41.

Aufgehoben
Messidor
(Holy Mountain, 2006)

Aufgehoben - the name alone insights thoughts of discordance. And oh, discordant this is. Along with John Wiese’s Soft Punk, Messidor is one of the most incredible patches of dissonance to grace this green earth. I mean these guys are berserk. Messidor is a mechanical beast of, often times, unreasonably punishing proportions. With its grinding, percussive purr, its concrete destroying snarl and all the moments of all-out ballistic assault, Aufgehoben's is the most terrorizing album on this list. However, this isn’t horror music. New jazz for the post post rock era.

-Thistle

Aufgehoben - Khora

Aufgehoben
Khora
(06.2008, Holy Mountain)
Verdict = Pure sonic violence

There is pretty much no end to the wildly invented expletives that played through my head as astounded exclamations while listening to Aufgehoben’s latest piece of complete aural destruction, Khora. I mean, there are some pretty messed up, ridiculously extreme noise records being churned out nowadays, but let me assure you that no one holds a candle to the calculated, grizzled, muscular audio behemoth that lies in the wake of the UK’s Aufgehoben. I am not a regular listener to recordings with the potential of permanent physical damage, both hearing and otherwise, but I have definitely tested the waters with more than a few in the realms of doom, blackness, hardcore, and analog feedback alike and despite the cacophonous depths to which many have mined, Aufgehoben are most certainly the undisputed champions of brutality in sound. 2006’s Messidor was proof enough of that. Khora, Messidor’s “sister” album, is something of a an uncompromised completion of the perfections rendered by its predecessor. Where Messidor spent contained its beats within caged time frames for concentrated carnage, Khora proceeds to let its beast loose, but a little bit more on that in a moment. Khora is separated into four tracks. The opener, “Innocence Oblivion Contempt,” is probably the most concise piece of ferociousness that most people will likely hear in their whole lives. Just over four minutes in length, the track hurdles forth with hellacious guitar squalor and electronic deconstruction pampered with deafening dual drumming. It is a masterpiece in noise and an uncertain mission statement in its potentials. The track flows into “Annex Organon” and “A Bastard Reasoning,” three and ten minutes in length respectively. The first delineates into a swirl of mic’d oddities (shopping cart, bricks) while the second, though still as gruesome as you might expect, shows the largest amount of restraint and minimalism amongst they tracks. The final track, “Jederfursich,” is when the beasts are let loose. Nearing 27 minutes, the track is a single, unedited take of pure, destruction and utter chaos. It is a fairly jaw dropping experience. Taking every ounce of energy imaginable, the band members dive into the piece with unrelenting energy. To try and dissect it would be like attempting to disassemble the metal and limbs tangled together in a 1,000 car pileup. I won’t attempt it here; just recognize that it needs to be heard to be believed. The reason that I find Aufgehoben so attractive, despite its obvious alienating, repellent qualities, has something to do with their method and the heightened air of their recordings. On Khora, you won’t find the more common, uninspiring touchstones of unrelenting, pedal bent feedback or caustic, wretched screaming (no vocals here whatsoever). Aufgehoben are able to create an apocalypse without cheap tricks. Khora presents dignified noise splattered with the purity of jazz and punk and rock. No one ever asked for such a thing, but thank goodness to Aufgehoben for providing – the gold standard of anything that can be considered loud.

-Mr. Thistle

Listen to clips of Khora on Boomkat

Who's Your Favorite Son, God? - Out of Body Diva

Who’s Your Favorite Son, God?
Out of Body Diva
(03.2008, Holy Mountain)
Verdict = this album will break your bones even if your sitting still

It is beginning to actually feel like summer here in Salt Lake City (knock on wood) with snow only falling once every other week or so. Seriously though, for all the Godliness of this place, you would think that we might be able to manage a more consistent weather pattern. Fortunately, Who’s Your Favorite Son, God? is here to manage my temperament rain or shine. Bleating and contorting through their manic, blistering debut on Holy Mountain (after The Julie Mittens I just couldn’t leave HM down for long), Out of Body Diva, is the perfect mind scrambling blitzkriegery with which to reboot to. Chaotic and surging in and out of cohesiveness, WYFSG is impulsive in all the right ways. Improvisationally hectic enough to have you verging on a full body melt down, but right-minded enough to reign you in just before the impending collapse with jagged riffs and gilded hooks. I listen to my fare share of ADHD, spazzed out noise rock, but somehow WYFSG manage to avoid comparisons and are all the better for it. For its short time span, listening to Out of Body Diva is surprisingly exhausting. Like, ‘you’ll physically collapse after listening to it’ exhausting. Seems WYFSG know exactly how far they can push it with their mind altering clatter. Out of Body Diva is a rockin’ exorcism of the highest variety.

