cassette craze chronicles XXIII (feat. ANGEL OLSEN, CHAT PILE, CRYPTAE and EXALTATION)

 

I guess it's time for one of these again! Actually I could already write about five new tapes in my collection today, but since I've already shot the picture the fifth will have to wait for part XXIV... Let's start with a regular guest of the series!

ANGEL OLSEN - Big Time (2022)

Is Angel Olsen too schmaltzy? Yes, sometimes she is! Is she too Country on this album? Hell yes, most definitely! Is she too Pop? Does that really matter?
The thing is that the US singer/songwriter appearantly likes to release those singles which make me doubt if the album isn't too something for me, but ultimately I come around loving it. With "Big Time" I'm probably still in the midths of that process, because at least during the first half the Country Kitsch is really front and center here and makes it quite a challenge. However, even though Angel Olsen really milks this cow to exhaustion, she still finds ways to change course just enough and just in time to keep it interesting. My favorite parts are of course those, where she jums from the intimate to the noisy and orchestral like in the chorus of "Go Home".
While I doubt that I will love "Big Time" as a whole as much as "All Mirrors", "Whole New Mess" or even the "Aisles" EP, I applaud the artist on the dedication to find a new specific sound for each of her releases. Also especially the B side actually features a couple of extraordinarily strong songs.

CHAT PILE - God's Country (2022)

While we're already at Americana, let's get on with this harsh and real description of "God's Country"! Ok, Chat Pile may push the limits of that term, since they are actually playing a brutal bastard of Noise Rock, Crust and Sludge Metal with a very discernably shouting and speaking vocalist, who channels a lot of palpable anger.
I haven't done the math to find out whether the band deserves the exact amount of hype it receives right now, but I know that already the second track "Why" had me completely sold on the album, just with the simple truth and honest delivery of its message alone: "Why? Why? Why do people have to live outside? I couldn't survive out on the streets Why? Why do people have to live outside? I couldn't survive out on the streets I've never had to push All my shit around In a shopping cart Have you?" You seldom hear a cry for social justice delivered so on point.
Combined with Chat Pile's unfiltered raw energy and their surprisingly fresh take on brutal noise music "God's Country" couldn't be a heavier crushing hammer of anxiety - or a more desperate document of our time.

EXALTATION - Under Blind Reasoning (2022)
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]

Every musical wave which has receded eventually makes its comeback. And if there's one of those I can fully get behind it's the recent rise of Death Metal in all its glorious forms. Not that I am immersing myself deeply in it or would buy a signifant number of albums... but it's just a comfortable  feeling to know that the real deal is out there alive and kicking - and spitting out albums like "Under Blind Reasoning", which in its core is probably eighty percent pure Morbid Angel "Gateways To Annihilation" worship. And since this filthy New Zealand Death Metal horde just absolutely excels at the emulation of the old school masters, adds some sick modern dissonant touches and fills the remaining twenty percent with great original ideas, this short but sweet onslaught simply is nothing but fun. Just what I want my good old classic Death metal to be!

CRYPTAE - Capsule (2022)

Same label as Exaltation (Sentient Ruin Laboratories), but a a totally different take on the Death Metal revival. It's not the first time that Kees Peerdeman and René Aquarius smashed the idea of Death Metal to pieces and rebuild it as something sicker, crunchier and somehow even more menacing. Their middle finger to genre expectations however has grown longer in the two years since "Nightmare Traversal".
The duo incorporates more unlikely influences, even going as far as pairing the best recent Metal revival (Death Metal, duh!) with the one noone in the whole wide world ever wanted... yes I'm talking about the deservedly despised return of urgh... I don't even want to type it... Nu Metal.
And because these guys are the musical extremist sickos they are, it's of course brainmeltingly awesome anyway. More than ever Cryptae's over the top cranked to twelve sound really doesn't have any blueprint. My best comparison wouldn't even be one which I think sounds very similar. But all in all the furor, madness and variety of "Capsule" gives me an overall feeling which is quite close to listening to Wormrot's "Hiss". Plus that special Dead Neanderthals fuck everything avantgarde note of course.
Cryptae are just a very special kind of bleurgh. And I love it! Definitely one of the most unique and very best extreme metal albums of 2022.  

cassette craze chronicles XVI (feat. ANGEL OLSEN, GOZ, SORDIDE)

I'm trying to hold myself back a little with music purchases (well, guess how successful I am with that), so it took a while for this new installment of my cassette craze chronicles. But here we are again!

