Steely Dan UHQR Series

Music Reviews: Experimental Rock

December 1st, 2022

It's a great, big 'Vacant World'

Mesh-Key records and Kevin Gray ressurect an obscure 60s psych classic

By: Michael Johnson

In 1966 The Beatles came to Japan, playing the 15,000-seat Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, firmly planting the flag of western rock and roll in the island nation. What followed were a series of Beatles and Rolling Stones-esq copycat bands, often assembled by various record labels, playing everything from covers of American blues hits, to sparkly pop ballads written by in-house composers supplied by the record label. As the Japanese had difficulty pronouncing the term ‘Rock... Read More

November 28th, 2022

Goat's "World Music" Re-Issued

A 10th Anniversary Reissue Re-Mastered At Abbey Road

By: Mark Dawes

The mythology that has been purposefully built up around Goat is sparse but compelling. An anonymous masked voodoo collective playing psychedelic afrobeat-tinged rock, from a village called Korpilombolo in northern Sweden? It’s a nice yarn, and whether it is true or not seems irrelevant when the potency of the music itself blows away the need for a good origin story. (It turns out they actually are from northern Sweden.) If you have seen Goat perform live, you will... Read More

November 4th, 2022

An Extended Suite For Musical Insanity

From the archives: Michael Fremer reviews Mr. Bungle's 'Disco Volante'

By: Michael Fremer

(This review originally appeared in Issue 7, Spring 1996.)An extended suite for musical insanity and sonic meatcleaver that mutates The Bonzo Dog Band, Spike Jones, Nino Rota, Frank Zappa, Alvin Cash, The Art Of Noise, surf music, exotica, industrial heavy metal sludge, the tango, methedrine, Metallica, Don Van Vliet, and just plain old fashioned wise-assery into a rip roaring roller coaster ride through a double E ticket musical and sonic fun house. That these guys... Read More