope wrapped in a soggy tarp, while Discovery is comparable to Daft Punk's album of the same name but played in reverse at 16 rpm through a boombox in a boiler room.  These two records contain the sounds of pulling out with tapping beats of fluid dropped on a soft convertible top (open), much like those fictitious Giorgio Moroder songs for the upcoming Olympics in Atlantis or a reworking of that award-winning song from Revenge of the Nerds--or is it "Wonderwall"--into a theme for a future ski jump at the Great Pyramids. Are you ready for the lizard people to compete? Now available as mastered vinyl LPs with a digital download.  "Ferraro creates a new age for the new agers. You know that crazy Pillsbury commercial where the dough boy lies back and drifts across this white background with ecstatic floating music sweeping him along? Well it's not far off, at least in effect. It all meets somewhere between Arvo Part, Terry Riley, and the Healing Sounds of Crystal Bowls, only as interpreted through immense draperies of washed-out production." --Ear-Conditioned Nightmare

Mammatus

S/t

Holy Mountain

Named for the ominous clouds that are usually seen after the worst of a thunderstorm has passed, Mammatus is a lean sludge machine that shoots giant burritos (carne asada) from their instruments. They have no known enemies in the natural world and share symbiotic relationships with hamburgers, sub-goths and dragons. Their album was mastered by a wizard so mighty he has no name. They assure you that his abilities far exceed those of any "terrestrial" engineer, for they send the tapes back in time to be woven with spells of the nameless one that were spoken of before rock could speak. So, what was the last record you bought that was recorded in "Dragonfidelity" or "Drag-Fi?"

Wooden Shjips

Dos

Holy Mountain

***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!!  How many music bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb? None, computer screens are backlit. Here we have a Wooden Shjips record the world saw coming--not titled II, Sophomore, or Second, but Dos. The group maintains its strident pace like a silverfish rave in perfectly folded bedsheets, with more bounce per ounce as life goes jogging with bopping heads and digging heels. Five numbers whose style might fit as cozily at La Cave in 1968 as at Ibiza in 1988. Natural loops with just enough vocals take you where the khakis and the cut-offs play together.  Dos sounds off as the inauguration speech of a group accepting the minimalist psych bop crown that once adorned the likes of Neu and Loop. If possible, their brand of whipping fuzz hooks have gotten groovier. "Motorbike" begins the program with an attack of bleeding organ and cicada chirps--a wiley, wheel-spinning cloud-kicker indeed. "For So Long" introduces the hip-swayed, shoulder-dropping dance steps of the album. At this point, the guitar delivers a concise Fogerty / Karoli vibe of stiff and loose kraut blues. Closing side one is the stop-motion go-go anthem "Down by the Sea." Imagine yourself in the back of a cigarette boat with Alan Vega and Takashi Mizutani circling Easter Island. Smile as you melt under the glare of their mirrored sunglasses staring your own face back at you.  The needle drops on side two. Beyond the dawning of the age...

La Otracina

Blood Moon Riders

Holy Mountain

Don't be fooled by the King Diamond-style logo. This liberation of inverted progressive surf rock from psychedelic epithets plays like a fan-fiction account of Dick Dale's meeting with Sonny Sharrock at Amon Duul II's rehearsal space to discuss the "post-rock" epidemic. Unlike so many other instrumental soundtrack bands who employ ho-hum, choose-your-own-adventure tactics, La Otracina sticks to the rails of their own twisting corkscrews and spine-snapping dives. This work does not lend itself to the standard-fare apathy of background music. Blood Moon Raiders is its own ride, with its own ticket, and the doors are locked after take-off.  Pinch some headphones to your dome and situate the rest of your form into a beanbag as you navigate the fibrous landscape of a black-light poster. The tracks flow from a subtle new-age contingency to violent bouts with Laotian street gangs. Remember to pack a sack lunch and strap on a machete before mounting this electric buck-bot. Don't fret--the intention has always been to crack open your skull or drown you.

Payne, Adam

Organ

Holy Mountain

Were you one of those kids who was distraught after discovering Black Flag was more influenced by ZZ Top and The Grateful Dead than The MC5 or Stooges? Well, you might wanna strap on a stronger carabiner before scaling these cliffs because you're more likely to discover pop gems than a stoned mystic in a cave. Organ is an anthem of Southern California patriotism with all the thrills of dragging in Lodi and peyote-munched soul-wandering in Silver Lake. This album is power-pop perfection, the Paisley Underground finally done right.  There's a big difference between playing every instrument and being a one-man band. Suffice it to say that Adam Payne is a one-man band akin to Emitt Rhodes broadcast over solid-state transmitters. Maybe Grant Hart has the better voice while Bob Mould churned out better lyrics. What if the Kirkwoods melded into a creature that couldn't punch itself? Adam Payne, as one band, has made an LP that matches the chops and hooks of Captain Trundlow's Sky Company or the bits of The Only Ones that are consistently lifted. The rumors that Payne was asked to produce the next Mudcrutch album have yet to be confirmed. Organ opens like Up The Academy but ends like Zabriskie Point in frustrated abandon that only leaves the listener wiser. 

