Skullflower - Form Destroyer

They make your bones shiver and HUM.

"Skullflower was the flagship band of the Broken Flag collective, a group of experimental noise rock bands from the U.K. (most notably Ramleh, Total, and Sunroof!) that often swapped ideas and personnel. Led by guitarist Matthew Bower, the highly prolific Skullflower boasted the largest cult following of the bunch, with a sound based on sludgy, Black Sabbath-style riffs overlaid with feedback, fuzzed-out guitar noise, and throttling rhythms, all played at an ungodly volume. Always an improvisational outfit, their textured noise freak-outs grew increasingly free-form over the course of their career, moving farther and farther away from even loose definitions of "rock." Skullflower claimed a broad range of influences in addition to the aforementioned Sabbath: heavy psychedelia (Blue Cheer, et al.), Krautrock, classical avant-gardists (John Cage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley), early industrial music (Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten, Whitehouse), and noise rockers from the American indie world (Sonic Youth, Big Black, the Butthole Surfers). Despite a clear association with industrial music, Skullflower never employed much tape manipulation or electronic instrumentation, preferring a standard guitar/bass/drums lineup. The results often drew comparisons to bands like Savage Republic, Nurse With Wound, and New Zealand's Dead C, and were an avowed influence on bands as diverse as Bardo Pond and Godflesh.Skullflower was formed in London in 1987, growing out of guitarist Matthew Bower's previous band, Total (which subsequently turned into a solo side project). Skullflower's early core members were Bower, drummer Stuart Dennison (the only other constant besides Bower), and bassist/guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn. The lineup was fairly fluid, however, especially early on; other contributors included guitarist Gary Mundy (also the leader of Ramleh), bassist Alex Binnie, bassist/drummer Stephen Thrower (also of Coil), and auxiliary bassist/guitarist/drummer Anthony DiFranco (also known as JFK). Initially recording for the Broken Flag label, a community enterprise that also handled Ramleh and Total, Skullflower made their recorded debut with the 1988 EP Birthdeath, and followed it with the full-length Form Destroyer in 1989. Like much of their subsequent output, both releases were pressed in extremely limited quantities. Material from both was included on 1990's Ruins, the group's first release on Jaworzyn's Shock label; several tracks appeared in remixed form.The contentious mixing process for Skullflower's next release, 1990's Xaman, spelled the end of Jaworzyn's involvement in the group. Bower subsequently recruited Anthony DiFranco to take over the full-time bass duties, and this trio recorded 1992's IIIrd Gatekeeper for Godflesh guitarist Justin Broadrick's HeadDirt label; they also toured as Godflesh's opening act that fall. Two more albums followed in 1993: Last Shot to Heaven, on Noiseville, and Obsidian Shaking Codex, on RRR. By this time, DiFranco was decreasing his involvement in the group, and eventually left altogether to record as Ax; his place was filled by official second guitarist Russell Smith, formerly of Terminal Cheesecake.Hereafter, Skullflower concentrated on free-form noise improv to a greater degree than ever before. 1994's Carved Into Roses, on VHF, featured guest vocals from Philip Best (also of Ramleh and Whitehouse), plus Casio squiggles from Simon Wickham-Smith. 1995 was a prolific year even for Skullflower: Argon (issued on Freek) added horn players John Godbert and Tim Hodgkinson to the overall din, while Infinityland (a second effort for HeadDirt) again welcomed Best and Wickham-Smith, and the live Adieu, All You Judges (back on Broken Flag) captured a joint performance with Ramleh. 1996's Transformer was released on the prominent, garage-oriented indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry, and marked a quieter, more ambient direction for the band, complete with strings. It was followed later that year by the similar This Is Skullflower, which appeared on VHF and featured Godbert on piano, as well as third guitarist Richard Youngs. Following that release, Matthew Bower opted to concentrate on his other bands, the even more improvisational Sunroof! and Total, and retired the Skullflower name.Bower and Dennison resurrected the group in 2003, recording Exquisite Fucking Boredom for the tUMULt label along with guitarist Mark Burns and bassist Steve Martin; it was co-produced by Neil Campbell (Vibracathedral Orchestra, ex-Total) and Colin Potter (Nurse With Wound)." - S Huey

FD

Ruins.