-Mr. Thistle

Who's Your Favorite Son, God? on Myspace

The Julie Mittens - Self Titled

The Julie Mittens
The Julie Mittens
(03.2008, Holy Mountain)
Verdict = Ulcer Inducing

First off, The Julie Mittens is an awesome band name. We seem to be a little preoccupied with band names here at FG which is good, because bands names are almost as important as the music… Selling point number two: the release comes to us from the illustrious Holy Mountain imprint. If you aren’t familiar with their catalog already, you should be. Anyway, The Julie Mittens evoke some obvious imagery: femininity or whichever lanky girl that you know named Julie (we’re familiar with a few here at the office), the hand warming products of childhood when fingers are too small to be relegated to their own individual cloth encasing and somehow mittens also remind me of kittens. So over all it is a pretty cute and cuddly scene. The actual musical content of the disc is another story. I just recently completed my final for my literary history class which culminated in a series of essays on all of the literature we had covered in the class. Problem is, I didn’t really read any of the literature we were assigned in class and I definitely didn’t study. The result was about a gallon of acid churning and destroying my stomach as a result of the stress. Essentially, this is the effect that The Julie Mittens music creates. Separated into for extended jams each with corresponding dates as titles (assumedly the date in which they were recorded), The Julie Mittens churn out an assault of improvised aural squalor that screams and screeches so terribly that the already lengthy tracks seem even longer than they actually are. There really isn’t any form here either, no certain movements or composition, just straight for the jugular instrumental abuse. I can see, maybe just an inkling of what the band is trying to accomplish, but overall this is just terrorizing music in a more negative than not way that you will probably never play twice (that is, unless you like stressful final exam situations).

-Mr. Thistle

The Julie Mittens - "April 3 2007"

Wooden Shjips - Self Titled

Wooden Shjips
Wooden Shjips
(09.2007, Holy Mountain)
6.5/10

Hype can get you into a lot of trouble. Voxtrot, for instance, seemed to be the perfect examples of hype as they released three solid EPs in a drawn out period awaiting their debut. Increasingly anticipated, once the album dropped the overwhelming expectation destroyed the mediocre album. Wooden Shjips are in the same boat. Having released two wonderful, limited edition vinyl releases (a 7" and 10") of blaring, sun-baked psych, the band seemed destined for a gloriously lauded debut. But alas, on their self titled debut they have lightened their sound and broken their previous promises. The hazy retro outfit’s extended jams have turned stale, lacking the previous buzz and rumble. The bands ancient 70's grit has also started to resemble, more than idly, The Doors. Simply add a lazy, slightly reverberated psych guitar to Morrison’s vocals and Manzarek’s keyboard and there you go. The potential here is still thrilling which makes the record all that much more disappointing. Not a terrible record by any means, but also not terribly exciting by any measure.

-Mr. Thistle

Wooden Shjips - "We Ask You To Ride" excerpt

Blues Control - Self Titled

Blues Control
Blues Control
(05.2007, Holy Mountain)
8.5/10.0

By the sounds of things "blues control" is the antithesis of what this band has. As skuzz-fuzz, skronk chameleons, any inherent blues the band has seems to be seeping out of the sides. This, I think, is how the band intends it: muddy, contorted sonic soundscapes wrestling with the idea of blues. The duo, featuring Lea Cho on keys and Russ Waterhouse on strings, seem well traveled by including a wide array of world music influences. The music has a serious gipsy or Jamaican vibe to it: I can't quite pin it down as one or the other. The combined circus of fractured blues and inner city Caribbean A.D.D. can also sound unexpectedly robotic. I know this all sounds like some bizarre contradiction of terms. How about you listen to this thing and try and tell me what it is? All I know is that this is a mess and a glorious one at that. Blistering with robotic heart, reggae fever and flame-scorched southern blues; Blues Control seems to be operating under some kind of island zombie-ism that perpetuates their distorted attack like a mindless lust for the taste of human skin. A gorgeous nightmare, Blues Control's self titled, Holy Mountain debut is not to be missed.

