(Rooster) 2cd 16.98

PERICH, TRISTAN 1-Bit Symphony (Cantaloupe Music) jewel case 1-bit electronic music generator 30.00
Music nerds may get obsessed with records all the time, but they also get pretty into musical gadgets, as evidenced most recently by FM3's Buddha Machine, which we've sold about a billion of, and most folks we know own more than one. And heck, that's just a little plastic box that plays short little loops. We didn't think anything would be able to trump the coolness of the Buddha Machine, which appealed to music geeks and tech nerds in equal measure, but then along came 1-Bit Music from a composer named Tristan Perich. Not only was 1-Bit Music Perich's debut record, it wasn't a record at all, instead it was simultaneously a piece of sound art and a miniature sound producing gadget, a collection of tiny wires and chips and switches and a watch battery, all affixed to the inside of a plain old cd jewel case. The result, a super striking looking little gizmo, but one that produced some weird and amazing 1 bit sounds. But what exactly are 1 bit sounds?
Well, most folks are familiar with 8 bit sounds, all your favorite vintage arcade game music is 8 bit, and all the modern purveyor of Casio core or Nintendo core, they're using those crunchy lo-fi 8 bit sounds to make awesomely retro music. So one bit, is the smallest increment of memory and sound, and Perich composed his music using just 1 bit sounds, the result, beyond being small enough to fit on a tiny chip, and that chip along with some switches and wires in a jewel case, it also made for some alien sounds, like video game music, but as if imagined by the roster of Raster-Noton, a series of clicks and beeps and tangled squiggles of squelches and primitive melodies, almost like some ultra minimal toy techno or something. And while in headphones the sounds were intense and loud and raw, through speakers, they were INTENSE, super destructive and brutal, the sort of sounds, no matter how playful and simple, that DESTROY speakers. So awesome.
Sadly, Perich and his crew had trouble keeping up with demand, as each of the releases, were hand made, every wire and switch, glued into each jewel case one at a time. So eventually that 'record' was discontinued. But now, we have Perich's latest release, no longer simply 1-Bit Music, now, it's a 1-Bit Symphony! And it is in fact more complex, with the various tones and beeps and squelches woven into lush tapestries of sound, rhythmically complex, and harmonically lush, at times sounding almost like M83, sometimes like Steve Reich or Terry Riley composing on a primitive toy Casio keyboard, other times like some lost old school video game, the sounds panning wildly from speaker to speaker, the melodies tangled and intricate, the overall sound so hypnotic and mesmerizing, the compositions sprawling and epic, ranging from 5 minutes, to nearly ten minutes to infinite, the final track a gorgeously lush chunk of distorted fuzzed out minimal buzz, that manages to sound all moody and shoegazey, warm and woozy and crunchy, an endless loop, that we really could imagine listening to endlessly.
But like 1-Bit Music before it, the music is really only half the equation with 1-Bit Symphony, the packaging, which IS the record, is so striking, a gorgeously arranged series of wires and switches, a battery, a volume knob, a button to switch tracks, an on/off switch, a headphone jack, all affixed to a clear jewel case, with a simple stick on the front, and the booklet in the plastic sleeve on the outside of the jewel case, adding a spare white background to the visuals, but also including liner notes, not to mention an intense and fantastically confusional poster featuring what appears to be the composition presented as it was programmed, which also manages to be visually striking and a work of art in its own right.
This one is not so nearly limited as the last one, but probably safer to not risk it, cuz if you're at all into weird music, and weird music related thingies, you are definitely gonna want one of these, and you'll probably want to give one to all the music nerds in your life as well. And like the first Perich 1-Bit release, this one too, is no doubt destined to be the cool music gadget, and minimal lo-fi 1-bit glitch crunch shoegaze squelch symphony record of the year!

