My Record Collection.or Reviews Black Ohms, 3-way & 2-way Splits

Expo '70/Be Invisible Now Split CD
Yet another worthwhile Expo '70 split release which, this time, finds Wright tag-teamed along with Italy's obscure Be Invisible Now!. The four tracks on the CD are nothing short of astounding. The opening Heir Of Serpents sounds huge, 2001 HUGE!!! With it's descending evaporating melodies and repetitive acoustic guitar arrangements, it truly does feel like floating way out in deep space while tripping balls. Seeker Of Sonic Auras is a much darker number which would have fit perfectly on the soundtrack to Jodorowsky's El Topo with it's vision-inducing drones and chiming slide-guitar effects. Be Invisible Now! stay along the same lines as their counterpart. I Fiori Devono Morire is a creepy yet pounding number filled with dark and moody drones, tons of fucked up sci-fi effects and old school organ melodies. L'Ultimo Giardino Dietro La Chiesa closes the album on a more industrial note with it's electronic beats and insect-like atmosphere.

Matt Hill/Duane Pitre/Justin Wright "Live at the Pistol Social Club+" CDr
This is the first ever recording featuring Expo '70 main man Justin wright under his real name. It's a three-way split with one tune assigned for each artist and one collective track. The album starts off with the later, a monster jam which reminds me of some of Charalambides work with it's droning slide guitars, chaotic solos. It gets heavier and heavier as it progresses until it eventually dissolves within itself. Matt Hill's contribution is Derek Bailey-like improvisational guitar solo, filled with harmonics and a seemingly haphazard approach to the instrument. A bizarre yet charming number which would fit in perfectly as an alternate theme song to Mr. Rogers were it broadcast in the twilight zone. Duane Pitre's track is a pretty straightforward guitar drone number with touches of high-pitched feedback and a shimmering atmosphere. Wright's work could easily have been released as Expo '70 with it's wonderful pulsating, musique contrète-like vibe.

Expo '70 "Black Ohms" CD
Continuing along the same lines as it's predecessor, Black Ohms is a journey through time and space. This is what it would sound like if Steve Reich formed a rock band, or if Neu! tried to blend some elements of doom in their sound. It is proof that one can still be influenced by experimental tape artists of the sixties or the german krautrock scene and still be able to sound fresh and modern. For example, I adore the simple yet effective Solitude with it's slow, plaintive fuzz guitar solo sprawled across a lovely, delayed background motif. The two last tracks are the albums main highlights with Cosmic Seance being a unique exercise in psychedelic doom while Midnight Stalking/Dawn Of The Black Ohms sounds more like a weird, experimental dark ambient tape composition. There might be tons of drone artists out today, but Expo '70 really stands out above the others and Black Ohms is the proof why! Phenomenal music as always from Wright!

Aquarius Records List No. 300 "Black Ohms" Record of the Week!

EXPO '70 Black Ohms (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd

As regular readers of the aQ list can no doubt attest to, we sure do love droning guitars. Whether downtuned and mostly motionless, or frenzied and buzzing, or blown out and shimmery, there's just something about the sound of those steel strings vibrating projected through massive walls of amplification. There's the primal primeval sound itself, the actual drone, a sound found everywhere in nature, then there's the power, the amplification, this transformed sound. The drone is most certainly linked to the machinations of life and the universe, we can only imagine, the Big Bang resulted in an aeons-long drone that hung over the nascent Earth, the sound of insects, the growls of beasts, the rumble of thunder, the white noise of the surf, all harnessed and sculpted into a more modern, more human experience of sound, into actual music. But the best drone music, with the most resonance, is the music that conflates the two. That creates a listening experience, wherein we find ourselves drifting off, sometimes to some man made universe, of songs and sounds and music, sometimes to someplace wholly other, where the music looses itself from the strictures of composition and arrangement, and is allowed to float freely, to drift. It's then, that the music maker becomes more than a musician, more than a rock band, almost more like and esoteric, ethereal wrangler of sound. The magic is creating music, that sounds like it wasn't 'created' at all, but instead, was discovered, unearthed, or if created, not from guitars and 4-tracks and drums, but from some strange energy, or some alternate universe, the sounds become glimpses into other worlds, or peeks into the music maker's soul. In creating these sorts of sounds, the listener is inexorably drawn in, and pulled quite willingly into a whole new dimension, where unlike the creator, who may have meticulously assembled the various elements, they are allowed to wander, and wonder, to float and drift and get lost, to allow the sounds to unleash emotions, to open up their mind, their hear, maybe in some cases even their soul.

As you might imagine, and we've mentioned it before, the drone is a mercurial beast, and one not wrangled easily. There are plenty of comers, who feel like once you've conjured the drone, it does the work for you, but such is not the case, as is proven time and time again, by sonic alchemists like Expo '70, whose take on the drone is less monochromatic, less one dimensional, whose dronemusic is infused with elements of krautrock, spacerock, postrock, but all woven into vast black expanses of sound.

Even more than past Expo '70 releases, Black Ohms manages to create some impossible world of sound, that is at once dark and sinister and foreboding, yet somehow dreamlike and serene, a collection of tracks woven into a seemingly continuous sonic drift, beginning with a deep, almost corrosive buzz, pulsing and undulating, shot through with streaks of melody, layered and textured, looped and hypnotic, heavy and dense and in its own minimal way, quite brutal, before giving way to something much more tranquil, a sea of glimmering, harmonics, and deep drifting tones, here the guitar is revealed as just that, a guitar, its abstract chords and minimal riffage, clipped and effected, draped in reverb and delay, and allowed to unfurl into softly propulsive rhythms, and spider web-like textures, again, infused with subtle melody, and blurred, burnished shadings.

The record wanders through miniature otherworlds of atonal melody, of machine like click and chitter, fifties computer bleeps and bloops, soft chiming jammy summer sun guitars, before returning to the deep, dark drone for a nearly 35 minute two part finale. The first part, a fifteen minute return to the sound of the album opener, the guitar again distorted and dark, not so much riffing as buzzing, a Niblockian soundscape of overtones and harmonics, a warm blackened bed for the ethereal melodic drift above, streaks of glimmering melody, soft stretches of wispy ambience, laced with an almost buried, looped guitar figure, all subtly rhythmic, a distant throb, like the pulse of some buried giant, muted and mysterious, but supporting the whole delicate structure.
The second, a 20 minute slow burn, a crystalline assemblage of barely there rhythms, deep layers of shimmering drone, this is the sound of a million dronemusic cd-r's fully realized, a smoldering chunk of minimal propulsion, rife with strange, tape speeds shift, but instead of jarring, it only manages to make the sound woozy, slightly alien, underwater, glimmering melodies, sparkling like black diamonds, fields of soft static like clouds of tiny insects, deep soft swells like the ebb and flow of some otherworldy tide.

Imagine the most minimal krautrock record you own, dubbed over and over and over onto the shittiest tapes possible, left in the sun, then played back on a car stereo, with only one woofer, but then render that in ear popping hi fi. The sound may seem murky and muted, but it is most definitely by design, there is nothing low fidelity about the sound of Expo '70, because within the meticulously and deftly obscured sound world, lurk all manner of sonic mysteries, each suspended in an impossibly beautiful blurred constellation of sound, which in turn is left to drift across a vast expanse of Black Ohms.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!.


HILL, MATT / DUANE PITRE / JUSTIN WRIGHT "Live At The Pistol Social Club+" (Kill Shaman) cd-r

That's right, we're sounding that alert 'cause you might not know these names... suffice to say though that Justin Wright is better known (to AQ customers) as the guy behind Expo '70, whose new full-length cd Black Ohms happens to be our Record Of The Week this list. And Matt Hill is his touring partner, whom you've seen together with Wright if you caught 'em recently in SF at the Hemlock with Wooden Shjips, or elsewhere on tour. Also, their pal Duane Pitre is another guitar-wielding dronester with tendencies in line with the cosmic Expo '70 aesthetic. The prolific Expo '70 being an outfit we've continually championed as they constantly amaze us with their sooooo gorgeous, '70s krautrock inspired, spaced out instrumental drone musick.

There's four tracks here on this solid black cd-r. The seventeen minute long track one, finds Wright, Hill and Pitre playing together, droning out mightily, live at someplace called The Pistol Social Club. The credits have 'em all playing guitar, all responsible for "textures, drones", with Pitre also on "prepared percussion, disjointed lines" and Wright handling "melodic lines" as well. It starts as a hushed ambient soundscape, at once spacious and intimate, hesitantly melodic and repetitiously trancelike; raw, rough edges softened by gentle whirr, their guitars' volume gradually increasing, eventually building into a quite dense, distorted finale.