-Mr. Thistle

Blues Control – "Blues Control excerpt"

Zodiacs - Gone

Zodiacs
Gone
(2007, Holy Mountain)
8.0/10

Instrumental rock music can be quite a drag sometimes. The prospect of songs whose minutes span into the double digits that features only rock based instrumentation (guitar, bass and drums) can be a dauntingly at the least. The structured, crescendo filled bands usually keep my attention the longest but their formula as been depressingly overplayed in the instrumental post rock world. It is with rarity that the improvisational side of such strikes anything more than apathetic boredom. This is why I was so surprised with Zodiacs! Eschewing the crescendos and going straight for the jugular, Zodiacs have created a series of four scorching psych skronk freak outs bent on improvisation. The idea of the album makes me think that I could be fully understanding of what they have dished up with a 30 second sample from Amazon, but on Gone, Zodiacs have proved me feebly wrong. Sharing members with Hush Arbors, Sunburned Hand of the Man and Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, Zodiacs sound is inspired from the guitar solos of Zepplin and Hendrix combined with the avant-garde leanings of bands like Lightning Bolt and the previously reviewed Comets On Fire. The delicious recordings are mind-blowing in the most positive way and somehow are not laboring to listen to. Gone is noisy psychedelia sent down from the gods of rock.

-Mr. Thistle

Zodiacs - "Road Star Blues"

Aufgehoben - Messidor

Aufgehoben
Messidor
(2006, Holy Mountain)
9.0/10.0

Let me (hopefully) be the first to introduce you to the most violently abrasive noise album of 2006. Yeah, I’m aware that 2006 saw the release of Wolf Eye’s Human Animal, Yellow Swans’ Psychic Secession and even Prurient’s soul destroying Pleasure Ground. Nevertheless, Aufgehoben’s Messidor is the rightful king of them all. Clearly, “noise” can be a divisive topic; well, lets face it, noise can be a repellent topic at best. It is not even a point of possible conversation for most. I don’t tote these statements as a pretension because I share some of the sentiments held by its detractors. However, I also find that some of this so called noise is, in fact, genius. A portion of this movement is the embodiment and natural progression of the true punk/hardcore spirit of old that has all but fizzled into commercial stagnancy. Another part is all geek, harboring the crème de la crème of musical scientists. If you will allow me to be overly and unnecessarily analytical: Noise, as a genre label (and I am aware of the stigma of labeling genres of music, so bear with me), or avant-garde music as a whole, walks a thin line between intellectuality and the most intense ignorance; between the positively inspiring and the absolutely degrading. It’s a razors edge and you are either on it or you aren’t. The trouble is, as a rule, the genre is so heavily washed in reverb and distortion that it can be quite a task to sort through the legitimate artistry and the illegitimate, obnoxious crap. By now it has to be unavoidably clear that I, Mr. Thistle (my obvious birth name, first and last), has a bit of a sweet tooth for the unconventional. It is with this sweet tooth that I would like to humbly assert that Aufgehoben’s Messidor is in fact a work of genius proportions. Coupling both the spirit of a punk/hardcore revolution and the intellect of the most precisely built, artistic audio composition, Messidor drives its ethic, like screws, into your very bones. Aufgehoben’s noise devastation also manages to be incredibly respectable and refreshing by avoiding the now cheap hallmark of screaming through distorted mics that each of the aforementioned bands seems to fall back on. My personal problem with noise music can often be traced back to this method of distorted screaming. While I don’t perceive myself as particularly offendable, this process often leaves me with a more demonic tone than I casually prefer. It turns the composition into shock art which has little relevance in my arena of appreciation. On the other hand, Aufgehoben’s jazzy Sightings via Merzbow attack comes as a robust explosion, making its contemporaries look exceptionally weak in comparison without using any vocals. In fact, Aufgehoben has actual live drumming with the group priding itself on not using electronic processes to make the serious bleating on their records. Initially they went by the name Aufgehoben No Process just for clarification. Messidor is war music surging and softening in the progress of its battles. An absolute statement for the consumers of noise as a genre. If you are reading this line you have completed the longest review that will ever grace these pages and importantly so.

-Mr. Thistle

Aufgehoben – Coanima