CHRISTIAN MISTRESS Agony And Opium (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
First, a couple things, we doubt that these rockers are Christian, and the only lady in the band seems more like a "Ms." than a Mistress. But, yeah, that's a very metal sounding name ain't it?? Now, we know that '70s and '80s influenced heavy metal isn't everyone's cup of tea, but then neither is doomdronedirge or lo-fi garage pop or groovy porno soundtracks or lots of other things... and we wouldn't be being true to ourselves if we didn't make this a Record Of The Week! After all, some of us here have done nothing but listen to this non-stop since it showed up. Plus, maybe this IS your cup of tea and you wouldn't have known that if we didn't really push it.
For those of you who are into traditional metal sounds, like those of the NWOBHM (and thus know what NWOBHM stands for), Christian Mistress should be an immediate hit. Everyone else, well, if you're gonna get just ONE heavy metal record this year, it'd be pretty cool (for you) if it was this one.
The debut from Olympia's Christian Mistress, actually looks more crusty punk than heavy metal, and comes out on a label better known for doom and sludge than "True" heavy metal. Yet this is true all right. Not only boasting shredding twin guitars, but melodies and SONGS, and a singer, Christine Davis, who not only can sing but has a "VOICE". Sorry for the all caps, and quotes, but we're excited. What we mean is, she's got a voice that is unique and memorable, as well as being able to carry a tune. Pretty special in this day and age. We'd probably have to compare her, among female metal vocalists, to Kate De Lombaert from '80s Belgian band Acid, not that we expect everybody to know who that is... Davis could also appeal to fans of Hammers Of Misfortune, and Jex Thoth, though she doesn't sound like those female singers, her voice much more raw, deeper, with a slight rasp in fact. But sweet enough for us! It's powerful yet melancholic character goes well with her lyrics, serious ones about such subjects as love and (we think) addiction, she stays away from trite metal cliches. Meanwhile, musically, the band shows itself to be steeped in the "old ways", dedicated students of Judas Priest and early Iron Maiden, the NWOBHM, Metallica, Megadeth, etc... plugging into the timelessness of the best traditional metal, while still sounding fresh and vital. Exciting, and emotional.
Christian Mistress go for quality not quantity here, offering up six killer songs in just over 27 minutes. From opening track "Riding On The Edges" onwards, the listener is treated to sheer headbanging joy, adrenalized gallop, heavy riffs, spiralling spires of intertwined lead guitar, and both melody and energy in large doses. All six songs are excellent, with maybe "Desert Rose" especially standing out come chorus-time... and we'll mention how the last cut, "Omega Stone", starts off in gentle, acoustic mode, Davis singing quietly, wearily, for several minutes, building into some psychedelic soloing, before the band bursts into frenetic, triumphant, rapid riffing for the track's final moments. It's probably the song on this album that an audience would be most likely to raise their lighters for, and we mean that in a good way! And then as soon as it's over, we're already hitting play to hear the disc again once more, to get another Christian Mistress fix. Here, and elsewhere, they achieve a sense of drama without being at all corny. Instead, this disc comes off as classy, majestic, and inspired. And about as hooky as can be. We're always talking about how this or that black metal or ambient drone or whatever band is "actually" writing pop songs underneath all the buzz, distortion and/or screaming. Well, here's a band that's heavy and metal... and DEFINITELY writing pop songs, of the stick-in-your-head variety. Your head that's banging at the same time. Basically, the current crop of retro metallers (not to mention all indie rock bands, if we look at this from a metal-centric perspective) just got their asses handed to them by Christian Mistress. Old school, but original.
We're not the only ones freaking out over Christian Mistress. 20 Buck Spin, obviously. And, Fenriz loves 'em! In fact, we might have first heard of Christian Mistress 'cause the Darkthrone drummer mentioned them in an interview or something. And while we don't agree with Fenriz about all his many cult band crushes, he was right about these guys (and girl). Also, the other day we happened to be playing this in the presence of Mike Scalzi from Slough Feg, who volunteered that "this band is awesome"... and he usually doesn't like ANYTHING. So consider that quite an endorsement, for what it's worth... along with us making it Record Of The Week.
MPEG Stream: "Riding On The Edges"
MPEG Stream: "Desert Rose"
MPEG Stream: "Home In The Sun"

MOEBIUS & BEERBOHM Double Cut (Bureau B) cd 17.98
Of all the various collaborations that krautrock maestro Moebius of Cluster fame has been involved in, we have to say this 1983 collaboration with Gerd Beerbohm might just be the most mind blowing of them all. Originally released on Sky, it's been out of print for ages, so we were so thrilled when we saw Bureau B was going to reissue it, as it's a record that foreshadowed so many sounds of the rhythmic underground that we would love for years to come.
The record opens with "Minimotion" a totally menacing and suspenseful track that sets the mood perfectly for the rest of the record. Like the darkest side of Goblin, or what John Carpenter would want to base the tension of an entire film around. The next two tracks "Hydrogen" and "Narkose" are stunning in how ahead of their time they sound, even now. It's like an otherworldly version of minimal techno, practically the blueprint for what the Chain Reaction crew would be creating more then a decade later. Like the sounds of a steam engine filtered through the lens of a horror movie, so mesmerizing and menacing. The record's final track is the epic 21 minute "Doppelschnitt" and really should be played as loud as possible and made as required listening for anyone making minimal techno or any sort of electronica really, as this shows you the hypnotic possibilities of this sound. No doubt folks like Villalabos, Monoton, Moritz Von Oswald, and Carl Craig got their ears on this album early on, as this record really laid out the ingredients for what would go down in Berlin and Detroit in the years to follow.
But what makes Double Cut so incredibly special is not just that it was ahead of its time, mastering a genre that hadn't even been invented yet, but that in its minimalism, they made a record that creates such a strong mood and has such a distinct overall sound. It's like being trapped in a completely distinctive outer dimension. It wouldn't surprise us if David Cronenberg was hip to this record while he was making Videodrome. It's not often you get to talk about records that completely set the stage for a whole movement of music making to come in its wake. This is one of those records, and we're so damn glad its back in the world where it belongs. A unanimous favorite for sure, as everyone here at the store is totally in love and in awe of Double Cut!
Not yet reissued on vinyl but we're told that will be coming soon, hopefully.
MPEG Stream: "Minimotion"
MPEG Stream: "Doppelschnitt"
MPEG Stream: "Hydrogen"