Then there's one track apiece from Hill, Pitre, and Wright. Hill's seven minute contribution is all acoustic guitar and field recordings, sparse pickings and pluckings, sounding like a broken music box, crank turned at half-speed, backwards, amidst nighttime insect buzz. Unidentifiable crackle, rustle, and hiss infuse the plinking proceedings, which could be a mellowed out Derek Bailey with Jewelled Antler production. Pitre's piece, "Motorized Music for Electric Guitar (live)" is what that says: a live performance, at a church in Brooklyn, with Pitre applying a "handheld high-speed rotary tool" to the strings of his electric guitar. The result is a twelve minute Niblockian drone divine, slow-building and shimmery. Wonderful. And then Wright bats cleanup, ending the disc with a live improv guitar piece featuring the use of two amps, and, we're told, a squeaky chair. It's ten and a half minutes of dreamy, subtle cosmic throb and drift, with sci-fi electronic FX whispering from outer space to swirl around this piece's glowing meditative center. So nice.

For Expo '70 fans and anyone into the guitar-drone-zone, this here's a varied four-part treat indeed!

Psychatrone Rhonedakk Reviews Black Ohms & Be Invisible Now Split

EXPO'70 sits before the cyclopean amp God!

I hope you know it's TRUE! Well, as far as I can tell from the cover of BLACK OHMS....the new EXPO'70, anyway!

Yes, a smoke shrouded Justin sits before what looks like a black monolith with one glowing eye....if you look on the disc itself the word "ORANGE" can just be seen on the "God's" head. You've got it,....here is the original worshipper of the mighty ORANGE amp bluster. I do believe that is the main message this cover delivers,....and the CD's music, does it deliver "God's" word too? Read on and see....

Track one is named "Lysergic Sunrise" and it is almost purely almighty AMP DRONE/BUZZ ,fuzz-wall sound....a sliding guitar coasts around this wall of sound and just enough amp scrunge is evident to make you realize that this is a guitar drone, NOT any synth tone stuff here.

MIND ECHO UNIT takes a less agressive stance in the drone department,and adds almost hidden chiming tones for depth of field(I like to call it...). Give this some time and listen hard my children,.....other worlds of sound will unfold before your ears. Then a ricocheting guitar lead brightens the haze with an Eddie Hazel on downers type of sound. A bit like a slow motion Maggot Brain for you all.

EMERALD FANGED DANCER is full-on MOOG madness in an off-kilter dance macabre,....then SOLITUDE flows out of your speakers like an electric chamber orchestra with a tasteful fuzz lead guitar soaring over the seemingly bowed sounds.

COSMIC SEANCE has that wide listening depth-of-field I spoke of before...listen deep and float,...long flowing tones surface and glide through this piece,that is until the last 5 or so minutes where a lead guitar layer forms like something from AR and The Machines to round out the trip!

The last twenty minutes is called "Midnight Stalking/Dawn of The Black Ohms",...and Mr. Wright probably wants to strangle me by now with all of my recent Tangerine Dream references,but the beginning here sounds to me like one of their dark pieces like ZEIT ,only better with more changes! This throbbing behemoth slowly subsides towards the middle mark of the track's time to mellow out and become more obviously guitar sounds that take us to a shimmering "Dawn" with high freq chimings darting through the soundfield.

So with EXPO'70's album done....I can say "Yes, the God of ORANGE amplification has been made real,and His (or is it Her?) kindness shall surely reign down upon us all when we celebrate by playing this album!" Go forth and listen to a true testament to the beauty of sound.


>>>>Next up on the spinner is...a split CD featuring EXPO'70 & BE INVISIBLE NOW!

This is one of the many new delights available from EXPO'70...

The two tracks here from EXPO'70 are very early (and I mean VEERYY early)Tangerine Dream like. I'm talkin' Alpha Centauri era(again...it seems...?) here on "Heir of Serpents" ,a cool cosmic drone that seems made from mellotron flute is accented by slide guitar of a Syd-like quality ...while slowly a strumming acoustic guitar adds it's tone to this strangely pastoral sound. Near this track's end the final touch is layers of distorted guitar that add a sea-chanty like mantra to the proceedings. Very nice. "Seeker of Sonic Auras" wafts in on a single note repeating over space-wave synth of an ominous quality. This gets a queazy warble going that hints at something frightening below a dark surface....it's peaceful but uneasy at the same time. The track shifts layers exploring all the strange qualities of this dronescape. A paranoid space for your exploration....I have the feeling Hawkwind would have approved!

Now BE INVISIBLE NOW comes right in on that "ominous" vibe with the first of their two tracks....their drone says "No one can hear you scream in space",...or "In case of sonic attack...use your metal limbs"...maybe? Then after a good five minutes of darkness the drums come in to make this sound like side three of ULTIMA THULE!! Swells of chittering synths blast around the driving drums like maddened insects attacking your mind,.....then all fades into the blackness of metallic drone once more. Alien groaning synths take us back out of this space towards their second cut.... this time darkness with a beat! Spooky giant drones with an almost "gothic" feeling take you to the land of Dario Argento. Hell ,you can almost see the friggin' zombies stalking you ,even when your house is lit by full daylight! This is "meat eating" synth fright,...and it's so damned good.

So,there you go,....I ask you,"HOW can you go wrong!?!" Get yourself a copy of this new synth classic before it's all gone and you have to cry to someone to get a lowly burn of it. (Now I've gotta get some more "Be Invisible...." stuff. Hot DAMN!)

Expressway to my Skull Blog Reviews

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Expo '70 "Animisim", "Audio Archive 001 and 002" (Kill Shaman) 2008

Expo '70 is the (usually) one man drone project of Justin Wright, who hails from unlikely Kansas City, USA. The man has been churning out CDRs for about four years now, and each successive release has improved upon the last.

"Animism"
Animism is the most recent full length from this one man drone juggernaut and is perhaps the darkest material he has pumped out yet. The album starts off in the shadowy mountain passages of Tangerine Dream but soon picks up and sets its sights for the dark matter of the great kosmiche in the stars. An amped up, more chugging version of Sunn O))) is an apt comparison for the middle section of the record. After an intense mid-section, Animism slowly unfurls in a mess of dark and droning synths, interrupted occasionally by drawn out and buzzy riffage. One can't help but be imagine floating listlessly in the cosmos when listening to this one.


"Audio Archive 001"
"Audio Archive 002"
The next 2 releases are collections of unused material from 2006-2007. If you check out the Expo '70 discogs page, one can tell that the man is busy if he has this much unreleased material from the last two years alone. These definitely aren't throwaways, however, the tracks don't gel together as well as the more thematic Animisim or his previous full lengths. Most of the tracks presented on these two releases flit between intense organ drone-outs, buzzing acoustic ragas, solo guitar space launches, and haunting voodoo theremin experiments, all of which show the vast range of drone styles that Justin has quickly mastered. Song titles like Summoning The Cosmos, Psalm Of The Universe, White Magic At Dawn and Ghost Vapors ought to give you a sense of what he's reaching for.

Expo '70 is hardly breaking any new ground, in fact he's treading on territory that has been explored for almost 40 years. What I think is impressive is his ability to pay homage to so many varying styles of the same theme while also bringing his own unique, updated touches.

Flavorpill write up for Hemlock Tavern Show

Expo '70
One could be forgiven for thinking that Expo '70 was a long-forgotten Krautrock project from a group called "Expo." (The minimalist name and cover art certainly fit, and the slow-burn drones evoke Ash Ra Tempel and Brian Eno at his darkest.) As it turns out, the group is the brainchild of Justin Wright, a native of Kansas City who has an excellent sense of both guitar sustain and graphic design. Recently, Wright's music has taken a turn for Sunn O)))-style doom. Both local openers share Wright's fascination with analog drones, but Wooden Shjips dial up fried psychedelia, whereas Arp's music for synthesizers is all about smooth lines.

– Max Goldberg

SF Weekly Write up for Hemlock Tavern Show

Expo '70's Exploratorium of the Mind

The word "psychedelic" gets tossed about all too often these days, usually by indie sophisticates who want to elevate sloppy, unfocused, or just plain unfinished songwriting to some theoretically higher, more esoteric and cerebral plane. What differentiates these so-called "psych" musicians from Missouri's Justin Wright — aka Expo '70 — is that Wright's extended guitar drones are as focused as lasers slowly drilling away into the black chasm of space. Songs develop with great compositional patience, growing almost imperceptably from an initial buzz into epic nebulae full of dark magnetic noise and occasionally shaken by deep gravitational rumbles. They may be improvised, but more in the tradition of structured German kosmische electronica or sci-fi space rock than the wobbly jams of weaker, more cliched "psych" music — so let's just throw the genre terms away in this case and let the music stand on its own. Or float, as the case may be.
— J. Graham

Show Review The Glob in Denver, CO.

Expo 70, Temples, Three Tall Dudes with Small Trucks
Friday, August 15, 2008
Glob Glob Glob
Better Than: Noise shows where it's all bent circuit manipulation and feedback.
By Tom Murphy

Apparently there's a thriving, though nascent, underground scene in Kansas City, and Expo 70, who was up next, has been a big part of what's going on there with at least nine releases (I bought all of them) under its belt. Elements of the act's latest album, Black Ohms, made it into a set that otherwise seemed like inspired improv. Low, droning tones introduced what was to come: The band had set up a tricolor filter, rotating light that gave the feeling of being at a campfire in William Hope Hodgeson's The Nightland. The flow of drone quickly became infested with the sonic equivalent of bioluminescent creatures too far below the surface to be distinct. The bass drone drew out to infinity frequencies from the upper stratosphere and channeled through middle-range delays. During the first third of the composition or so, the music sounded like the tapping into the communication channels of crystalline life forms translated for human ears. Fog jettisoned from between the amps and drifted off to mark a shift in tone, as the song evolved into a driving pace with fluid bass lines lurking beneath the cycling resonance of echoing guitar loops and heady, sustained leads swimming through the electronic fog that served as a cognate of the actual mists still lingering.