GOZ - Domus (2022)

A bassist plays a solo.

No, it's not a setup for a bad musician joke, but the actual content of this album by Goz, also know as Conçalo Almeida, whose work with several bands and projects (among them Albatre and Spinifex) I've  already covered here. With the help of some effects he has created an intense and interesting work of experimental drone. It's clearly made for fans of the genre or the farer verges of jazz. For those the two A-side tracks "Epicurus" and "Domus" offer a quite unique characteristic voice. On the B-side things get a little more noisy and atmospheric at the same time, as in "Sinius" Goz is joined by a friendly bloke called Torture Corpse on synths and knobs and stuff (I guess).
A great buzzing, swelling, scratching piece of free-form music. Nicely packaged, I only wish there was a way to optically differantiate both sides of the tapes. That always bothers me little - and is of course also a common vinyl annoyance.

SORDIDE - Les Idées Blanches (2021)

Do I even want to talk about this album in detail? The French trio Sordide is going to perform it at Roadburn only two weeks from now, but it's going to happen parallel to Jo Quail's "The Cartographer", which is quite mandatory for me. You know the great Judas Priest hit "Victim Of Clashes", right?

Well, this album still is of course a great banger. The tape version not being the most typical WV Sorcerer Productions release, this is a pretty "big" and modern sounding black metal album, which often gives me vibes similar to classic Samael and Behemoth, yet also - mostly subtly - hints at Blut Aus Nord, dissonant death metal and dreamy blackgaze. Awesome!

ANGEL OLSEN - Aisles (2021)

No, it's now the newest idea out there. Among many others Miley Cyrus has done it actually quite convincing. Long before her Atrocity have done it quite atrocious.

Yes, this EP is a throwback to the 1980s featuring five more or less schlimm hits. "Gloria" (Laura Branigan), "Eyes Without A Face" (Billy Idol), "Forever Young" (Alphaville), you name it! But Angel Olsen's lush yet still minimalistic synth - plus the occasional cello or guitar - renditions  of these song makes you forget that you have heard enough of this for a lifetime. Her emotional but never knödelig voice doesn't hurt either. The laconic lana del reyish sluggishness in Men Without Hats' "Safety Dance" also suits her.
The only track I can't really get warm with is "If You Leave", probably because the original by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark already reminds me too much of Nena's "99 Luftballons" in certain passages.

All in all the roughly twenty-five minutes of this EP still remain an entertaining and given the subject matter astonishingly intriguing affair.

cassette craze chronicles II (feat. A/LPACA, ANGEL OLSEN, DHIDALAH, HIERONYMUS DREAM, LANA DEL REY, SOW DISCORD and THROWING BRICKS)

 

Still nothing to see here. Just a bunch of recently bought tapes, including some purchases from last Bandcamp Friday.

But let's start this with an emotional double whammy of my almost-namesake Angel Olsen:

ANGEL OLSEN - All Mirrors (2019)

I've had this one on my long I-should-get-this-one-day-list since it came out in 2019. Since that was before I started using this medium again, I surely wouldn't have bought it on tape. But now with a song titled "New Love Cassette" did I even have a different choice anymore?

Having released several works between the realms of reduced, almost folky singer/songwriter material and equally guitar-centered indie rock, "All Mirrors" was the album, where Olsen dialed up bombast and production to the maximum. The larger than life big sounds and strings could almost wash a lesser artist's performance away, but Angel Olsen sits in it very comfortably and uses especially the epic vintage arrangements to her full advantage to create a sparkling experience which channels the emotional integrity of Emma Ruth Rundle through the lens of Shirley Bassey.
Sincere, cinematic, huge!

ANGEL OLSEN - Whole New Mess (2020)

As big, shiny and glamourous "All Mirrors" had been, the album never fully relied on its fassade, but was rather an experiment in how far Angel Olsen could takes the songs, which were initially written just with her voice and guitar, into this aesthetic direction without "losing" them.

The raw and intimate "Whole New Mess" seems like the radical counterdraft. A break-up album, recorded inside a church, using the room's acoustics to create distorted, dirty echoes. Even though it's technically a rather stripped-down recording of mostly the same songs with slightly altered titles, the sonic imperfections and underlying depressive tone make it feel much heavier than "All Mirrors".

