yellow swans & mouthus - conan island - weird forest - lp -5$
An inevitable match made in Hades. Four titans workin' it out in the primordial mulch and all the gods are cowering in their presence. The dual intertwining guitar-attack impacts and fragments into the dense concrete percussion forest surrounded by a shroud of pulsing caterwauling skree. A harum-scarum locomotive ride of thick, bombastic & heavy proportions..just like you want it to be. Play loud for optimum effect! Cover art by Brian Sullivan.
-wf
terrors - lagan qord- weird forest - lp - 16$
Perhaps the true test of an artist is taking common elements and fashioning a unique sound all their own. Elijah Forrest, as Terrors, is one artist who passes the test. A bi-coastal vagabond dropping tapes from southern California to Baltimore, Forrest has traveled many miles, seen a lot and judging from his music, not all of these experiences have been pleasant.
Terrors is relatively unprolific by underground tape culture standards, putting out a handful of well-received cassettes over the last few years. Each release is filled with simple songs built around his voice, guitar and at times, a healthy wallop of tape hiss ambiance and feedback. With these simple ingredients, Forrest injects a sense of weariness and sadness into his songs -- even the instrumentals which loop, layer and wrap back around themselves seem imbued with a touch of grey. The chords, melodies and progressions may sound familiar but in Forrest's hands, a freshness and timelessness breathes within these songs.
Weird Forest is excited to present Lagan Qord, a compilation of Terrors tracks culled from the last few years. Wonderfully remastered by Sean McCann, these songs have never sounded better.
Remastered by Sean McCann. Artwork & layout by Elijah Forrest.Vinyl edtion of 300 copies comes with insert.
noveller - glacial glow - weird forest - lp - 17$
"Sarah Lipstate is Noveller and Glacial Glow is her most assured, accomplished statement to date. Lipstate largely sheds the distortion and feedback present in much of her earlier work. Instead, she relies on instantly memorable melodies, a wider sonic palette, and excellent pacing to deliver arguably her best album. Noveller announces her intentions from the opening track, appropriately titled 'Entering', as the syncopated rhythm of the melody represents a new twist from her previous guitar work. This is only the hors d'oeuvre for the stunning 'Glacial Wave', which drifts along serenely until Lipstate rains down gorgeous arpeggios like icy shards from the heavens. Other pieces feature sparse arrangements anchored by pulsing throbs which evoke a subtle, creeping anxiety more menacing than the feel-good retro-horror soundtracks making the rounds these days. Throughout Glacial Glow, Lipstate exercises restraint and a fleeting melancholy feeling pervades the album. It says something about an album's quality when the closing track, 'Ends', is chosen as the lead-off video. Ocean sounds combine with the lovely chord progression and guitar lines to create an uplifting, yet slightly wistful feeling and a perfect bookend to the record."
yellow swans - psychic secession - weird forest - 2xlp - 18$
This is the third Yellow Swans vinyl release on Weird Forest and they've really tattooed it out of the ballpark on this one. It's a pulse-pounding, synapse-blasting expedition straight to the cacophonous pleasure points of your innards. It must also be known that it's one of the most grooving releases I've heard all year, dig? Makes me shake it maniacal. Yellow Swans? Yeah, they do all these things, baby. Their ultimate release — simply phenomenal — features a treasure-trove of guests including Christina Carter, Inca Ore, Axolotl, The Dead Science, Gerritt, Silentist, The Cherry Point, Leif Sundstrom, White Rainbow, and Jeremy Romagna. Includes a side-long bonus track not on the CD versions! This is the vinyl edition of the CD release on Load Records.
-wf
ganglians - monster head room - weird forest - lp +7" - 15$
"Glee. See that's a word I rarely party with in my codex but it's just the one that I would subscribe to Ganglians. Everytime I see these chaps play I come away with a big old grin on my world-weary face. How do they do it? Well it's the lightheartedness in their playing...the angelic Wilson-esque vocal harmonies...then from out of nowhere come those West African guitar stylings! And yet I can never pin down this band's sound... not that that's a bad thing. In fact it's always been a sure sign for me that the music's doing something right. From the lazy day musings of 'To June' to the monumental yarn 'Valient Brave.' Jam this on your next road trip or on your back porch drinking an Arnold Palmer. This is a record for summertime if ever there was one. It's pop music in the best sense of the word...paramount and perennial. Hot on the heels of the recently released self titled Woodsist 12" & the split seven inch with their buds Eat Skull. The CD version of this album is available from Woodsist."
hexlove/faulouah - free jazz from slavery - weird forest - 2xlp - 17$
If one were dim enough to go about explaining the new double LP from Hexlove/Faulouah by pointing up parallels between it and the future-thinking music which has surely influenced its creator, I imagine the task wouldn’t be too daunting. One may first notice that Free Jazz from Slavery is awash in the sublimely complex percussion patterns of 20th century composers like Harry Partch, Eugene Kurtz, and Iannis Xenakis. Or one might wonder if Zac Nelson, the man in the cockpit of this thing, hadn’t been listening to Another Green World since he was in the womb. And certainly it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the jibing spirit of early-eighties Pere Ubu experimentation is all over the more flippant efforts like Don’t Say I Didn’t Warm Yah and the watery blurb that opens the record, Aztec vs. Dolphin.