Country Teasers / Ezee Tiger

Split (W.O.A.R. / W.O.A.)

Holy Mountain

Anthony Ezee Tiger is this one-man band dude from Michigan. He also plays in Paik, but his Butthole Surfers-esque solo shows convinced more than one guy that he's a for-real fucking powerhouse. On his side of this split, he takes one-man plod and somehow turns on the Health and Efficiency vibe without encouraging a bunch of vegans or non-smokers to give their opinions. And then it all of a sudden bangs down into a little pop song. Who wants ice cream?  "... a pandemonium of murky feedback, speaker-thrashing guitar and bass riffs, and slurred vocals. Ezee's blossoming walls of sound consume each other whole, belching out the byproducts through trash-bin electronics. And yet somehow it all comes together with catchy melodies that threaten to lodge dangerously long in your memory." --The Stranger  Country Teasers have twelve songs on their side. They might have thought it was a Fall record, but since the Nimbus plant closed, no one could really cram that much tunage on one side of a record--until now! Ben Wallace and company not only keep banging the door and plinking and plonking, but get cozy enough to make you feel that the whole cowboy hat thing's not a fluke.

Crazy Dreams Band

S/t

Holy Mountain

Grooves that confuse? Crazy Dreams Band presents its guitar-free "thug pop" dirge with creeping crooning and brassless horn blasts. Like the best Giallo films, you'll be as turned on as you are terrified. As tender as Coco Rosie, as brutal as Magik Markers, and as cool as Royal Trux' Radio/Video vibe. Imagine if Bruce Springsteen and Martin Rev collaborated on songs for Patti Smith or Catherine Ribeiro. Channeled inner voices are expelled as cave anthems into neon text in Linear A, while bones poke through the skin atop a witch's brew of venomous sludge.   Crazy Dreams Band is the urban tribal music that survives whatever "end is nigh" theory you choose. They're jamming this music outside the thunder dome, beneath the planet of the apes, and the day after tomorrow.  Members of RELIGIOUS KNIVES, LEXIE MOUNTAIN, MOUTHUS.

Zomes

S/t

Holy Mountain

A lot of people mention the "L" word when talking (or whispering) about Asa Osborne. It's not Lungfish we're talking about here (he was their guitar player), but rather "Levine," as in Keith Levine. It seems Mr. Osborne witnessed a fight with Keith Levine as one of the combatants. Levine subsequently lost a tooth and--this is the strange part--Osborne grabbed it and has used the tooth as a guitar pick ever since. Weird.  Zomes' self-titled album is full of beautiful Seesselberg-sized chunks of loop-like melodies that effervesce while Osborne brings them to life. There is a cinematic quality to the material here that recalls "library music," East German Indianerfilmen soundtracks, and even Blues Control at their most humid.

Shining Path

Chocolate Gasoline

Holy Mountain

***Chocolate Gasoline is the new 12-inch from THE SHINING PATH. While their eponymous album exists in the world of post-SST black-clad psychedelia and noise, the group decided that they had gone far enough in said direction and realigned themselves. Chocolate Gasoline has a less harsh demeanor, à la Accelerator-era Royal Trux if the Stones-meter was set a little closer to "Under Cover of the Night" than "Dancin' with Mr. D," especially on the opener, "Lonely Hearts Killer." The remaining tracks stretch out via influences ranging from hard dub, early PiL, no wave, block-banging hip hop, and kraut-dance/industrial, if one could imagine a version of Viva more about bikinis than white overalls. Nonetheless, all of this can be played with real instruments and "rocked out" in a live setting, which is what the group intends to do.

Aufgehoben

Khora

Holy Mountain

Khora is the fifth full-length by Aufgehoben. Since the release of their previous album, Messidor, the group has somewhat relaxed their strict commitment to anonymity by allowing their names to be known and photos to be taken, and even playing a few well-received live shows. Messidor may have been mellower, but the progression displayed on Khora leads one to believe that full-on rock may be in the cards for this group, who have seemingly removed the elbow patches from their jackets and rolled up their sleeves for good.  The album begins with three short pieces, sonic examples of texture meeting metal--like a djinn trapped in molten gold, attempting to burst free from his cage but only managing to express rage via infinie temporary sculptures ranging from the nightmares of the Muetter Museum to futuristic expressions of nature not yet captured by a conscious eye. The final track is 28 minutes of pure glory that will surely become one of noise rock's classics. Massively blown-out and beautifully recorded, "Jederfursich" lays down twin mirrors side by side as a model of infinity is allowed to morph through sounds that recall the energy of existence and the sand of time itself.