The sounds then rapidly transformed and a rough-textured low end streaming nearly made the band sound like a classic rock unit, only it was so drawn out and stretched beyond normal rock boundaries it took a little imagination to figure out what the members had done. It's not often a band, without trying, forces you to use your imagination. The final movement had a stoner-rock-esque bass riff surrounded by delayed, encircling guitar drift that recalled Sleep with lessened sense of impending doom.

Aquarius Records Reviews Boring Machines Split CD

Latest from aQ faves Expo '70, masters of modern krautdrone, every record another chapter in their expanding sonic history of the universe, a tale in sound, of suns and planets, of drifting in space, of galaxies expanding, of stars dying, of black holes, and endless expanses, of timelessness and infinity.

Two tracks, each a slow building epic, the first rife with deep chordal swells, simple strummed acoustic guitars, crumbling distorted leads, mournful melancholy melodies, distant streaks of feedback, abstract whir and deep minimal rumble, a gorgeous slab of outer space drone folk, like a more spaced out kraut version of Kiss The Anus, or like a new weird America Santana fused with Hawkwind at their most acoustic and blissed out. The second track is a much dronier affair, a spaced out soundscape of rumbling, buzzing, shimmering synths, layered and textured, rhythmic and hypnotic. Like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, but much darker and buzzier, but just as blissy and space-y. The sound building and building into a heaving wall of synths and guitars, various whirs and rumbles and tangled up minimal melodies, all wavering textures and timbres, eventually joined by strange outer space FX, and more pronounced funereal melodies. Some truly gorgeous spacey shit for sure.

For this cd-r, Expo '70 have teamed up with Italian drone rockers Be Invisible Now, who have a similar sound, but definitely manages to make it their own. Beginning like some Goblin Argento soundtrack, all creepy synths and swells of black ambience, delicate little spacey melodies and swooshing FX, that swirl and build, the track begins to distort and crumble, the effects becoming more agitated and intense, the whole track thickening, until drums come in, offering up a tribal framework, around which the sea of synths swirls and shimmers, a mysterious rhythmic space rock ritual, which quickly fades out, leaving the various layers of synths to slow down, to slip away, to darken and crumble, leaving just a soft, fading buzz.

The second BIN! track begins all heavy and distorted, almost like some spacier Wolf Eyes, wrapped in swirling effects, anchored by simple pounding percussion, the synths getting more intense and more buzzy, thick and blown out, the programmed rhythms growing skittery and chaotic, everything louder and more dense, more distorted, FX everywhere, the track erupting into some strange noise drenched new wave, like the soundtrack to some French new wave horror film, or some New Order remix rejected for being to noisy and fucked up and scary. Awesome.

A pretty good intercontinental space rock, krautdrone matchup for sure. Packaged in a full color eco-wallet digipak style sleeve, and of course LIMITED.

Sands Zine Reviews Boring Machines Split CD

il ritorno dei krauti, ben cucinati, gustosi e saporiti
x Matteo Uggeri

Era parecchio tempo che un CD nuovo nuovo, appena estratto dal cellophane ed infilato nello stereo dell'auto, non mi trasportava immediatamente in nuovi lidi mentali lasciandomi con bocca semiaperta e testa dondolante. Questo l'effetto dell'apertura di Heir of the Serpents, cavalcata krautissima, pieni anni '70, tra spaziali droni di synth vintage ed una chitarra acustica che quando fa il suo ingresso, non prima del terzo minuto, si porta dietro tutta la mia attenzione. In più, chitarroni psichedelici corredano il tutto con piena coerenza revival. È la traccia più bella dello split, ma non è niente male neppure il seguito, con l'immobile e cadenzata Seeker of Sonic Auras, con crescendo più statico e assolini di tastiera conditi dai tipici "swiiiiiisshhhhh" del tempo che fu.

Con I fiori devono morire l'atmosfera si incupisce, pare quasi dark ambient, quando poi a metà brano una ritmica elettronico/tribale ci sveglia dal torpore. Ancora più pesantezza nella conclusiva L'ultimo giardino dietro la chiesa, dove affiorano anche suoni distorti e una cassa di stampo EBM trascinante e cattiva come il Diavolo, una roba che non sentivo dai tempi delle frequentazioni disco-dark dove Frontline Assembly et similia (direi che qui viene in mente proprio il loro bel side project strumentale Delerium) la facevano da padrone. Al di là di quest'ultima influenza però tutto il disco resta agganciato al kraut rock anni '70, senza vergogna, senza dubbi, senza paura. Sebbene io non ami il revival, quando è così dichiarato e diretto (nella presentazione si fanno i nomi di Klaus Schulze e Cluster, certo non a caso, e ci si potrebbero mettere anche Tangerine Dream e compari…) riesco più facilmente ad apprezzarlo. Ode quindi ai due autori di questo omogeneo split, il californiano Justin Wright (Expo '70) e l'italiano Marco Giotto (Be Invisible Now), nonché all'etichetta Boring Machines, poco prolifica (ed è un bene di questi tempi) ma estremamente attenta a piccoli gioielli come questo.

Storia della Musica reviews Boring Machines Split CD

Expo 70 vs Be Invisible Now!
Split
di Alessandro Pascale
3.5/5 stars

La Boring Machines è indubbiamente una delle etichette emergenti più interessanti di casa nostra con il suo parco di riferimento squisitamente psichedelico decisamente poco commerciale ma molto interessante. Un paio di songwriter di razza (Jessica Bailiff, Bob Corn) ma soprattutto tanta bella roba sperimentale e strumentale (Boring Machines, Satan is my Brother oltre alle due realtà dello split odierno). Se non siamo in presenza di una piccola scena c'è comunque di che sbattere le ciglia per lo possibilità di poter godere una simile realtà in Italia.

A conferma del buon momento dell'etichetta esce questo split tra Expo'70 e Be Invisible Now!, due tracce a testa per oltre quaranta minuti di musica. Expo'70 è il progetto di Justin Wrights, uno che si è divertito a suonare in alcune band californiane abbastanza misconosciute (Living Science Foundation, Electric Sky) prima di mettersi in proprio realizzando tonnellate di materiale da cui viene estrapolato nel 2007 il suo esordio ufficiale Animism. Ascoltando le due composizioni qui presenti emerge netto il ricordo di quella musica cosmica squisitamente '70s. Quello space-rock tipicamente kraut e parzialmente ambient che prende le mosse dai vari Tay Mahal Travellers, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel.

In Heir of serpents una consistente serie di synth e tastiere crea un tappeto sonoro spirituale e minimale su cui interviene una chitarra acustica strascicata presto accompagnata da un paio di chitarre elettriche delle quali una ripete ossessivamente un riff con la costanza di un rintocco di campana, l'altra invece spazio in un blues acido, fino allo spegnimento quasi improvviso. Seeker of sonic auras invece elimina del tutto ogni improvvisazione impastando un sound ancora più gelido, claustrofobico e inquietante. L'impressione però è che si spezzi l'equilibrio che caratterizza la prima traccia dando adito all'impressione di una carenza di idee.

Be Invisible Now! è anch'esso il progetto solista nato nel 2001 del trevigiano Marco Giotto, dopo un passato '90s come musicista rock più convenzionale.

I riferimenti stilistici sono grosso modo gli stessi già elencati in precendenza per Expo'70 ad eccezione forse di un maggiore amore per i primi Pink Floyd periodo A saucerful of secrets-Ummagumma. Direttamente da quei dischi sembra infatti provenire il drumming forsennato alla Nick Mason che si fa largo tra i crismi digitali de I fiori devono morire. Percussionismo a tratti violento e tribale di forte impatto che impreziosisce un clima misterioso e alienante.

L'ultimo giardino dietro la chiesa parte con un vortice di synth su cui si staglia un drumming dapprima scandito e regolare poi asincrono e sbeffeggiante. L'uso dell'elettronica crea un clima ostile, minaccioso e fortemente meccanico, un'atmosfera da apocalisse nucleare se non da dicotomia uomo-macchina.

La potenza del disco (e in particolare della seconda parte) impone allora una certa attenzione per questi artisti che, pur mostrando una forte derivatività dai mostri sacri dei '70s, rielaborano ottimamente quelle istanze con una serie di quei "viaggioni" psichedelici che nel panorama attuale si credeva fossero in grado di realizzare solo calibri grossi come Bardo Pond, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Warlocks e Dead Meadow.

THREE IMAGINARY GIRLS

Three Imaginary Girls - "Seattle's Sparkly Indie-pop Press"

Expo '70 —Animism
{8}
{Kill Shaman}

The liner notes for Animism explains that not only are almost all of the songs on the record improvised, but that Justin Wright used electric and acoustic guitars, as well as gongs, to create them.