In fact the recording of "Whole New Mess" predates the previously released work, so you could view this as a demo version. The term could be misinterpreted as diminishing though. Which would be a shame, because this is in no way a "lesser" version. Just a very intense, different take. I think I might actually even like this a little more. Both albums are great, no question.

A/LPACA - Make It Better (2021)

There's also no question that the debut album from these punky Italian krautsters ist great, because d'oh, I just reviewed it two weeks ago. I broke my promise to order it on violet vinyl though. You know why. If you dig Karkara, Slift and the "Nonagon Infinity" direction of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, do yourself a favour and through this into your tapedeck!

DHIDALAH - No Water (2017)

The five year old tape from the Japanese power trio Dhidalah, which I was lucky to find an affordable copy of in the Discogs shop of Burning World Records, feels familiar for different reasons, as these two heavy stoner doom metal spacerock crossover jams refresh the memories of a killer Roadburn show in 2018. Ripper!

THROWING BRICKS - What Will Be Lost (2020)

And now lets get just a megaton angrier with a release I ordered on last  Bandcamp Friday from the leading tape label in my young collection, Tartarus Records.

The sludgy, droning blackened post hardcore doom quintet Throwing Bricks proves that Dutch shit smells the nastiest. The nine tracks of "What Will Be Lost" are a journey through everything distorted and oppressive. Oathbreaker, Cult Of Luna, Mizmor, Sunn O))), Vattnet Viskar, their label mates Farer and in their melodic moments also Alcest are all names this multi-faceted ferocious beast brings to mind. Crushing, noisy, desperate, overwhelming. A punch into the face which disintegrates it like the one on the cover artwork.

SOW DISCORD - Quiet Earth (2021)

Continuing with the punishing art of discomfort, the list of bands from which the industrial black noise project Sow Discord recruits its guest musicians on the dystopian (or probably rather realistic/pragmatic) stocktaking "Quiet Earth", already reads like the promise of a world of pain: The Body, Primitive Man, My Disco. Fuck!
Somewhere in the sweet easy listening spot between JK Flesh, Merzbow and early Laibach vibes, yet with its own variation of dark spoken words vocals, this album wants you to rightfully hate humanity and does a pretty good job at it. But come on, David Coen, the man behind the rusty spikey curtain, is also the electronics guy of Australian doom steamrollers Whitehorse. So what else can you really expect but brilliant bleakness!

HIERONYMUS DREAM - Clairvoyance (2020)

Too much oppression now? Need someone to lift you up again?

Just when I thought I had already spend enough money on Bandcamp Friday and the week before, here come the sodding Psych Lovers on facebook guiding my attention to a special super-limited re-release of last year's debut EP "Clairvoyance" from the Greek instrumental band Hieronymus Dream, which included not only the "Weird Beard Tapes" strip for braggers, a beer mat and a nice t-shirt with a depiction of said beer mat, but above all with "Second Trail Of Alcyone" a new 13 minute bonus track on the B-Side.

What made me immediately buy this however is the sweet crystal-clear and warm sound. This floyd-fueled kraut engine runs so smoothly... you just tie yourself to its rear with a yarn thread and float in its wind like a happy kite in love. "Dream" in the band's name approved!

And while we're already up in the air now...

LANA DEL REY - Chemtrails Over The Country Club (2021)

Damn, eight tapes is a lot to talk about for such a little collective review. And after all that experimental and krauty and noisy mainstream stuff, I'm glad to finally support the underdogs once more and close this post with the new tape of a promising young American singer, who I really believe will one day be selling her albums also on CDs and vinyl all over the world.

It's a new Lana Del Rey album, so the expectations are pretty much set - and met. "Chemtrails Over The Country Club" starts close to where "Norman Fucking Rockwell" left off, with Del Rey's hightened pop persona equally ripened to a state that expertly balances the naiveté of her ex-lolita image and her typical piling of pop culture references with a healthy dose of cynicism - and above all a flawless vocal performance and damn good instrumental arrangements, which leave nothing to be desired and feel even more like one consistent band throughout the whole album this time.

The "features", which were a mixed bag on "Lust For Life" are back again, but this time Lana's three singer/songwriter sisters Nikki Lane, Weyes Blood and Zella Day, who join her on "Breaking Up Slowly" and even close the album on the Joni Mitchell cover "For Free", fit right into the organic, dreamy, nostalgic folk ballad appeal of this once again perfect summation of how great pop music can actually be.

There are brutal earworm battles being fought between Lana and Angel Olsen in my head right now for sure.