This, though, is the wrong way to go about listening to or talking about any of Hexlove/Faulouah’s work. Musical ancestors are worn proudly on Nelson’s sleeve, but as eagerly as he celebrates them, he also delights in taking them, along with himself, down a peg. The snarky punning of the album’s title, the faux-shamanic chanting and cooing, the deliberately murked-up and buzzing arrangements all belie an agenda that involves not only a glad embrace of the less austere reaches of avant-gardism but a pointed critique of its elitism and intellectual posturing. Tracks like the doom-laden Lots of Wings Carry Seeds, which pulses like the metabolism of some slumbering extinct beast, display a staggering sense of grey beauty but are quickly undercut when Nelson begins to take a more blithe and self-deprecating tack. This, though, is not to the record’s detriment; it never falls into mere novelty or self-parody. The sheer technical brilliance, evident on every track, earns quite a big spot on Nelson’s cheek to put his tongue in. The most glorious moments, though, are those in which he is able to marry these two tendencies, as on the desperate and busy Grump up the Volume, which opens the second side of the first record. And this is just the first record.
All doubts that may have been lingering about Nelson’s seriousness or capabilities vanish completely after even the most cursory listen to the second record. Alone it is a startlingly focused and beautiful ambient masterwork, but it shines all the more when it is coupled with the chaos of the first record. The long, breathing pieces are tranquil and meditative yet never naive or on the look-out for a place in The New Age. Under every track, however spare and delicate, lurks an anxiety that constantly threatens to swallow all delusions of well-being. Though it drones and broods, it is never without texture. Alive with the haunting organ of Exits Very Damp or the subtle xylophone flourishes of Big Happy Lotus, it manages to maintain a clean, coherent spirit without becoming sterile or devolving into massage music. The sidelong closer and centerpiece of the album, Psychopomp, though, is as sparse and heavenly as music gets, but it still attains such a raw human beauty that after you hear it, the last thing you want to do is lie down for a massage. Rather, you want to run out and find the human who created it and thank him. —Steve Rodgers
Limited to 500 copies on green and orange vinyl with full color gatefold jackets
inca ore - brute nature vs. wild magic- weird forest - lp- 15$
Inca Ore is the solo voice of Eva, the singer of such fine bands as Alarmist and Malibu Falcon. Inca Ore travels the cosmos on firey phoenix mattresses with the voice of a goose-quilled cloud pillow siren calling to all the constellations in the universe. Eva uses her vocal range and delay complement to create the sounds of entire sorceress covens through her lone voice. Lovely psychedelic drone mixed with narcoleptic folk. An enchantress of the highest order! Side A was previously issued as a CD-R in a small pressing of 100 copies on the Collective Jyrk label. The b-side is a brand new track consisting of one astounding, 18-minute interstellar vocal trance-out!
Second pressing of 500 (black vinyl only) in "different but the same" offset-printed jackets, with insert, Artwork by Aaron Winters at Abide Visuals
-weird forest
mark mcguire - tidings / amethyst waves - weird forest - 2xlp - 20$
Trying to put the last 15 years of music into context, you’d be hard pressed to get anyone to agree on a single thing. If anything, this period has been a collective convergence of all things cool-sounding: naïve experimentalism, academic composition, art-rock synthesis, electronic nihilism/flagellation, and, well, everything else. Mark McGuire could muddy anyones interpretation of the contemporary canon with his buddies in the triadic mega-unit, Emeralds, his collaborative outings in Sun Watcher and Skyramps (with Daniel “Oneohtrix Point Never” Lopatin), and his prolific, yet well-executed, solo work. ”Have you heard his shredability, incomprehensible astral traveling and meditative neutron stasis on any of those solo jams, the dude must be ancient!?” Truth is, Mark Mcguire is a youngin’, not a refugee of the ’70s. Nor is he mining unfamiliar territory; he produces something old and familiar, yet it sounds so fresh and necessary for today.
Originally released as limited edition cassettes and masterfully cleaned up for this definitive release by James Plotkin, Tidings/Amethyst Wavesfinds McGuire packing 60+ minutes with trance-inducing, melodic guitar intricacies, an occasional wall-of-squall reminiscent of Mizutani riding a thunder horse, and filaments of a drifting stratosphere where organic synthed-out solos are nestled in tight. With this release, Mark McGuire has hatched a true American Euro-vision utilizing major shifts in the ‘music as language’ paradigm. No joke, this is where Wyld Stallyns is heading in the year 2398 A.G. and Tidings/Amethyst Waves is as essential as anything in the Emeralds catalog.
-wf
sam goldberg - current - weird forest - lp - 15$
Sam Goldberg is a Cleveland, Ohio multi-instrumentalist/ composer who has been running in the garage rock/electronic underground circles for the last half of the ’00s. He also curates and operates the Pizza Night cassette label, one of the most beloved underground cassette headquarters of the midwest as of late. Unique, timeless, and clever constructions of sound created with many instruments like synthesizers, rhythm boxes, and electric guitars provide a wide scope of varied colored tones from release to release. This debut record, Current, is an early document of Sam’s solo guitar work. Side A consists of a hazy and humid melodic stasis that may be known from the Emeralds/Sam Goldberg 2007 tour cassette. An untitled piece that evokes a sense of longing and discontent while simultaneously hitting the deep and raw channels of the subconscious past that bring an understanding to the spaces between experience and memory. A gorgeous wash of clouded, ringing guitar not unlike Glenn Branca’s “Symphony No. 2.” On the flip side another phantom composition played only a few times live and recorded over a year ago in a similar weightless, sky guitar fashion rounds out the double side long debut. “Carol” is a great example of massive tone landscapes that can be born with minimal processing and careful compositional dynamic.
-wf