If you haven't already clicked away from this review after reading that sentence, I would hope that your interest would be piqued by what Wright -- performing under the name Expo '70 -- does. The seven tracks on this disc are breathtaking epics of drone and spacious hum, unfolding in glacially in the manner of groups like Earth and Spectrum.

It seems strange to say, but it might be a good thing that Wright recorded this album on his own. There is enough room in the songs from them to breathe deeply, but others might feel the need to push them too hard, both in terms of energy and volume. By himself, Wright is able to let them evolve naturally, letting inspiration come when it comes. It materializes often and gloriously on Animism, and thankfully we are blessed with it on this near-perfect album.

-Bob Ham, December 04, 2007

http://threeimaginarygirls.com/recordreview/2007nov/animism


EXODUSTER

Expo '70
Animism
Kill Shaman Records
Grade: B

Expo '70 is the invention of the multi-instrumentalist Justin Wright – former guitarist in Living Science Foundation. Similar in thought to groups like Om and SunnO))), Wright is a guitar extraordinaire more interested in creating feelings and soundscapes than rocking out man hooks – though some do sprinkle in. Wright has released scores of CD-Rs from his home base in Kansas City; mainly as a means to feel productive and some of these have been picked up for wider release by Aquarius Records. Amongst the seven improvised instrumental tracks, a handful standout as splendid including the relatively short opener "Outside In," the spacey mood "Mahogany Lake," and two extended droning numbers "Entering the Night on a Highway of Astral Projection" and closer "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover." If nothing else, Expo '70 will serve as excellent soundtrack material for indie films.

www.exoduster.com.


Wooden Shjips on Dusted Magazine praise Animism

Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: San Fran psychsters Wooden Shjips and Canadian Americana stars The Sadies.
Listed: Wooden Shjips + The Sadies

Wooden Shjips

San Francisco psychedelic quartet may seem a few years late for the hippie resurgence of "New Weird America," but don't think anything less of them for it. After releasing a series of praised 7"s, their self-titled debut, released earlier this year on Holy Mountain, is one of the strongest releases the genres have seen in modern times. Culling from influences that span the 70s, their powerfully droning, and epically repetitive songs ebb and flow as well as any of their predecessors. Wooden Shjips is out now, and the band is playing selected dates around the country.

To start I'd like to point out that these are all contemporary bands, making records and playing shows right now (and most have MySpace pages, so have a listen). These are just ten records I picked up in the last year, but it could have been a list of twenty or thirty. Times are good for music lovers (at least we have that, right?).

6. Expo '70 – Animism (Kill Shaman)
I'm not going to mention the K-word, but I will say that I listen to a lot of German music from the early 70's. Hell, I probably listen to Ash Ra Tempel more than any other band (If anyone has that live stuff from '73, I'd love a copy). Expo '70 shares many traits with music of that time and place, but this is no derivative. Sublime, floating, trance music, indeed. This music needs to be toured with a full band and light show.


STONER ROCK.COM

Expo 70 - Animism
Review by John Pegoraro (StonerRock.com)
Kill Shaman Records
Release date: 2007


As I've said numerous times in the past, I'm a loud, dumb rock guy at heart. That works for me when wading through a sea of loud, dumb rock bands, but when faced with something else, it can be a bit of a chore to get into the right frame of mind. Especially ambient music. I mean, where are the fucking songs? Where's that hook that draws you in? What's the impetus to stick around for ten (or, even worse, 20) minutes of droning noodling?

For Expo 70's Animism, the brainchild of one Justin Wright, I'd recommend sequestering yourself in solitude with a really good pair of headphones. Then and there you'll get an answer to the above question. Typical of the genre, the songs unfold at a lethargic pace and blend in amongst each other. Each track serves as the introduction to the next, with Animism peaking with the 19 minutes of "Entering the Night on a Highway of Astral Projection" and the morose "Missing Sun." That last one is the closest to an actual song – it's driven by a simple acoustic guitar riff, similar to what was on Earth's Hex, with the aural effects serving as color. The final track, "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover," repeats the more ethereal ambiance of the earlier portion of the album, closing it out as it began.

I'm not going to lie to you and say that Animism is going to get frequent listens, nor is it going to make it onto any personal Top Releases of 2007 list. But once I let go and gave into the music, this loud, dumb rock guy enjoyed the trip.


MY RECORD COLLECTION

Myrecordcollection.org by Mathieu Duval (he ordered one of the boxed sets recently.)

Overview:

Expo '70

Exploring the music of Justin Wright (aka Expo '70) is like travelling back in time while keeping your feet firmly planted in the present. It's hard to explain, but deep within these droning, psychedelic soundscapes lies the soul of a sixties tape composer with a taste for the weird. Wright's regular weapons are the all-time classic Moog synthesizer and a guitar, but what he does with (to?) these is quite unorthodox and the results are simply out of this world. The most incredible thing is that, although this music is almost exclusively drone-based, I can assure you it will please music fans from every possible background. The comparisons and influences are limitless as Expo '70 sounds, to these ears, like the perfect compendium of every possible music genre out there; just like mixing red, green and blue will create white, mixing every possible type of music will give you Expo '70! It's all scientifically proven.

Imagine yourselves Boards Of Canada collaborating with Thomas Köner and Ash Ra Tempel, or La Monte Young jamming with Cluster and SunnO))) and you've got a fair idea of what this all sounds like. You name it and I could probably hear it in the music. Yet, regardless of all these influences, Expo '70 remains a unique act and one I'll be keeping my eyes on from now on as I am now a devout fan.

Once again, it's the fine folk at Aquarius Records that brought this artist to my attention. I gave the samples a listen and immediately had to find out more, so I paid a visit to the artist's website, listened to the mp3s and it was a done deal: I NEEDED this! Unfortunately, I was pretty broke back then so it took a few months before I went ahead and ordered everything I could get. I can't stop listening to these albms ever since they've been in my possession. Every time I put one on, I get sucked into this artificial vortex where time, matter and sound isn't always what it seems.

Reviews:

Boxed Set Vol. I.II
Label: Self-Released
Release: 2007
Format: 5CD-R
Cat. no: None
This box set is pretty unique even though it's the second time it's released. The first edition was released in an edition of only ten box sets, each one including five albums by Expo '70, all nested in an old school RCA magnetic tape box. This second version of the box was also released in an edition of only ten copies (containing the same exact albums), but this time, Wright asked five of his close artist friends to create two different covers each (2 X 5 = 10!). Of the ten available box sets, I was surprised to be able to get one of the two created by Melanie Kasten (both of which I considered to be the most beautiful of the two); they also both reminded me quite a bit of all those Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon releases. The new artwork was then pasted on the same magnetic tape boxes and sold as is. I'll probably have to glue back the corners that have dried up with time, but all in all, I believe I now own one of the two most beautiful and rarest box sets in my collection.

July 18 2004 (Live At Infrasonic Sound Studio)
Label: Self-Released
Release: 2004
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
Welcome to the wonderful world of Expo '70, where everything sounds quite familiar, but isn't always quite what it seems. The first thing that popped up in my brain when I first put this live album on (besides trippin' balls) was that it felt quite similar to the psychedelic soundscapes of The Taj-Mahal Travellers; long drawn out pieces based in drone with constantly manipulated noises. The Double Leopards did something quite similar before him, but I believe Expo '70 has mastered this type of music. I for example has odd sounds surfacing sporadically throughout as a gloomy, fuzzy drone carries the piece way out into the stratosphere. II is quite similar except that it is drenched in delay and slightly creepier with it's shimmering background drone. III is a much shorter piece with tons of scraping and buzzing alien sounds that could give Birchville Cat Motel a run for his money. This is available both as part of a rare box set and by itself.

Surfaces
Label: Self-Released
Release: 2005
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
Easily one of the trippiest albums in Expo '70's discography, Surfaces comes at you slithering an dreamy. The fake BYG/Actuel artwork might have you believe this is one will explore wild free-jazz territory, but Wright is quite true to his krautrock influences and Surfaces comes off sounding like the festering mutant bastard son of a Harmonium/Cluster union. Practically every song is drone based, but there are a few exceptions like the spastic acoustic vs. fuzzed-out-of-your-brains electric guitar solo of Prelude To Electric Wilder Beasts (unfortunately, I find this song a bit too sloppy to be enjoyed to it's fullest). It's the "shorter" tracks that stand out on this album; like the early Klaus Schulze vibe of Who Left The Door [...]? or the dark mood of Taikong. Fans of early/experimental Moog compositions will absolutely love this one, as will fans of Boards Of Canada (Matroshka Experiment is quite similar to some of their "filler" tracks).

Exquisite Lust
Label: Self-Released
Release: 2006
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
Don't be fooled by the cover, this is far from being another Hotel Costes lounge/electronica compilation. In fact it's some of the most LSD-tinged music by Expo '70 (it's very close in spirit to his earlier Surfaces album) so far. The opening Hitherto sounds like something Kawabata Makoto might have composed for some of his solo ambient works with it's drifting, delayed guitar notes cascading all around you like rain. The two Astrionics are probably what the unlikely meeting of Loren Connors' "airs" with Fennesz (in a VERY aggressive mode) might sound like! The album eventually takes a sharp turn towards the dark side on my favorite Two Black Hearts. The heavy drone on this piece sometimes becomes ethereal as shimmering background noises slowly surface once in a while. The title track ends the album on a dreamy note. Turn the lights off, sit back and let it all seep in. Exquisite Lust is both available as part of the box or by itself.

