Here's a crummy picture of it.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Locrian "The Crystal World" Back Patch
Utech Records will have these on sale in a few days. They look awesome!
Here's a crummy picture of it.
Here's a crummy picture of it.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Boomkat Album of the Week
Link here.
We'll have copies at our show on Monday.
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We'll have copies at our show on Monday.
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century plants / locrian - Dissolvers
Beautiful silver leaf screen-printed sleeves - a strictly limited vinyl run from Tape Drift* Tape Drifts impressively move into the vinyl realm with a sublime split LP of bleak drone treatments from Chicago's Locrian and the terrifically titled Century Plants of Albany, upstate New York. Firstly, the presentation is about pitch-perfect; black label vinyl housed in silver leaf ink screen-printed sleeve and a special double-sided colour insert - just to whet your appetite. Century Plants commandeer the A-side, stoking the very slow burn of 'Fading Out', evolving from near-inaudible, ominous, spectral figures, fleshed out with spidery webs of autonomic guitar picking and deeply unsettling psych-drone shapes looming from the aether. 'Delirium' is the after effect, eyes slowly rolling in the back of the head while sparse, wintry-tanged ambience gives way to O'Malley-esque feedback manipulation and harmonised subbass. Passing the tourniquet to Locrian, we're soon subsumed by the psychoactive 'On A Calcified Shore', glass-scraped feedback swirling into ghoulish apparitions and sustained underlying drones stretching out into an inky black void, while 'Omega Vapors' intoxicates the senses with billowing clouds of feedback noise and quietly agitated strings make the skin crawl and prickle. Gorgeous music - limited copies only.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Locrian Interview at Audiodrome (Italy)
You can read an interview (in Italian) with each of the three Locrian members here.
You can read Audiodrome.it's review of "The Crystal World" here.
You can read Audiodrome.it's review of "The Crystal World" here.
Locrian Release Show on Monday, November 29th, 2010 @ Empty Bottle Chicago
Monday November 29, 2010 The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60622
773.276.3600
http://www.emptybottle.com/
9:00 PM
FREE
21+
with:
Anatomy of Habit
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/
Helen Money
http://www.helenmoney.com/
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/
Locrian
http://www.facebook.com/pages/
+ Locrian's "The Crystal World" video presentation
Event links:
Vital Weekly on Locrian "Territories"
Link here.
LOCRIAN - TERRITORIES (CD by Bloodlust!)
Somewhere else we look into a solo CD of Andre Foisy but here is a CD by his band Locrian, a duo of himself and T. Hannum. They played guitars and electronics. Seeing this release on Bloodlust! its hardly a surprise that it contains noise. A slow menacing sound of pounding drums, piercing electronics (derived from guitar playing? I am not sure here) and more loud guitars. That is the opening track 'Inverted Ruins', which includes Mark Solotroff, head honcho of Bloodlust, on vocals but Locrian has more to offer than just that. Each track seems to be recorded with the help of other people, so that's why things are probably more varied, beyond the boundaries of pure noise. 'Between Barrows', the second piece on the CD, is a much more subdued piece of music, carefully improvised. Although Locrian don't return to the careful style in this album again, its not said that every piece is one of loud noise only. The closing statement, 'The Columnless Arcade' is a finely driven motor like rock song, bursting out half way through, full of energy. 'Ring Road' sees the burning of a guitar (metaphorically speaking of course), like a giant dark beast bursting out, while 'Antediluvian Territory' is an almost ambient like guitar tune. The epic 'Procession Of Ancestral Brutalism' is then the noise centre of this album. Locrian delivered a great album with this CD. Here too we are dealing with the notion of noise that is varied, like we have discussed more recently: not that endless walls of feedback and distortion, but a varied bunch of pieces, some of which happen to be very loud and some not. But Locrian does all of that outside the world of pure electronics and that is a great achievement. An excellent CD! (FdW)
Address: http://www.bloodlust.blogspot.com
VW also reviews the new André Foisy 3" CDR as well as the new releases from Small Doses. Nice!
André Foisy - THEORY OF PROGRESS (3"CDR on Small Doses)
Andre Foisy is one half of Locrian, a more noise oriented band, but here the true ambient music comes out. Foisy plays guitar and adds a bit of electronics. The music is very mellow and relaxed. Foisy uses e-bow or other bows to play his guitar, adds a substantial dose of reverb to create a great textured sound, but keeps the effects within a fair, controlled state. Over the course of the piece things are build up, but not extensively and never in a hurry. A delicate and refined release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.small-doses.com
LOCRIAN - TERRITORIES (CD by Bloodlust!)
Somewhere else we look into a solo CD of Andre Foisy but here is a CD by his band Locrian, a duo of himself and T. Hannum. They played guitars and electronics. Seeing this release on Bloodlust! its hardly a surprise that it contains noise. A slow menacing sound of pounding drums, piercing electronics (derived from guitar playing? I am not sure here) and more loud guitars. That is the opening track 'Inverted Ruins', which includes Mark Solotroff, head honcho of Bloodlust, on vocals but Locrian has more to offer than just that. Each track seems to be recorded with the help of other people, so that's why things are probably more varied, beyond the boundaries of pure noise. 'Between Barrows', the second piece on the CD, is a much more subdued piece of music, carefully improvised. Although Locrian don't return to the careful style in this album again, its not said that every piece is one of loud noise only. The closing statement, 'The Columnless Arcade' is a finely driven motor like rock song, bursting out half way through, full of energy. 'Ring Road' sees the burning of a guitar (metaphorically speaking of course), like a giant dark beast bursting out, while 'Antediluvian Territory' is an almost ambient like guitar tune. The epic 'Procession Of Ancestral Brutalism' is then the noise centre of this album. Locrian delivered a great album with this CD. Here too we are dealing with the notion of noise that is varied, like we have discussed more recently: not that endless walls of feedback and distortion, but a varied bunch of pieces, some of which happen to be very loud and some not. But Locrian does all of that outside the world of pure electronics and that is a great achievement. An excellent CD! (FdW)
Address: http://www.bloodlust.blogspot.com
VW also reviews the new André Foisy 3" CDR as well as the new releases from Small Doses. Nice!
