TRANS11

Please keep in mind, I’m not claiming this is everything that was killer this year. In fact, I can think of about 30 awesome releases that weren’t included here at all… which is why it’s going to be a two-part podcast. This month and next month’s will both focus on the best of 2010.

There were a lot of great releases this year, and even two podcasts won’t be enough to cover all of them, but I think we’re off to a strong start with this one, anyway. It’s got 31 songs in a little over three hours, with Kings Destroy as a bonus at the end for anyone who wants to stick around that long and listen to it. Or skip right there and then go back and listen to the rest. Your call. However you want to do it.

It’s been a crazy year, and with my top-albums countdown on, it’s not over by a longshot. There’s still plenty to come, including the second part of this Year in Review, but for now, enjoy this. I wanted to include a couple surprises people may not have heard but that stood out to me as highlights (Backwoods Payback, The Giraffes, Infernal Overdrive), but with High on Fire, Electric Wizard and Zoroaster kicking things off in that order, there’s plenty of what you’d expect as well.

As ever, I hope you enjoy it and come back for more in next month’s audiObelisk Transmission. Please click the image above to go to the download page (or right here, if you’d prefer), or stream it on the player above. Full track list is after the jump.

Read more »

aOT010

I set myself a couple rules for this one: No farther west than Texas, nothing north of Virginia and if a band features members of Down, they’re out. That means no Crowbar, no C.O.C., no Eyehategod or any of their other offshoots. Those are great bands, don’t get me wrong, but you get into that territory and next thing you know the whole podcast is full — ditto had I included Maryland — and I think once you take a look at the tracklist, you’ll see I was aiming for something else entirely.

When the idea was originally suggested, it was an exploration of the new Southern metal, bands like Baroness and their post-Mastodon Southern prog ilk. Later it was expanded to include a wide breadth of Southern rock and metal old and new. Well, the first was a little too narrowly focused (there just aren’t 30 bands — yet — playing Masto-prog), and the second was a little too wide ranging, so I took a middle course between them. You still get the bands like Baroness, Torche, Mastodon, and Zoroaster, and you also get some more straightforward rock-type stuff from the likes of Texas acts SuperHeavyGoatAss, Amplified Heat and Orthodox Fuzz.

I’m pretty sure you’ll agree it’s a killer mix of bands, and that it covers a wide ground, from the humid sludge of Sourvein and Ol’ Scratch, to the wide-eyed psych bliss of Tasha-Yar. All but one of the included tracks are from the latter half of the last decade (I’d argue the song from 2004 and the album from which it came were a big inspiration for many of the other bands present), and that was definitely on purpose, since this is a vibrant scene happening right now. I tried to be as timely with it as I could.

In that spirit, you’ll find new music included from Torche, Kylesa (finally found Spiral Shadow at an FYE; let the record show I tried two legitimate indie stores first), Elliott’s Keep, US Christmas, Kin of Ettins, Orthodox Fuzz and The Crimson Electric. To honor readers Josh and Jason who first presented and then expanded the idea, we start off with Weedeater, who are possibly the most Southern band on the planet.

Click here or the image above to get the file, or stream it on the player above. Full tracklist with timestamps and years of release is after the jump. I hope you enjoy it.

Read more »

I’m planning on putting together the next audiObelisk Transmission this next week, and I have a few ideas, but screw it, I take requests. Anything you want to hear in a podcast? Any themes you think are begging to be covered?

Leave a note in the comments and let me know what you think the next podcast should be all about.

aOT9

This is the mother of them all. Short of doing three songs in as many hours, which I could have done just as or even more easily, I don’t see how any audiObelisk Transmission could get heavier than this one. It’s just a little bit of an excuse on my part to have an easily accessible copy of Dopesmoker at all times, but with new music as well from Hypnos 69, a classic dirge from Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine and one of Boris‘ most avant garde moments, Transmission Zero Zero Nine is an absolute monster. I hope you dig it.

No need to hide the tracklist after a jump since it’s only four songs. Click the banner at the top of this post to get the file, or stream it on the player above. Here’s what we’ve got:

0:00:08 Sleep, “Dopesmoker” from Dopesmoker (Tee Pee, 2003)
There was no way I was going to make this podcast and not include this song. It’s the riff that launched a thousand clone bands, and Sleep‘s shining hour. Literally, an hour. Plenty of time to worship.

1:03:42 Hypnos 69, “The Great Work” from Legacy (Elektrohasch, 2010)
New music from these Belgian classic proggers. It’s the last cut on their new album, Legacy, and maybe their most aptly-titled song ever. Their sense of melody is second to none and the progressive elements in their approach have never shined brighter than they do here.

1:21:53 Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine, “He Who Accepts all That is Offered (Feel Bad Hit of the Winter)” from Rampton (Southern Lord, 2002)
The lineup of Lee Dorrian (Cathedral), Stephen O’Malley (SunnO)))/Khanate), Justin Greaves (Iron Monkey/now-Crippled Black Phoenix) and Greg Anderson (Goatsnake) only put out one album under this cumbersome moniker, taken from a song title on Earth‘s Earth 2. It’s a good thing. I don’t think the universe could handle a second without ripping in half.

