Have a Nice Life

This will be a review on the band's latest release The Unnatural World but with a predecessor so poignant and sealed in my heart and I'm sure in the hearts of their fan base I am itching to present the band's harrowing début that stands as a superlative monolith within the genre.

Deathconsciousness (2008)

"A Quick One Before the Eternal Devours Connecticut" seduces me into a slumber within my waking life, a sense of mysterious comfort and beauty that unravels into ominous tones that prick my heart. A minimal introduction that in no way prepares you for the next 78 minutes you are about to endure. Hold on to that light you've been gifted by this ethereal ambience, you may need it.
A clean bass line dances the listener into the next track and is present throughout the song like the world is tumbling slowly in the background but whatever who even cares.
The vocals keep that sultry heavy trance that has been pervading from the start, a maddening repetitive monologue following that faint rumbling bass "we kill everyone with arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads. Arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads" ad nauseam.
Thus begins this tenderly crafted vision of apocalyptic hopelessness and uncertainty executed by a character that stays in tune with their failure to connect with the world even in a time of its collapse. 
Each track is not without its spectral accompaniment whispering, rumbling and at times howling beside lonesome vocal melody, numbed riffing or scattered echoing drums. A intelligently executed depiction of the impending unknown. 
The ubiquitously raw production adds the sort of fragility to this release that is evocative of lo-fi black metal, transforming simple guitar progressions into a chilling smog of atmosphere.
Occasionally there is a drop in atmosphere, a brief calm before the storm depicting that numb human constant, that evolutionary mechanism to cope with the trauma around us.
"There is No Food" breaks the album up wonderfully from sporadic hysteria to an unnerving dread. The muffled vocals, subtle background suffering of nameless survivors and ringing in your ears assures you that this swelling dark ambience isn't a break for the listener from this relentless turmoil but a new dark chapter.
With a flourish of quasi industrial, post punk, up tempo chord progression on the inaptly named "Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail" we are the dancing dead.
This theme follows the album to a close before breaking into clean guitar and vocals which inevitably are seized by thunderous drums and all consuming reverb and before succumbing completely, before communication loses itself in this sea of noise the vocals gasp among wailing harmonies "we wish we were dead" and after hanging for so long we are granted the end with absolute deathconsciousness style, aching notes plucking and crying out into an overwhelming static to an unnerving close.

The Unnatural World (2014)

Anyone who has encountered or has been swept up in the hype around the bands initial release will be aware of the pressure involved in following such an object of attachment. I eagerly awaited a new release by after the announcement and the date began to loom ever closer I started to wonder if I would need to prepare myself for disappointment.

To listen to the records back to back (although I respect them as individual pieces of art) Unnatural World's introductory track Guggenheim Wax Museum is a rewarding release from the previous work's closing track Earthmover, perhaps I'd been insecurely clinging to the first like lovers growing apart and as such had to accept it's place in my heart but now I need room to grow.
This release is far from a disappointment and elements from past works satisfyingly compliment the fresh atmosphere on this latest album. It begins dark and dreamy, an intoxicating miasma moving slowly and surely It's easy listening but still possesses that stirring edge.
Defenestration Song, a reworked demo released on the band's 'Voids' cassette breaks from the build up of poisonous fog created by the introduction  

Sun Kil Moon

Benji

Benji is the sixth studio album by American indie folk act Sun Kil Moon, released on 11 February 2014 on Caldo Verde Records. Self-produced by primary recording artist Mark Kozelek (of Red House Painters), the album shares its name with the 1974 film Benji, and was recorded between March and August 2013 at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco, the album features contributions from Owen Ashworth, Jen Wood, Will Oldham, and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley.

Now, enough with the formalities. If you are at all acquainted with the Red House Painters or Sun Kil Moon’s earlier albums you may have some idea what you’re in for here and you will. A bit but not really. Mike Kozelek is back with a kind of vengeance one is reluctant to exact and inevitably exchanges it with an intimate conversation over drinks and that’s exactly what this album is, over an hour long exchange of a weight being unburdened onto the listener. Endearingly masculine, tender and organic painting vast American landscapes I will never see with my own eyes. An hour of barefaced meandering honesty with the poetic prowess of Charles Bukowski, the breaks in the rhyming scheme seem both charmingly unpractised and cleverly crafted.

The countless recollection of events both personal and internationally known, from a second cousin’s funeral to the Anders Breivik shootings place the listener right in moment, you can smell the air, you can taste the green tea lingering, savoury in your mouth and you can recall the televised reports but the hysteria is numb. This is nostalgia made absolute accompanied by eerie harmonised guitar leads and close to spoken word, gravelly vocals, not your nostalgia, perhaps not even his nostalgia but our nostalgia.
This album explores a time line of the individual's human existence and experience from childhood memories of friends and family to very matter fact sexual encounters and ultimately (and often!) death. An unassuming yet powerful reflection on one’s own mortality. 

Sacred Bones Records

Sacred Bones Records

Sacred Bones Records was born in Brooklyn, New York in early 2007, with the intention of bringing our friends’ music to light, as well as unearthing music lost to time. Our main focus is on vinyl, but our releases are also available in compact disc and digital formats.  We are deeply fortunate to have a co-operative of gifted artists working with us whose talents span a multitude of mediums, including film making, print making, graphic designing, emailing, and panicking. We put as much energy and care into the presentation of our records as each band does to their own music.  We look forward to continuing to release albums by artists who we truly believe in both sonically and spiritually.

Friction 1991

Friction 

a Chicago-based group of emo rockers. Starting with a sound that was firmly based in the Dischord post-hardcore movement, the bandmembers wrote songs that reflected their Jawbox/Jawbreaker obsessions, but with a melodic twist that they slowly develop throughout the disc. "Cassyflies" is the first track to recognize this shift in direction, but as the album goes on, they manage to develop a friendlier, less tense approach. This helps immensely, as their dynamic grows twice as large and the album begins to bounce back and forth between the tense feel of their early work and the later poppy punk balance they managed to create. They move back and forth between these styles effortlessly, revealing increasingly impressive skills as the recordings go by. Covers of Jawbreaker, the Misfits, and the Arrowsare interesting but uneventful, while their original material goes from being fairly good to really great as the album progresses. There are a few lulls on the second disc as they venture a little too far toward post-punk experimentation and repeat several songs from the first disc, but for the most part this is a great collection that documents an emo band growing into its own skin.

Allmusic.com

honeyslide - honeyslide ep

honeyslide - honeyslide ep

London / Garage / Grunge / Space Rock / Shoegaze 

New Critical Heights signings Honeyslide are set to release the follow up to their sold-out debut cassette the Honeyslide EP with a double A side 10” featuring two lead tracks “Drippin’” and “Deep Architecture”, plus two further tracks “Sugar Routine” and “Untitled #240”. Swathed in reverb, bathed in noise and drowned in dreamy vocals, Honeyslide blend the experimental with the melodic to provide thrillingly provocative sounds

Lastfm.com

Loop - Fade Out

Loop - Fade Out 

Blues / Hard Rock / Psychedelic / London 

Ride Into The Sun - S/T

Ride Into The Sun - S/T 

Psychdelia / Psychdelic / Shoegaze / Adelaide 

BandCamp

Slow-burning psychedelic shoegaze-rock, painting a soundscape that takes you on a trip from droning guitar, to blissful noise all at once. There’s a cohesive cinematic feel here that pulls everything together. This is a band rich in character: in both the sounds they weave and in the authentic stage presence they project.

Bandcamp