André Foisy - THEORY OF PROGRESS (3"CDR on Small Doses)
Andre Foisy is one half of Locrian, a more noise oriented band, but here the true ambient music comes out. Foisy plays guitar and adds a bit of electronics. The music is very mellow and relaxed. Foisy uses e-bow or other bows to play his guitar, adds a substantial dose of reverb to create a great textured sound, but keeps the effects within a fair, controlled state. Over the course of the piece things are build up, but not extensively and never in a hurry. A delicate and refined release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.small-doses.com
Monday, November 22, 2010
Ear Bleed on "The Crystal World"
Link here.
I’ve been pretty jaded/burned out from new underground music lately, and it seems like pretty much everyone else is too. Been talking to people about the negative creativity spawned by fame, as it seems like any underground musician who gets recognized lately and is thrust into blogger superstardom immediately stops growing as an artist and just churns out more and more of the same half-assed tropical/beach-pop/hypnogogic pop/shit-wave/cold-wave/chill-wave/whatever other stupid ghettoized genre music. Never been too interested in genres myself, as I’ve always felt like genrefication takes away from the music; Once it’s been stuck in a niche you have things that are expected of you and expectations of what you should sound like. And unfortunately it seems like lots of folks these days are more than happy to please the expectations of bloggers and other folks that don’t know anything about music.
Luckily none of this has anything to do with the new Locrian album “The Crystal World” on Utech. Having already neatly smashed out the walls of death metal, noise & power electronics on their previous albums, they wisely decide to keep smashing outward and take over whatever spectrums of music they end up in. Now a three piece, Locrian branch out into heavy psychedelic stoner rock (“At Night’s End”), kosmische synth jams (the instrumental title track), and strange as it may seem, psychedelic folk (“Elevation and Depths” towards the end sounds disturbingly like one of Bröselmachine’s better songs), with all 6 feet still formly rooted in the darkness and anguished screaming we know so well. Locrian’s music always has an unsettling presence lurking in the background, slowly spreading post-industrial pagan gloom over everything they touch, much like the Ballard novel the album is named after, and “The Crystal World” shows them seeping into new avenues of music and making them their own.
This is definitely the most musical thing I’ve heard from them yet, a nice change of pace in an era that doesn’t place much value on well-crafted music. Each track is a carefully-sculpted journey through Locrian’s signature sound that slowly unfolds to find something completly new hiding inside. It took me forever to review their last album, mostly because every review of it I saw was gushing praise out of every pore, and this one will probably get the same; but since they seem pretty immune to it so far I’ll go ahead and say that Locrian has once again raised the bar for themselves and suceeded in creating another incredible album that stays true to their aesthetic while still challenging themselves to make something different.
I’ve been pretty jaded/burned out from new underground music lately, and it seems like pretty much everyone else is too. Been talking to people about the negative creativity spawned by fame, as it seems like any underground musician who gets recognized lately and is thrust into blogger superstardom immediately stops growing as an artist and just churns out more and more of the same half-assed tropical/beach-pop/hypnogogic pop/shit-wave/cold-wave/chill-wave/whatever other stupid ghettoized genre music. Never been too interested in genres myself, as I’ve always felt like genrefication takes away from the music; Once it’s been stuck in a niche you have things that are expected of you and expectations of what you should sound like. And unfortunately it seems like lots of folks these days are more than happy to please the expectations of bloggers and other folks that don’t know anything about music.
Luckily none of this has anything to do with the new Locrian album “The Crystal World” on Utech. Having already neatly smashed out the walls of death metal, noise & power electronics on their previous albums, they wisely decide to keep smashing outward and take over whatever spectrums of music they end up in. Now a three piece, Locrian branch out into heavy psychedelic stoner rock (“At Night’s End”), kosmische synth jams (the instrumental title track), and strange as it may seem, psychedelic folk (“Elevation and Depths” towards the end sounds disturbingly like one of Bröselmachine’s better songs), with all 6 feet still formly rooted in the darkness and anguished screaming we know so well. Locrian’s music always has an unsettling presence lurking in the background, slowly spreading post-industrial pagan gloom over everything they touch, much like the Ballard novel the album is named after, and “The Crystal World” shows them seeping into new avenues of music and making them their own.
This is definitely the most musical thing I’ve heard from them yet, a nice change of pace in an era that doesn’t place much value on well-crafted music. Each track is a carefully-sculpted journey through Locrian’s signature sound that slowly unfolds to find something completly new hiding inside. It took me forever to review their last album, mostly because every review of it I saw was gushing praise out of every pore, and this one will probably get the same; but since they seem pretty immune to it so far I’ll go ahead and say that Locrian has once again raised the bar for themselves and suceeded in creating another incredible album that stays true to their aesthetic while still challenging themselves to make something different.
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