Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Blog Special - Vulture Club!

Ok, here's something we've been meaning to do ever since we started this blog. Use it to announce special sale items, things that we REALLY LIKE but for some reason maybe have surplus of in stock. Such as, for our first Blog Special, the awesome Utech cd release by Vulture Club, one of our (inexplicably overlooked by many AQ customers) dronedoomdirge faves from a couple years ago.

Here's our review of the Vulture Club "Live Young, Die Fast And Leave An Exquisite Corpse" cd:
The first Vulture Club cd-r was the ultimate man vs. machine battle royale, with the machine winning. A record where the instruments called the shots, an army of guitars and amplifiers, marching across a blackened bloody battlefield littered with the corpses of musicians, the masters now bone and blood, the guitars and amps allowed to ring out, reverberate, to unfurl epic swaths of rumbling, crumbling feedback flecked drone. And we loved it!
The ultimate doomdrone sound, no riffs, no rhythms, just the sound of steel strings vibrating, amplified, played back at incredible volume, in turn causing the strings to vibrate, and the cycle continued... Another one of those sounds that is practically perfect unadorned, we could listen to an E chord ringing out through a wall of Marshall stacks FOREVER. But at some point, the amps and guitars that make up Vulture Club, decided more could be done with their buzz and drone, so they did the unthinkable, they recruited players, musicians, they chose not to give up their freedom, but to work together with their former masters, to create a new world of sound, a world where the guitars and the amplifiers were still in control, but the musicians were able to coax certain sounds from the guitars, to gently bend necks, stretch strings, fret certain notes, and thus, we have Live Young, Die Fast And Leave An Exquisite Corpse. The sound is still dronedirgedoomsludge but just like the debut, that sound is stretched to its absolute limit, a soundworld where notes and chords mean less than timbre and tone, melody is supplanted by power, you can feel the sound more than hear it. BUT, for this new disc (a real cd this time), the action ante has been upped just a bit. Instead of letting the guitars just buzz endlessly, the droning distortion is more dynamic, with percussive attacks, and extended decays, notes and chords barely visible in their flatlined form, the sound pulsates and throbs, creating unintentional rhythms, guitars unleash simple tones which are wrapped in layer after layer of distortion, and allowed to slowly crumble to bits, revealing all the secret tonal color inside. It's all very subtle, this still sounds like a room full of amps cranked to ten, with guitars run through distortion pedals and leaned up against the amps, the sound a glorious low end cacophony, but repeated listening, deep listening, reveals an amazing amount of subtle sonic variation beneath the glacial whirs and buzzing blur. Vulture Club is the sound of SUNNO)))'s and Earth's colliding, the music of black holes, the sound of guitar and amplifier joined in the unholiest of unions, an absolutely glorious sound indeed!
This disc normally retails for $14.98, but if you order it from our website and mention "VULTURE CLUB $5 OFF BLOG SPECIAL" in the comments field of the order form, we'll let you have it for only $9.98 - five dollars off! While supplies last, of course.

Though this disc is so good, if you choose to pay full price for it you wouldn't be disappointed either...

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