Center Of The Earth
Label: Self-Released
Release: 2006
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
Expo '70 has to be my favorite discovery of 2007. Every time I put an album on, I get transported away into the artist's very peculiar sound world. You might recognize a guitar here and a synthesizer there, but if you stop concentrating for a second and lose yourself in the music, everything will suddenly sound (and look) alien and strange. Expo '70's myspace page doesn't mention that this is "headphone bliss" for nothing; I suggest popping this album on in a dark room with either your headphones on or with your stereo with the volume turned up. Once that's done, just get comfortable and enjoy the ride. The four tracks on Center Of The Earth are quite heavy however and sometimes even border on SunnO)))-like doom (III), yet these soundscapes are so thick and fuzzy, listening to them feels like being wrapped in a thousand warm winter blankets that give off the occasional static electricity shock. Now who doesn't enjoy that? Amazing stuff!

Live 090505
Label: None
Release: 2006
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
This is the only Expo '70 release which I know is limited (to fifty copies only - twenty of which were reserved for the two different box sets). This is unfortunate as this thirty minute live set is as good as anything Wright has released up until now. It's also quite unique as it is not always drone-based, in fact, at times, it sounds like a long lost tribal recording from some obscure indian village, at others it sounds like someone is practicing his scales in his bedroom while priests are performing an exorcism in the very next room. And again in other parts, things become so bare and cold, one forgets about the music and is lifted away to never explored regions of the planet where snow stretches out to the horizon. If you're not afraid to tackle space and time (and perhaps getting lost along the way), then you should definitely try to hunt this one down. There's definitely enough change and bizarre atmospheres to keep your mind occupied from beginning to end.

Mystical Amplification
Label: Kill Shaman Records
Release: 2007
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
I absolutely love the artwork for most of Expo '70's albums. They are so representative of the music within; subtle retro look, mysterious design, yet there is no doubt about how deeply anchored in rock the music is even though it might not seem that way at first. Mystical Amplification is just that. This is the result of using cranked up guitar amps for shamanic purposes. The constant buzz of the speakers, the droning bass, the alien-like feedback and the absolutely brain crushing rock'n'roll guitar solo that plays constantly in the background; it's enough to have you believe that the spirit of some guitar God has been imprisoned in the music since the dawn of mankind and is now trying to break free from the monolithic nature of these soundscapes. This album is probably the closest Wright has come to actually sounding like a weird krautrock obscurity that has just recently been rediscovered. This is four numbers of pure, mind-altering bliss.

Audio Archive 001 (Music From Inaudible Depths)
Label: Self-Released
Release: 2007
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
I love pretty much everything I've heard by Expo '70 up until now, but I have a certain preference for his Audio Archive Series. His signature sound is still unmistakable, but they seem to be slightly "freer" in the sense that there doesn't seem to be any theme to these albums. Each track feels like an individual soundtrack and the results are often more varied. Summoning The Cosmos, for example, sounds like it could have been included on Fennesz' Hotel Paral.lel; Psalm Of The Universe, on the other hand, sounds like a long lost tune by Cluster and Valley Of Haze is remarkably similar to the works of The Skaters. Don't get me wrong, Wright (Expo '70) doesn't emulate these band's sound, each track is buried deep within his patented drones; yet there is so much going on behind these slow moving pieces, they are so evocative that everyone will hear something different, get different impressions of where this all originated. Mysterious and free.

Audio Archive 002
Label: Self-Released
Release: 2007
Format: CD-R
Cat. no: None
Audio Archive 001 might have been a devastating record, but this second installment sounds simply divine. Just pop this baby into your stereo and lose all grip on reality. This is some of the absolute most brain-melting music I've heard in a long time! The opening 042507 is an marvel to behold as smooth, yet repetitive guitar melodies tickle your synapses and block a few neurotransmitters in your head. The following 112706 is a dizzying drone which might induce vertigo or even nausea in some listeners, the perfect soundtrack to your "mornin' after". Fans of Thomas Köner and Birchville Cat Motel can simply not go on living without having heard this stuff! The last track, 120706 sounds like these two artists jamming with Manuel Göttsching and that's just one of the innumerable surprises to be found here. As with many of Expo '70's releases, the (black) CD-R comes housed in a plain folded paper jacket with cool artwork and insert.

Illusive Landscaping
Label: Diagnosis... Don't Recordings
Release: 2007
Format: 3"CD-R
Cat. no: DONT019
With only two tracks and less than twenty minutes worth of music, Expo '70 manages to drag you into his fascinating sea of higher consciousness and keep you submerged throughout. Opening Chrome Cobras is a dark and moody piece based around what sounds like a thick organ drone; serpentine guitar noises come and go throughout, giving the track a desolate, lost-in-the-desert like atmosphere. This number has a minimalist, early Philip Glass or Charlemagne Palestine vibe going for it as well. Blissful Morning starts off magically enough with Wright playing around with tibetan singing bowls before morphing into his usual wall-of-drone (and this one will hit you like a ton of bricks). This one sounds like an extended version of the intro to Faust's Mamie Is Blue (from So Far). Absolutely breathtaking soundscapes once again and a must for you drone enthusiasts, but bare in mind this one is limited to only one hundred copies.

Animism
Label: Kill Shaman Records
Release: 2007
Format: CD
Cat. no: KSR22
Absolutely brilliant! Drone hasn't sounded this good since... well... since Young or perhaps Köner! From the very moment the shimmering wind samples of Outside In hit your eardrums to the last distorted seconds of the fade-out on Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover, you will be a prisoner of Wright's peculiar world. Animism reminds me quite a bit of Expo '70's Audio Archive series as it is quite varied (subtly for sure, but varied nonetheless). Basically this sounds like all your utmost favorite krautrock albums all mashed into one huge fucking monster album and then slowed down and stretched out beyond recognition. If any of you are curious about this artist's work, I BEG you to pick this one up first, not that the others aren't good, au contraire, but this one will wipe that stupid smirk off your face and knock you down on your ass. No point in isolating highlights here as there is not one dull second in sight! Without a doubt, one of my top five for 2007!me improvisations down to tape with compatriot McKinley Jones, the results of which are Mystical Amplific


RAVEN SINGS THE BLUES

Expo '70 "Mystical Amplification" CDr

After RSTB's last encounter with the one man wonder that is Expo '70 and his soul crushing drones, Justin contacted me and hooked me up with a few more gems from his ever expanding catalog and I gotta tell you it seems that the man has struck a sympathetic tone with the universe. Just previous to his first "official" album, Animisim Wright laid some improvisations down to tape with compatriot McKinley Jones, the results of which are Mystical Amplification, and a better title could not fit these four heavy documents. Reportedly warmed up over two days and recorded straight in one shot, the four pieces on Mysical Amplification are certainly a testament to Wright's skills. Looser than Animism, the tracks wade much further into the psych territory, with hazed fretwork washing over the dark thunder of drone and restrained feedback lapping at the edges of the din. If you get a chance head over to Aquarius and check out their selection as they're one of the only tickets that are serving up Expo '70 right now.


Expo '70 "Animism" CD

Animisim is Expo '70s first official CD release, following a string of heavy drone/krautrock inspired cd-r releases on Kill Shaman. Turning out to be one of the heavier releases in his catalog, Justin Wright lays down a ton of deep drone and spacey effects. Working slowly up from distant thunder to ethereal waves of billowy effects, the album is a solid frontrunner for drone album of the year. Wright seems to languish in the beautifully myopic effects of the drone, hitting you hard with the weight of the guitar but diffusing the landscape it exists in. Once the clouds roll in Wright faces the gale with a calm and even hand on the strings and a foot on the effects wrangling slow and easy space blues over the full force dronescape that looms overhead. Wright has garnered much attention from his cd-r releases and Animism stands to cement that reputation even further.

http://ravensingstheblues.blogspot.com

SCREAMING BLOODY MESS

Expo '70 "Animism" CD (Kill Shaman)

Osaka 1970, site of the World's Expo Fair. It's theme, 'Progress and Harmony for Mankind'. One of the highlights was a moon rock brought back from the Apollo 11 mission. Progress and the future- if Justin Wright was around playing music then, there's a good chance he would have got a gig playing in Osaka, as like moon rocks his sound is both otherworldly and fascinating.

The prolific Wright, who up until now has released a grip of CD-R's with friends and established a small cult following amongst the layered guitar/drone set (who have compared him to Eno and SunnO)))- breaks out on his own with 'Animism' to deliver a fine conceptual record that takes in elements of krautrock, trippy psych and droney ambience.