Stonehenge.


Hyderomastgroningem.


Burning Stone.

For Mr.Diaz-Algaro:
"Ruins are the brainchild of drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, one of Japan's most original and fiercely independent musicians. He formed the band in the summer of 1985, originally intending to be a power trio, but when the guitarist didn't show for their first rehearsal, he bumped Ruins down to a rhythm-section-only duo.

Ruins produce a unique fusion of punk and progressive rock. Yoshida has stated that while he admires punk's energy, he has no desire to play pure punk, and in fact grew up on a steady diet of prog bands such as Genesis, ELP, and Gentle Giant. However, his true inspiration came from France's Magma. Magma's trademark odd-metered motives, faux operatic signing, and especially Christian Vander's extroverted drumming have certainly made their way into Yoshida's consciousness, although the jazzy undertones and relatively atmospheric group sound did not. From an early point, Ruins appealed to the avant-garde and punk listener more than the more traditional 'progger'. On their first recordings, they teamed up with NYC experimental sax-icon John Zorn, and would later put out albums on his Tzadik label. The Ruins sound is dense mix of hardcore punk, prog theatrics, and free-improv. Some critics have used the term 'jazzcore', but that seems inadequate. There really is no describing the duo's sound."



throw out your hella & lightning bolt cd-r's

Jesus Lizard - Head/Pure

The almighty Jesus Lizard. Need I say more?

If you had lips

Gravitar - You Must First Learn to Draw The Real

Like Fushitsusha, Harry Pussy, Mainliner, Skullflower and Chrome, Gravitar took Rock to its logical conclusion of utter extremity, enveloping their massive onslaughts in debauched, raging Sonic Miasma. True Motherfuckers of the netherworld, opening your Third Eye to unfathomable, Blakean visions. Respect.

"A set of rarities and unreleased tracks from 1996 make up You Must First Learn To Draw The Real (Monotremata, 2000), a collection that often matches the power and intensity of their masterpieces. These improvised jams transcend psychedelic rock. Often they sound like a guitar transcription of John Coltrane's and Sun Ra's cosmic-jazz suites. Geoff Walker's epic guitar runs the gamut of Hendrixiana. Eric Cook's drumming is sometimes the cathartic destruction that allows for rebirth and sometimes the quiet observer of a cataclysm of biblical proportions. The other guitar's carpet bombing sets a background for the act. Night Dub is a hypnotic piece that lays a steady, disjointed rhythm for the guitar to drop cascades of metallic tones. The band exhausts its cacophonous repertory in the sublimely raw Blues For Charlie. The ferocious, frenzied, propulsive maelstrom of URR ranks among the most intense rock and roll attacks of all times. The sixteen-minutes opus Rocket To Dearborn is an ever fainting raga that centers on one guitar's wall of reverbs and squeaks. Contrary to first impression, these are carefully orchestrated pieces that employ guitar effects in a scientific way and match it to mathematically calculated rhythms. The ebullient psychedelia of the early albums has been supplanted by a far more refined, even pretentious, art." - Scaruffi

URRRR

Noxagt - The Iron Point

Norwegian power trio consisting of bass, viola and drums, they bring your daughter to the slaughter via destructive viola drones, massive bass riffage and Valhalla rhythms ready to make your living quarters the stuff of forgotten ruins.

"Noxagt started as another Brandsdal-related home-documented vision, with short bursts of maximum confusion plotted over a handful of 7” singles. Their first album, a compilation of previously released tracks, clocked in at around 40 tracks. Their line-up has since added Jan Christian L Kyvik on drums, and Nils Erga on viola. Kyvik and Brandsdal released a ragged, mean-toned 7”, Special Piss, on the Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers label in the late 90s, an appropriate embryonic representation. But when the trio turned their attention to the song structures and conventions of metal and grind, Noxagt took off.