1:51:35 Boris, “Flood” from Flood (MIDI Creative, 2000)
Is that guitar forward or backwards? Both? I doubt anyone really knows what Boris are getting up to for the entirety of this song, Boris included. I remember interviewing drummer Atsuo Mizuno a couple years back and he looked at me like my head was on backwards when I asked about it. See if you can figure it out.

Download audiObelisk Transmission 009 here.

aOT8

In honor of the label’s upcoming showcase in Philadelphia (info here) later in September, I’ve decided this month’s audiObelisk transmission should highlight some of the best contributions from Detroit‘s Small Stone Records. The biggest challenge in making this installment wasn’t deciding what to include in terms of bands, but where to stop. It’s about three hours long, and I probably could have gone another easily.

I wanted to include some of Small Stone‘s classic output, from bands like Acid King, The Men of Porn and Five Horse Johnson, and I had to make sure the current and new faces were represented as well: Gozu, Skanska Mord, House of Broken Promises. And just when I thought I was all set to go, I realized I’d forgotten to include Sasquatch. Don’t even ask me how. I was all converted, uploaded, labeled and live, and the next thing I knew I broke out III and ripped the opener, reconverted, re-uploaded, so on and so forth. I don’t know if that’s dedicated or dumb.

Either way, it’s worth being both, given all that Small Stone has done for the genre over the course of the last decade-plus. We start off with some love for Jersey, which the label has always been ready to show. Halfway to Gone, doing “Great American Scumbag.” It’s a song I think sums up a lot of what it means to be into this kind of music in this day and age. As always, I hope you dig it and the rest of the transmission, which is the longest yet at over three hours and featuring 35 bands. This one’s easily my favorite so far.

And if you’re wondering what the image is above, it’s the Detroit airport.

You know the drill: Full tracklist after the jump, stream the file above or download it here. As requested, I included time stamps for when each song starts.

Read more »

As I begin to think about making the next audiObelisk podcast, now seems as good a time as any to stop and take a look at how the others have done so far in terms of downloads. I probably shouldn’t be surprised to find the Man’s Ruin one the most successful to date, since many of those titles were out of print and are hard to come by, but I was relatively amazed the Big Lebowski one fared so poorly. Nobody likes The Dude anymore? Could’ve fooled me.

Here are the download numbers from newest to oldest, with links in case anyone wants to check out something they may have missed:

Transmission 007 The Summertime Blues: 105 downloads
Transmission 006 Rule, Brittania: 96
Transmission 005 To the Ruin of Man: 336
audiObelisk Dio-cast: 302
Transmission 004 The Burning Road: 197
Transmission 003 The Dude Abides: 109
Transmission 002 Ode to Fuzz: 151
Transmission 001 Best of 2009: 182

Thanks for listening.

aOT7

The above image (apart from having the text added and a little cropping) is unedited. It is an aerial view of New Jersey from someone who I can only imagine was on their way to or from Newark Airport. What you’re seeing is the blanket of haze that rests over my beloved Garden State June to September every year. Pretty much all throughout July and August, you can’t see the sky except through the humidity. It is miserable and sopping.

The purpose of audiObelisk Transmission 007 is to honor (or perhaps, like a ritual sacrifice, appease) the summer itself. I’ve chosen tracks that embody different aspects of the season: sunny days (Unida, Fu Manchu, The Atomic Bitchwax), warm nights (Angels of Light, Six Organs of Admittance, Los Natas, Colour Haze), and some that just sound like they’re as wretchedly soaked through with sweat as I am these several months each year (Snail, Loop, Dead Meadow).

You’ll find a lot of the desert rock discussed in the last Where to Start post, new music from the likes of Fatso Jetson, Yawning Man, Backwoods Payback and Brant Bjork, and, true to the title, some Blue Cheer and a little blues from Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker and Blind Lemon Jefferson. As always, all are my rips from physical sources.

Click the picture up top to download or stream it above. Full list of tracks is after the jump.

Read more »

[NOTE: New posts will appear underneath this post for the rest of the week. You know the deal.]

audiObelisk Transmission 006

Truth be told, I was planning a special UK-only podcast even before Chris and Pete from Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight were so hospitable to me in April. There’s been a Post-It on my desk with a list of bands on it since February. Pretty sad, I know.

But it’s all the more appropriate that it goes live today, when Germany‘s psychic octopus proved correct and England was knocked out the World Cup. Having watched the US succumb to the unstoppable force known as the Ghanaian team yesterday, I can empathize. We bleed as one, except, you know, it matters to England.

As always, this audiObelisk Transmission is culled from my own rips, made with love in honor of the UK‘s many contributions to the heavy underground. Making your way through it, you’ll notice a couple glaring omissions, among them Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. I wanted to keep it focused on stoner rock and doom (apart from the bonus track), and while I know these bands are vastly influential, I’d rather spend that time listening to Uriah Heep, Leaf Hound and Atomic Rooster. Yeah, there’s Deep Purple and Black Sabbath on the playlist. It’s a pretty fine line.

We start off (following a Snuff Box sample) with London‘s Kings of Frog Island, and I think it’s a pretty good flow of songs and styles thereafter. The UK has had so much diversity, sound wise, it was all I could do to hold it together. In my most trying moments, I thought of England.

Playlist is after the jump…

Read more »