Eden Express

Que Amors Que

Holy Mountain

Eden Express is a trio comprised of Kip Uhlhorn (Cloudland Canyon), Kelly Uhlhorn, and John David Lovelace. Their debut is a lush, tropical album formed by a decadent love of drink, the non-erotic possibilities of equestrian ownership, and a finely tuned sense of the dark supernatural side of things. It's like castle rock with warm, white sand beaches!  While most groups form to play together with recording an eventual if somewhat unnecessary goal, Eden Express was formed to record this album first and to become a band second. That they so wildly succeed is a testament to the magic used and manipulated here. The witchy beauty of Eden Express recalls Pan y Regalis, Charlie and Esdor, and early tropicalia albums. Pour yourself and a friend some cocktails, sit by the pool, and try to become lucid as your bare, tanned forearms grow beyond 17 feet long.

Wooden Shjips

Vol. 1

Holy Mountain

***Available on vinyl again!!!  The Wooden Shjips' earliest material was released on vinyl, pressed in small quantities that were either free or hard to come by and are now hopelessly out of print. Who are we to keep you away from the rush of "Shrinking Moon for You"? Vol. 1 collects all the tracks from the free 10-inch, the Dance, California 7-inch, and the SOL 7-inch.  The band will be out playing live, in their own nimble way, this spring and summer, road-testing new material for their next record.  "... [T]ight-wound repeato psych guitar raunch with spoony (maybe even imaginary) percussion, surprisingly Rev-like keys, and vocals buried under burning driftwood. It's a nice one." --Byron Coley, Wire   "... Wooden Shjips seem to have their wagon hitched to a post psychedelic/punk damaged Krautrock environ that just not enough people are astute enough to homestead." --Tom Lax, Siltblog  "Like fellow locals Comets on Fire or English space rockers Hawkwind or Spaceman 3, Wooden Shjips' magic is created by a mix of pummeling hypnotic grooves and otherworldly guitar that sounds like Hendrix strung out in a methadone clinic." --Andy Tennille, HARP  "'Dance, California' locks onto a three-note, twangy, nuclear beach groove and hangs out there for the duration, guitar slashery (in the single-note sweepstakes for a good long while) shooting over the top like artillery fire. On the other side, an atmospheric, slow drone and steady pulse frame blistery lead and what's that, vocals? Oh,...

Julie Mittens, The

Julie Mittens

Holy Mountain

The Julie Mittens are a Dutch power trio who specialize in extended improvisation at extreme volume. Inspired by John Coltrane's The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording and the knowledge that Fushitsusha has more to do with Thelonius Monk than Blue Cheer, guitarist Aart-Jan Schakenbos, bassist Michael van Dam, and drummer Leo Fabriek consistently wreak havoc with lavish, textural, speaker-blowing meltdown jams; they surge with psychedelic power and a stellar rhythm section on the four studio recordings here.  About the name--it allegedly means something to the members of the group, but they won't say what. A Dutch thing? Just don't ask the guitar player to see his pick.  "... guitarist Aart-Jan Schakenbos, bassist Michael van Dam and drummer Leo Fabriek walk a harrowing path between amplifier anarchy and balanced interaction, never failing to make the two meet. Schakenbos provides the skyscraping as he warps and mutilates single notes with the centrifugal force of massive feedback. Van Dam either drops terrifying bass bombs that fill the vacuum Schakenbos leaves in his wake, drones ominously, or dialogues. Fabriek, however, harnesses the others' energy, as he resists the urge to flail away, and instead inserts a fill when it increases tension, thumps steadily when a groove is needed, or colors when space beckons." --Matthew Wuethrich, Dusted  "A kind of spiritual anarchy surfaces through the distorted bedlam, illuminating a full spectrum of frequencies which gives their most feverish moments the effect of coma-inducing psychical bliss landing somewhere between head banging and...

Who's Your Favorite Son God

Out Of Body Diva

Holy Mountain

"... one LP what got a lot've play while I was gone was the debut by Who's Your Favorite Son, God? and man, is it a keeper! See'em live down at SXSW was great, but the record fans the flames of hybridized (post) prog-swoggle and (proto) metal-mania like just about nobody else. What with this talk about brain transplants 'n' all, Who's Your Favorite Son, God? could almost be described as a union of Magma (mind) and MX-80 Sound (matter). I don't know about you, but I was jonesin' to hear somethin screamin' after Crowd Conrol (to no avail) and hey, if Christian Zander had kidnapped Rich Stim and Bruce Anderson, perhaps Attahk might've sounded as rad as this album. Who's Your Favorite Son, God? ably combine the dramatic and operatic pretense of Magma with the cool, aggressive delivery of MX-80 Sound and if you're thinkin' "that's somethin I gotta hear," you're right. My mom (remember her?) says they sound like Mahavishnu Orchestra should've if they were men (once you hear this you'll know what she means). Even the little Greek dude who delivers my beer opined "everything that Heavy The World isn't, Who's Your Favorite Son, God? is." And who am I to argue with a Greek? They invented civilization, buster! What have you ever done?" --Roland Woodbe, Siltblog