Opening with the shortest piece, the droning "Outside In," it leads into "Mahogany Lake," which takes improvised guitar and weaves a long dose of 'mess with your headness'. The 20 minute epic 'Entering the Night on a Highway of Astral Projection' sounds exactly like the title suggests. Space is the place man. If you go to sleep listening to this stuff you wake up in a different vortex.
www.killshaman.com

Tim Scott

http://www.screamingbloodymess.com/


FLAGPOLE: Athens, GA Weekly

Expo '70
Animism
Kill Shaman

originally published August 8, 2007

A vision: Raphael Ravenscroft, saxophonist on Gerry Rafferty's 1978 rock radio hit "Baker Street," ascends by full moonlight Huayna Picchu, the great mountain of protection and majesty overlooking the ancient Lost City of the Incan Empire, Machu Picchu. Reflecting on his role in that seminal adult contemporary depiction of soiled and lonely cityscapes, Ravenscroft wonders aloud if more should have been done to portray the organism of night and its shadow language of gutters and concrete, at once seductive and repulsive. He has been haunted every decade since over whether the iconic woodwind strains he recorded that year with Rafferty were the best he could do. That they were merely a dilution of the truth is, for him, without question.

Ravenscroft reaches the peak of Huayna Picchu sullen and tired. As he approaches the Temple of the Moon, immortal Incan shrine to the lunar deity, he sees a wispy woman within; behind her, a teenage boy wearing Ray-Bans. It is Rebecca De Mornay and Tom Cruise from Risky Business, playing out her delicate seduction. The film's haunting Tangerine Dream soundtrack emanates from the surrounding stone.

De Mornay and Cruise turn to notice Ravenscroft, dissipating into fine mist as their necks crane. Their mists unify and slowly envelope the submissive saxophonist, melting him into their own shape, and by the hovering pulse of Tangerine Dream, the newly formed triple-souled wraith extends itself as though a thin cotton thread to the moon, homeward.

On that moon is Justin Wright, sole proprietor of the Kansas City, MO, sonic talisman known as Expo '70. Above him floats a sweet black Gibson SG encased in a crystal pyramid, and into this pyramid drifts the De Mornay/ Cruise/ Ravenscroft/ Tangerine Dream string-wraith. With a reel-to-reel tape machine and a single microphone, Wright records the sound of this intercourse to present it to the world as Animism, his first official full-length album (after nine self-released CD-Rs) of percussionless cosmological guitar and synthesizer drones. It is the sort of music that induces sincere visions, and should not be overlooked by aficionados of sound-induced introspection and the upside-down spacelessness garnered from staring at something unfathomable for as long as it takes to forget that anything else exists.

Jace Bartet


DUSTED MAGAZINE

Artist: Expo '70
Album: Animism
Label: Kill Shaman
Review date: Jul. 17, 2007


After five well-received, though decidedly underground, CD-R releases, Kansas City-based Justin Wright - aka Expo '70 - comes aboveground with his first official CD release. Animism follows solidly in the footsteps of its predecessors, offering over an hour of trippy instrumentals that flow from ethereal float and cosmic drone to quietly psychedelic space-strumming.

Animism as a title carries with it some assumptions. Paraphrasing, the concept of animism says that something akin to a soul, or an innate life-force, imbues everything, not just so-called "living" things. This raises the question, then, whether these seven songs are intended to give voice to these souls, whether this is a soundtrack to a specific set of things, or perhaps it's simply a philosophy that Wright felt had some bearing on the music. Ultimately, there's no telling; no clues are given, so it's up to the listener. Which is perhaps how it should be.

The album opens with its shortest piece, "Outside In," a simple droning intro that leads into "Mahogany Lake," a long dose of Tangerine Dream that drifts on gentle drones and placidly echoing guitar notes. It's the perfect soundtrack to your next isolation tank experience. With "Eagle Talons," we're given a dose of heavy, glacial sound masses that delve into more threatening territory, but "Universal Horizon" provides a respite of slowly-struck gongs reverberating, a meditational moment.

The last two-thirds of the album primarily consists of the two longest pieces, broken up by the brief, acoustic "Missing Sun." The 20-minute and heavily-titled "Entering the Night on a Highway of Astral Projection" flows on glowering waves of thick drone, an oceanic rhythm augmented after the first third with sharp guitar lines and cloudlike synths. Midway through it ominously grows very quiet indeed, then expands again into a rumbling desert of low-end hum. "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover" closes the album with 15 minutes of slow Floydian bass chug amidst slowly-blowing waves of sound that give way to ambient tone float and gentle guitar notes as an on/off buzz sees us out the other side.

Animism is crafted on frameworks built long ago by the likes of Brian Eno, Cluster, and Klaus Schulz, and Wright clearly understands the brain-melting appeal of their cosmic tones. While "Eagle Talons" bears similarities to contemporaries such as Growing and Om, it lacks the dynamism of pieces like "Entering the Night" and leaves less of an impression. "Missing Sun" is the other odd man out on the album, but is similarly multidimensional and trance-inducing. Overall, with Animism Wright has recorded a coming-out album that should see many more people talking about Expo '70 in the months to come.

By Mason Jones


SLUG MAGAZINE

Animism
Kill Shaman
Street: 05.28

Expo '70 = Ash Ra Temple + Sunn O))) + Tangerine Dream
When Earth 2 came out, I don't think many people foresaw a time in the future when minimalist guitar drone records would be en vogue. And yet here we are in 2007, and it seems like Earth imitators are a dime a dozen. Expo '70 manages to separate himself from the pack by drawing not only from dirge metal but also krautrock and space music, making for a somewhat lighter, more lysergic listening experience. The seven tracks here are all improvised on electric guitar, with occasional intervention by acoustic guitars and saxophone, creating an often blissful and sometimes ominous atmosphere of drug-soaked drift. This is a welcome addition to the ever-growing corpus of space-doom-dirge records, and since this is the first non-cd-r release in Expo '70's catalog, one that will hopefully garner him a wider audience. –Jona Gerlach

http://www.slugmag.com

THE WIRE Issue No. 276

"Center of the Earth"
"Exquisite Lust"

Expo '70 is the prolific side project of Justin Wright when he's not engaged in his day job with the Living Science Foundation (*they wrote Living Science Project, this band is now defunct!). Previous albums involved collaborations with Julian (*they wrote Justin) Peeke (Live July, 18 2004) and McKinley Jones (Surfaces). Wright considers his two recent albums, Exquisite Lust and Center of the Earth, to be the first mature work of Expo '70. The pieces are all composed from heavily effect-ladden guitar playing. Layers of delay build up into geometrically textured soundscapes while deep, rolling chords, cycle over themselves into low, ceaseless drones. There's a crossword puzzle cleverness to the weave of riffs on Exquisite Lust track "Hitherto" and a cynical buzzing splendour to "Motorik". Center of the Earth has more coherence as a suite of pieces. "Part I" pulses and swells with the elemental logic of lava flows. This builds into "Part II", which rumbles straight from the planet's magma soul before "Part III" and "Part IV" fall into the calm at the eye of the molten storm.
- By Nick Southgate

(*Just fixing two mistakes in this article - Justin/e70)

FOXY DIGITALIS

Expo 70 "Audio Archives 001: Music from Inaudible Depths"
Kill Shaman

Now I know you know that there is a whole lot of droning going on out there. And I'm not taking about the white noise or some other industrial byproduct seeping through your walls. I'm talking Drone, with a big, fat, lazy capital D. Even if you don't drone on a regular basis, you probably got a side project that does. Please insert no sarcasm in those lines because I actually do think it is great. Not too long ago I had been hunting all over the damn place for decent drone/ambient/dark types of music, but so few could really satisfy, often drifting too far into plasticized, cinematic or corny industrial realms that I really dislike. The best stuff I found back then usually came from German synth or Krautrock groups only on pricey Import reissues that a broke college kid like me would hesitate to buy when $20 is a weeks worth of food. Well, these days, I can find tons of bands to bore my aching skull with sweet tone suspension on a weekly basis. A band like Expo 70 seems to be riding high on this wave of zoned youth, making the rounds to sold-out crowds up and down the Fresh Coast. Their CDRs (a new one every month it seems) tend toward the sounds of those old Krautrock masters with a few 21st century electronic twists. In the downtime between regular CDRs (what downtime? ), Kill Shaman released this limited CDR titled "Audio Archives 001: Music from Inaudible Depths".

Hmm. This title doesn't make it an easy sell. Neither does the tagline "unused recordings" on the back cover. I guess the target market for this barebones document is the fan that only needs to see "Expo 70" to be convinced of its greatness. The CDR is the work of Justin Wright with McKinley Jones doing the recording and playing on most tracks. "Summoning the Cosmos" is a stellar piece with Jones twisting up some neon chirps and sputters from his Moog while Jones builds up layers of creamy organ drone. The organ, in all its mutilated glory, has made a big comeback for me this year, what with all the Mudboy and Justin Meyers I've listened to in the last couple of months, so I was particularly pleased with the 13-minute long opener as I was with "Space Time Collapsing". This is beautifully desolate as the Jandek-cum-Spaghetti Western acoustic strums by Wright align with Jones taking a whirl in the captain's chair using a bit more volume and force. What starts off a sedate psycho builds into something dancing the line between joyous and mysterious much in the way of current crop of dark folk players with a heavier bent on electronics. At times this can feel like a shelter for homeless experiments with some tracks trotting out an endless series of pointless electronic trickery across a monochrome backdrop for a long period of time. The hard thing about drone is that its consistency can put you way into the zone, or completely out in the cold. "White Magic at Dawn" has its good stretches but at over-twenty minutes, it gets to be overkill. But time probably wasn't a concern. This is not a practice in dynamics, but sound and texture.