Erga’s viola is the core disruption that throws Noxagt’s music off its notional genre-dictated axis. His sound takes in see-sawing drone-work, rough scouring, and shape-changer melodies that turn on a dime. As The Iron Point builds, the viola seems to accumulate the distortion and grit flinted off the other instruments. On “Thurmaston,” Erga reels off a seasick melody, all queasy scrapings and muddied tone. Brandsdal and Kyvik trade in more predictable moves, but to no less effect. Kyvik’s drums work rhythm and counter-point, only occasionally ‘falling back’ on approximations of blast beats, using those moments as punctuations; a sudden rush of blood to the head. Brandsdal’s bass is weighty and caked in filth. When all three lock in and push a song into overload, as they do on “Naked in France,” the experience is head-wrecking.

The Iron Point closes with a cover of Tom Rapp’s “Regions of May.” The original is drawn from Pearls Before Swine’s first album One Nation Underground; Noxagt capture an ascending chord change that the original performance touched on only fleetingly, and draws out its cumulative power. Where the primary text was equal parts voluble and tender, Noxagt explode the song, shaping it as epic architecture. And the choice of cover is appropriate. Pearls Before Swine’s music took the folk tradition and charged it with pharmacy and eschatological concern. Noxagt’s music does a similar thing to metal, introducing new kinds of avant tendencies into metal’s core epiphanies, drawing a long bow of drone through their impact-heavy songs. Perhaps metal truly is the folk music of the urban wasteland." - Jon Dale

Overdo it Billy

Big Black - The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape

This album is a CD compilation of Big Black's Atomizer album & the Headache EP. For anyone not familiar with Big Black's sound imagine an afternoon in the woods with a serial rapist about to sodomize you with a chainsaw when all of a sudden a rock slide engulfs you both.
"Big Black was a band that went where few bands dared to go (and where many felt bands shouldn't go), and for good or ill their pervasive influence had a seismic impact on indie rock. At the same time, Big Black was a group who maintained firmly held ideals when it came to doing business; they paid for their own recordings, booked their own shows, handled their own management and publicity, and remained stubbornly independent at a time when many independent bands were eagerly reaching out for the major-label brass ring." [Allmusic]


I think I fucked your girlfriend once, maybe twice I don't remember.

Live Skull - Dusted

Live Skull were from NYC and specialized in art-damaged, feedback-drenched noise rock, Contemporaries of Sonic Youth, Swans and Band of Susans, they fell in line stylistically. In this album they bring to the fore an unknown vocalist from Boston called Thalia Zedek, and sparks flew. Her delivery meshed perfectly with group's menacing sound, and helped push "Dusted" into the upper echelon of Live Skull releases and NYC groups.

Machete

Swans - Great Annihilator

An astonishing album I rarely listen to these days due to personal reasons, from Swans' more song-oriented period, which of course doesn't mean they lost their intensity, it's just more focused. Listen to "Mind-Body-Light-Sound" and you'll know what I mean. Hail!

Get it

Original Silence - The First Original Silence (2007)

Are you fucking kidding me? Original Silence are: Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Jim O’ Rourke (The Thing), Mats Gustafsson (The Thing), Terrie Ex (The Ex), Paal Nilssen- Love (The Thing) and Massimo Pupillo (Zu). This is an example of musicians that are fully committed to improvisation. They must be on performance-enhancing drugs because they relentlessly grab you by your senses with a sheer energy uncommon in ANY type of music. Sonic chaos. This is the real deal guys.

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Flying Saucer Attack

Part of the Bristol scene of the 90's that reconfigured songform with all kinds of noisenik interference (Amp, Movietone, Third Eye Foundation, Crescent, etc.), Flying Saucer Atack (FSA) specialized in feedback-drenched and echo-laden pastoral bliss, with vocals buried under a ton of lead. Often trance-inducing, their work still sounds as fresh and relevant as when it was released, which is more than can be said for a lot of shoegaze groups.


New Lands


Distance


PA Blues


Mirror

Kill the Child.

Ah Swans. Perhaps my favourite group. Info on them is easy to find nowadays. Download this live album (one 60-minute track) and let it pummel your body and soul. Hi-fi sound system a big plus. Long live M. Gira.

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