Although, we've sold out of all of our copies of the "Rain of Ashes" cassette,
Troubleman Unlimited and
Crucial Blast still have some.
Description from Troubleman:
LOCRIAN
Rain Of Ashes cassette (Fan Death)
Listen up all "tape" labels, this is how it is supposed to be done. Pro printed, shrinkwrapped cassettes- and sold at a reasonable price! Plus it's one of the best bands around. You may know Locrian from their LP on Bloodlust...Heavy drone death! "Rain of Ashes" is a journey, not of complex feelings, but of realizing the decay and collapse you have just witnessed is real and will never go away. Instead of completely pummeling the listener, the piece slowly rips the listener apart until there is nothing left. Though after Locrian's first full length "Drenched Lands", you might have to ask yourself, "is there anything left to begin with in the first place?" "Rain of Ashes" reassures you that nothing is left. 200 copies on audio cassette. While you're at it, we have 2 copies left of their LP on BLoodlust (scroll down a bit). Order both! The best price ever!
Description from Crucial Blast:
Finally got to see these guys back in July when they toured through Baltimore...Locrian treated a small but enthusiastic audience at the Talking Head to a half hour set of stunning kosmiche drone and blackened post-rock abstraction, with one of the loudest, most fog-filled performances I've ever seen at that joint. The two members of Locrian positioned themselves on the small stage, the guitarist hunkered down in front of his amp, his armada of effect pedals at arm's length, the keyboardist looming over a stack of analogue synths, reel-to-reel tape machines (!), and various other effects devices and sound generators, and they proceeded to knock us all flat with a thunderous wave of deep-space psychdrone flecked with strange Slinty guitar figures and surpremely tasty vintage synth tones. They sounded like a blackened kosmiche krautrock band blasting at nuclear-strength volume when they reached the apex of their set, but it took a long time to get there as they slowly piled on more and more layers of drone and circular guitar and immense bottom-end heaviness. Before going to the show, I had just heard a smattering of their recorded output but was largely new to what Locrian were doing, but by the end of their set I was totally sold.
Just before the show, Locrian had performed live on a radio show at Universaity Of Maryland, and this half-hour performance has been captured as Rain Of Ashes, a limited edition cassette released by the very cool Fan Death Records that just started up recently. It's limited to 200 copies, and comes in full color package. The a-side features the full "Rain Of Ashes", while the b-side has the same track, but in reverse.
"Rain Of Ashes" feels like it's mostly improvised, starting off with soft smears of delayed guitar and warbling drones, building slowly into a swirling mass of black sound, deep kosmiche keyboards and deep gusts of subterannean hiss and tracers of dissonant guitar flowing together, and then gradually a simple four note melody appears, played on a very 70's sounding synth, dark and descending and quite pretty, and this melody begins to loop over and over and over, turning into a cluster of melodic notes as additional keyboards enter and play the same melody, reminsicent of Shulze and the synthscores of Carpenter/Howarth, and this stretches out for quite a while. Eventually, the melodic keys fade off, and we move into a darker expanse of buzzing, blackened guitar rumble, throbbing piano notes, shrieking wordless black metal-esque vocalizations, eerie guitar melodies suspended over an increasingly fearsome soundscape that builds into a hellish cacophony of shrieking vocals and grinding blacknoize that gets really Abruptum-like at the end. It's the sound of soaring through celestial starfields, then falling endlessly into a horrific black abyss.
Hearing the same music in reverse on the b-side, it's even more unearthly and woozy, a black blur of melted feedback and gorgeously warped melodies and dubbed-out ambience that stretches out forever, and I'm thinking that these guys need to make all of their stuff available like this...
Absolutely breathtaking black-kosmiche dronebliss, you can bet that I'll be getting more Locrian stuff in stock here as soon as possible. Highly recommended