I've found myself returning to this CDR more than I would have guessed, so I would say it's a good investment for the price. If you're not familiar with the bands work, I would point you to any of their CDRs, the fresher the better, and "Animism" before putting you on this. It is sixty-minutes of hit-or-miss material so I'd figure you'd want a better impression of the band than this. But there are plenty of really good moments on this collection for those who'd like to hear something a little different from the players. Or maybe you just plain love the Moog. Who doesn't love a new Moog solo once in awhile? 6/10 -- Kenneth Zubiate (10 October, 2007)

http://www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd/reviews.php?which=283270


Expo 70 "Center of the Earth"

I personally think that the deepest, heaviest drones and subterranean sound is the hardest part of music's vast existence to describe/come to terms with. It's defined by its mystery and enigmatic nature. Whatever meaning people can extract from it is largely posited in their own subjectivity, much more than other musical forms. This is also very liberating, freeing the critical faculties since meaning or insight is not handed to the listener on a plate.

More on this later but first some specifics on Expo 70. It has largely been the work of guitarist Justin Wright, starting life as a side project during his time with the Living Science Foundation. Over time it has gone from being a duo with Julian Peeke and later McKinley Jones to a solo outing with Wright being the only constant. "Center of the Earth" sees Wright pushing towards sounds unconscious depths. It consists of Wrights processed guitar work, recorded in late January and early February of this year.

It opens with flickered single notes, faint melodics and psyche effects that are soon enveloped by the dense drone that lingers on indefinitely. Later passages see drones of the likes of airplane engines as experienced from the inside. The sound of wind and resistance heard by someone safely separated from it by steel and glass. The longer the record goes, the denser and deeper it gets. There are few details to fixate upon: the meat so to speak is in the whole. In terms of its place in the world, it inhabits similar space to Double Leopards most zonked moments or Windy and Carl.

With all the mystique involved in this form of unmusic, cover art and artwork will often be taken as clues to the intent of a work (especially now artisan packaging and cover art is firmly a part of the experience of consuming music.) Here Wright suggests some aesthetic link or inspiration from geology or space. But to spend ones time searching for clues to the secret of obscure art would be a waste of time. To embrace free music like this is to embrace the immeasurable and intangible, grasping for literal meanings just misses the point. 8/10 -- Alex Kakafikas (18 December, 2006)

AQUARIUS RECORDS

From list No. 280

EXPO '70 Audio Archive 001: Music From Inaudible Depths
EXPO '70 Audio Archive 002

For a while there it was practically raining Expo 70 cd-r's around here, and we of course couldn't get enough, we were shirtless, soaking wet, jumping around, splashing madly in the sonic downpour. Expo 70 are masters of a sound that so perfectly pushes all of our buttons, a dark spaced out dronemusic, that manages to infuse the typical minimal drone, with the organic pulse of krautrock, the subtle propulsion of prog, the blissed out sonic effulgence of FX drenched space rock, all boiled down to their very essence, a throbbing pulsing organic world of sound, organs whirring, guitars rumbling, buzzing electronics, Moogs spinning out soft spacey shapes, bits of guitar strum, fragments of melody, all drifting in an expansive abyss of shimmering low end.

Dark and melodious, but blurred and smeared into expansive sonic sprawls, a black stream flowing heavenward, carrying us along with it, ambient music, but not wooshy or wussy, fierce and dense, dark and layered, keening sheets of feedback, crumbling chunks of distortion, breaking off like chunks of ice and floating weightless in a sea of hiss and buzz. Heavy enough to block out the SUNNO))), but serene enough to wrap around you like a warm blanket and sink into the soft feathery depths.

These two discs collect unused, unfinished and alternate tracks recorded over the last two years. Both are fantastic, gorgeous, minimal, intense, heavy, dreamy, 001 is packaged in a retro looking paper sleeve, while 002 is in a plain black sleeve with a sticker, and a black on black printed insert. Both are essential, whether you own all the other Expo 70 cds or none of them, and both are crazy cheap, the two together are still less than most single cds, you'd be foolish to buy just one...


From List No. 271

EXPO 70 Illusive Landscaping (Diagnosis... Don't!) 3" cd-r 8.98

We've sort of been inundated with dreamy new sounds from this one man rugblissdrone krautrock revivalist outfit. We're definitely not complaining though. We absolutely can NOT get enough of Expo 70's drawn out guitarscapes, extended spaced out kraut raga drones, churning and pulsing and throbbing, spacey synths and thick rumbling guitars all tangled into haunting sonic transmissions. We're just sort of scrambling to get them all reviewed. So we figured we'd start with this one, the latest, a two track missive that is so dense and layered it might as well be two HUNDRED tracks. Especially since we find ourselves setting the cd player to repeat and just drifting off...

The two tracks here are further examples of Expo 70's washed out space rock SUNNO))) sound, both tracks begin as soft swirls of synth and FX, tripped out and abstract, keening high end, rumbling low end, guitars wiggle and squiggle, all very chaotic but still drone-y and meditative, the first track doesn't deviate too much, the guitars are warm throbs, underpinned by a thick wash of buzzing synth, eventually sloughing off all the FX, leaving just a gorgeous Niblock like minimal drone. But the second track, is quickly subsumed by huge walls of crumbling fuzzed out slow motion riffage, super processed though, so instead of sounding downtuned or even heavy, it just sounds even MORE spacey, and thick and warm and druggy, a single riff, pulled apart and looped over and over and over, super mesmerizing, droning and drifting along through a field of distant fuzz and buzz and warm swaths of subtle synth, eventually fading out leaving nothing but tolling bells... So great.

Packaged in thick textured blue paper mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi.

And as always, these are of course SUPER LIMITED -- just a mere 100 copies, of which we got a majority share! -- and will most likely fly out of here...


From list No. 268

EXPO '70 Animism (Kill Shamen) cd
It's amazing how quickly Expo '70 went from being a group we had never heard of, whose cd-r we got randomly sent to us in the mail, to a dronerock juggernaut, releasing disc after disc of amazing ambient kraut-flecked drift, what is beginning to seem remarkably like a monthly installment of outerspace sonic exploration. But heck, we'd much rather get a new 'issue' of far out Expo '70 dronebliss every month than say, Star Magazine (well, actually, okay, maybe Star was a bad example, but definitely more than say Spin or Rolling Stone or pretty much any other monthly installment sort of thing, anyway...).

Animism just so happens to be Expo '70's first actual cd as well, the first release that's not a limited edition cd-r, which is one of the reasons we decided to make it record of the week. 'Cuz to be totally honest, every single one of the Expo '70 releases could have been, and heck, maybe should have been Records of the Week. Certainly if we based it on how much they get played in the store, and the reaction of the folks hearing it, and the fact that the cds have been impossible to keep in stock. But that's only one of the reasons. The other, is that Animism, in it's own subtly space-y and psychedelic way, is quite possibly the 'heaviest' Expo '70 release yet.

The record begins much in the same way as most of the others. A huge drifting rumbling soundscape. Spare and wide open. Across this warm expanse drift disembodied guitar squiggles, reverbed scrapes, bits of fragmented melodies, post rock snippets, tinkling percussive shimmer,all drifting over soft swells of undulating low end. There are tons of FX, but it's not Acid Mothers style freakout, instead, these sonic aktions are muted and smeared into dreamy streaks. Never has a music sounded so much like what it must feel like to drift weightless through space. Cloaked in inky blackness, but with the sparkle of a million stars illuminating the seemingly endless emptiness. And so it goes on, each track, a slow lugubrious crawl through the galaxies, strange shapes drift by, colored lights, every bit of melody like some barely visible shooting star, soft billow clouds of FX enveloping you before dissipating and leaving you to once again drift wide-eyed into infinity.

Track three, though, is where things start to get a little scary. In come the guitars, and this time it's not the little glimmers and twinkles, these are thick sheets of crumbling rumbling distorted buzz. Relentlessly trudging beast like across the same barren soundscapes, but leaving a trail of blown speakers in its wake. The effects here are much more blown out, melodies slip and slither amidst the coruscating heaviness, sounding almost like someone transported SUNNO))) back to the seventies, where they ended up jamming with Klaus Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel. Granted the Expo '70 cd-r Center Of The Earth, was also pretty heavy, but on Animism, the heaviness seems to be more deftly integrated with the lovelier psych-drone-drift parts, an organic space kraut doom, as dark and dense as it is dreamy and effervescent. The record effortlessly drifts back and forth, from black drone to space-y drift, as if one couldn't possibly exist in this universe without the other.

