TITLES: Q

QUETZOLCOATL Where Are We Going Sister CD-R $8.98 Ikuisuus (Finland)

Ikuisuus never disappoints - between this, the A.M. Orla disc, and the Family Underground album, all of which we have listed in this week's update, the Finnish label is providing us with an unstoppably high quality batch of heavy drone releases that are guarenteed to melt your skull. Out of all of the new stuff that I just got in from Ikuisuus, Ireland's Quetzolcoatl was the one I was least familiar with, but this full length CD-R just might be my favorite of the bunch. Where Are We Going Sister is just over 50 minutes of ecstatic, phantasmagorical spew, with heavy blurts of feedback streaking across a black horizon, chased after by the deeply creepy wails of banshees that leave dissapating tracers to hang in the night. Quetzolcoatl brushes thick strokes of amophous drone formed from violins and organ, vocals and other sounds wholly unidentifiable, and tracks like "Where Are We Going Sister" and "Night Flight" sound like the heaviest bits of My Bloody Valentine's feedback captured and swirled together into their own clouds of thick, distorted buzzfloat swimming through oceans of reverb and echo, shifting and pulsing like rain-choked cloudbanks of angelic pink noise. Hands down one of the most beautiful recordings we carry here at Crucial Blast. The disc, unmarked with a white face, comes in a full color wallet sleeve with a simple, B&W insert card.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Burning Lungs In Snowstorm" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Kneel Like A Wooden Cougar In The Earth" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Nightflight" (excerpt)

QUIPS !Amphetamines! CD $13.98 Translation Loss

QUIPS wrangle some catchy as hell hooks out of a noisy, garbled basement punk rush, effectively evoking the sort of grizzly Melvins/Sabbath riffage with pop smarts that were stuck all over NIRVANA's Bleach, but additionally imbuing the tunes with a coked up hard rock 'tude similiar to QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE. Def something different from the post-metal power we've been getting lately from Translation Loss, but def much liked here...lots of ripping hooks drenched in fuzz and distortion, yowling vocals like Mark Arm from MUDHONEY, lots of mangled melodies tied to the tunes in barbedwire...a righteous surge of early Sub Pop style heaviness. Yup - MUDHONEY meets NIRVANA's Bleach meets QOTSA sums this one up, a quirky noise rock wipeout! Slick metallic package design.

QUIVERS Once There Were Some CD-R $8.98 Colour sound

NY drummer Adam Kriney has to be one of the busiest dudes in the entire free/noise/jazz/thrash underground. Not only does he run the excellent small-run avant-jazz-noise label Colour Sounds, but he also rips it in a plethora of active groups, including OWL XOUNDS EXPLODING GALAXY, LA OTRACINA, BLIZZARDS, DIVINE INVASION, RUST IONICS, DEAD GIRLS, touring as a guest musician with CASTANETS and THE PLACES, and this new quartet, Quivers. I've been hugely digging everything that this guy has been doing over the past year or so, and this new CD-R from Quivers is definitely one of my favorite releases in Kriney's discography, travelling through the noisier/louder spheres of the improv plane. Once There Were Some is a killer debut outing that creeps through a battlefield of explosive improvised avant-noise/punk and speed skronk, only to stumble upon some moments of beautiful haunted avant-jazz that crawl out of the deep shadows and sets your hair on end. It's all powered by Adam Kriney's manic improvisational drumming and guitarist Ninni Morgia (a member of White Tornado and Wizard trio), who heaves gobs of expressive fretboard mangle and twisted out-shred across these 7 jams that evokes some kind of weird Sonny Sharrock/Mick Barr vortex. The group is rounded out with upright bassist Jordan Schranz (also of free-jazz trio Eastern Seaboard) and the eerie wordless vocals of Marie Evelyn. Limited to 52 numbered copies, and housed in a cool hand painted/assembled/pasted sleeve.