There are some subtle sonic surprises too, like the way-up-in-the-mix, tripped out harmonized guitars on "Entering The Night On A Highway Of Astral Projection", the folky acoustic strum on "Missing Sun", and the swirling SUNNO)))-y murk of "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover", sounding a bit like the Angelic Process with the treble turned all the way down and the bass all the way up! Blissy and muddy, an epic blown out glistening dirge, suffocated under layer after layer of FX drenched detritus.

If there was ever an ultimate soundtrack for blowing the hatch and floating free, doomed to a languorous eternity of drug fueled drift and buzzing rumbling psychedelic space rock torpor, this is most certainly it.

So recommended.


From list No. 267

EXPO '70 Mystical Amplification (Kill Shaman) cd-r
We LOVE Expo '70. They're playing in SF this week, two shows that will be over by the time you read this. And we might not even get to go, 'cause we're too busy writing reviews, like this one... oh the bitter irony. But even if we miss them live (which would be a shame) we're still in Expo '70 heaven 'cause they've brought us two brand new cd-rs!! (And, there's also a new release on a real cd too, Animism, which we'll list next time!) Wow. That's a lot of Expo '70, but their krautrock inspired instrumental ambience is an expansive sound, that can easily sprawl across the full length of a cd or cd-r in just a track or two...and therefore can also spread beyond, occupying several near-simultaneous releases with no diminishment to our enjoyment. We're happy to hear it go on, and on, and on eternally. Expo overload, no, too much is never enough.

So, this one... Mystical Amplification. With song titles making reference to such things as "Mountainous Caverns Of Black Arts" and Konstantin Raudive's research into EVP (a la the Ghost Orchid) it's easy enough to say things like this music is haunting and mystical... mystical amplification, heck that's the title. The Expo '70 guys are doing all our work for us. The four long tracks (we like how the songs are split into a "side 1" and "side 2" when listed on the sleeve, even though it's of course all on one side of this cd-r) are all one-take improvs, with mainman Justin Wright on electric guitar ("with plenty of effects", all right) and his current Expo associate McKinley Jones playing a Moog synth. Spaced out and psychedelic trips much more on the "kosmische" tip than their Kansas City origin would suggest... this is all buzzing droning bliss, no drums or vocals to reign it in to human scale, just cosmic textures galore, often soothing, and a little bit ominous. There are moments that vaguely sound like Robert Fripp or Eddie Hazel jamming with Klaus Schulze, both of 'em dreamy and drowsy from drugs. Or imagine a mellower SUNNO))), teamed up with Space Machine, perhaps, getting all yogic on us with some abstract instrumental, electronic om-chants. Sleepy, slowly swirling, hissing and purring over quietly churning low-end depths...

By the way, this is slightly (a buck) more expensive than all the other Expo '70 cd-rs 'cause of the attractive vinyl-style gatefold packaging.


From List No. 248

EXPO '70 Exquisite Lust (Kill Shaman) cd-r
We were sent a whole batch of cd-r's from this mysterious group Expo '70, and all the various cd-r covers were designed to look like old seventies krautrock or free jazz records. Which definitely grabbed our attention. Plus they're called Expo '70, so while we weren't exactly sure what to expect, we were definitely thinking it was bound to be good. And boy were we right. This is good. Great in fact. But that wasn't all, the faux vintage covers and the band name ended up being seriously indicative of the sounds within. Gorgeous drifting ethereal krautrocky ambience is what Expo '70 is all about, and eyes closed, you'd be hard pressed to not think this was some Ash Ra Tempel disc or some long lost A.R. and The Machines lp. Crafted entirely from guitars, sitar and Moog, each track here is some sort of lengthy, mesmerizingingly blissed out minimal drone jam. Guitar figures are looped into hypnotic cycles, over shimmery whirls of fuzzy sound and distant drones, the looped riffs slowly shifting and gently changing shape. It's almost like some sort of new age space rock Steve Reich. Swirling FX surround warm deep guitar tones floating weightless in a glistening expanse of muted color and twinkling sonic sparkles. So completely blissful and dreamlike and captivating. One of our favorite new discoveries.

Fans of far out krautrock, deep dark drone, and outerspace guitar exploration will be in absolute heaven, or at the very least in some darkened room, in a trance, drifting off to some druggy dreamy other dimension...


From List No. 250

EXPO '70 Surfaces (Kill Shaman) cd-r
We were sent a whole bunch of cd-r's by the mysterious Expo '70 a few months back, each one with a strange cool cover, one was some seventies styled naked females making out, another (this one in fact) was an homage to one of those seventies Actuel jazz record label album sleeves. We were already kind of sold, but then we threw them on, and WOAH!! Not at all what we expected. We were imagining some sort of droney free noise whatever, but instead, we got an earful of some timeless cosmic space music, some lost ambient krautrock. So spaced out and lovely. We listed Exquisite Lust on the last list and everyone went nuts for it, so we decided to list another one, and it's just as good. A bit heavier on the guitar, but still completely and utterly droney and dreamlike.

Surfaces is a non-stop journey through inner space, an abstract world of drifting guitars, stretched out into whispy drifts of shimmery ambience, strummed steel strings reverberate over muted propulsive thrum, huge glistening expanses of thick flowing whir oozes from rumbling amplifiers, grinding low end fuzz slithers in and around wandering bass burble, bits of guitar melody break into fragments and float downstream, over a rippling undercurrent of spaced out FX. Totally mesmerizing and ethereal, but strangely rhythmic. Channeling the sprit of Eno, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, A.R. And The Machines and other kosmik travellers, Expo '70 weave guitars, Moogs, sitars, and loads of effects into an expansive ambient shimmer, allowing sonic ripples to slowly spread out into the ether. So good. Anyone who bought the first one will probably need this one too. And all you spaced out interdimensional Kosmiche drone explorers could hardly do better than Expo '70 as the soundtrack to your late night, outer space, journeys into the unknown...


From list No. 251

EXPO '70 Center Of The Earth (self-released) cd-r
Third missive from our new favorite modern ambient space rock / krautrocky outfit. As if there were even any other contenders. These guys (or this guy rather) came out of nowhere and just blew our fucking minds. Expo '70, aka Justin Wright, has, over the last few months. given us two full lengths of gloriously dreamy kraut infused dronemusic, looped cyclical guitars, thick waves of smeared riffs and muted murky FX. A heavier, dronier take on Eno, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel. This latest transmission from the deepest reaches of the Expo '70's universe, is by far the heaviest and most aggressive sounding yet, as if they decided to give the boys in SUNNO))) and Earth a run for their money. But this is not just some massive slab of caveman sludge, instead this is an ominous soundworld of thick coruscating waves of grinding low end guitar fuzz, roiling and churning, but with a propulsive inner pulse, like some lost Ash Ra jam dipped in tar, and launched into the ether. Or if the other two Expo '70 records were the sounds of drifting weightlessly through space, the stars a distant shimmer, everything muted and slowly shifting, like some huge black expanse of water, Center Of The Earth is the sound of the sky buckling, the galaxy fracturing, of being sucked into some mysterious other universe, a subterranean world beneath our visible existence, murky and turbulent, a darkness impenetrable except for a few swirling swaths of grey light, quickly tangled up in the dark, the endless drift into a black hole, the sound a reverberating whir, a massive resonant hum that thickens and intensifies, until you can feel the drone in your bones, every cell in your body vibrating sympathetically, until you slip into glorious blackness. The final track is like the aftermath, your ship a ruined wreckage, floating through the sky, just another piece of debris in a sky full of memories and regrets and ruin, a drifting blissed out space rock riff beneath abstract streaks of psychedelia, wrapped in a gauzy film, the rays of some alien sun lighting up the sky and wrapping you in warm shadows. So gorgeous.


From list No. 254

EXPO '70 "July 18, 2004" (Kill Shaman) cd-r
Another gorgeous slab of spaced out krautrocky ambience from Expo' 70, this one a live, completely improvised performance back in 2004, with the band expanded to a trio. And if folks' reaction to the first three Expo 70's releases is anything to go by, then these will be flying out of here in no time as well.

For those yet to discover the sublime joys of Expo '70, these guys (usually just one guy, Justin Wright) traffic in glistening dreamlike kosmiche drift. A krautrock that is less about propulsion and rhythm and more about texture and ambience, think Ash Ra Tempel, AR & The Machines, Tangerine Dream, Eno, Popol Vuh. Guitars aren't strummed and picked, they are sort of allowed to unwind, long glistening strands of reverberating buzz unfurl and float into the hazy ether. Synthesizers unleash a similarly disembodied sonic vibe, soft clouds of fuzzy whir and distant chordal warmth. Very much the sonic equivalent to drifting down a warm summer stream, on your back, watching the clouds drift by, the trees on the shore shimmer and sway. Or maybe more accurately, floating in the vacuum of space, everything weightless, untethered and drifting lazily through the inky blackness. The light of stars and suns bends and twists, slowly cycling through the visible spectrum, disobeying all laws of physics, wrapping you in a thick swirl of sonic brilliance. This music has to be the work of some immortal group of dronelords, sitting in their multidimensional fortress, atop some mysterious lost mountain, who in their infinite wisdom, allow their dreamlike drones and angelic ambience to fall from the sky and settle over us like a light dusting of snow...