ACRE Sacrifice (Digitalis Industries) cd 12.98
Two years in the works, Sacrifice is the most fully realized record yet from this Northwestern dronelord, a gorgeously crafted collection of layered sonic dronescapes, that beyond sounding gorgeous and hazy and hypnotic, are also curious for the fact that the liner notes explicitly state "No synths, No looping, No laptop, No guitar" which most definitely begs the question how the heck this record was made. But maybe it's best to leave that mystery intact, and allow these 5 tracks to just exist, as if they were miraculously spawned from starlight or birthed from some strange glowing orb, which is precisely the vibe these tracks exude, throbbing, repetitive swells, warm washed out melodies, like a Reich or Riley piece played by autonomous robots on some defunct space station, sending their signals into the ether. A series of simple, slowly expanding soundfields that definitely sound looped, the various tones and melodies spinning weightlessly, wrapping around one another, warm and fuzzy, a swirling expanse of glimmering pulses wretched in a growling sheen of rumble and buzz, a celestial game of Pong slowed down and sequenced into a sort of spacekraut drift.
Three long epics, each a smoldering exploration of some rhythmic inner space, separated by shorted bits of shimmery ambience, one a sea of swirling high end like a symphony of rubbed glasses, slowly unfolding bits of feedback blurred into sun dappled smears, the other a crunchy bit of timestretched electronic doom buzz, almost riffy, definitely the heaviest track here, add some drums and you'd have some sort of dirgey doomic crush. The long tracks though are more contemplative and expansive, letting the sounds breath and expand, where the opener is a softly pulsing robotic symphony, a hazy assemblage of muted melody, the second long piece is a Niblock-ian sprawl, an endless stretch of buzz and fuzz and ever shifting overtones, a seemingly static soundfield, exploding with energy on a microscopic level, serious headphone bliss, some glorious extended next level ur-drone dreaminess for sure. And finally, the closer, another bit of riffy spacekraut drift, that sounds like some weird mix of Emeralds, Expo 70 and Oneohtrix Point Never, a super cinematic kosmische drift rendered in glacial fuzz drenched repetitive 'riffage' wound around a primal mesmerizing, and constantly evolving super nova pulse, all viewed from across the universe, the sounds bent like light, the resulting sound, woozy and otherworldly, like a Spacemen 3 track stripped down, stretched out, and let out through the airlock to drift endlessly through the glimmering expanse of the ever expanding universe...
MPEG Stream: "Badlands"
MPEG Stream: "Citadel"

ALTAR EAGLE Mechanical Gardens (Type) lp 19.98
It's always a little weird when a sound becomes cool, or hip, and suddenly the bandwagon is groaning under the weight of a million bands doing their very darnedest to cash in, to bask in even a little sliver of that reflected limelight. And with the advent of Facebook and MySpace the amount of time it takes now for a new sound to proliferate and make its way to every corner of the underground as essentially been whittled down from months, to weeks, to days, heck maybe even minutes. Such has been the case with the recent resurgence of interest in fuzzed out dream pop and eighties synth wave, cold wave, dark wave, all the various retro waves, besides the now hundred of new bands popping up every few weeks, it's even gotten to the point where Built To Spill recently re-recorded a bunch of their songs transforming their jangly indie pop into eighties new wave. But heck, at least it's a sound we dig, and amidst all the chaff, there is definitely some serious wheat, we focus a lot on those groups here, bands that obviously love that sound and aren't just aping it, in some cases, it's folks who remembered it the first time around, and were reminded how much they dug it, in other cases it may be a new discovery, but it ends up revelatory, and of course there are folks who take that sound and twist it all up, just another element and influence in a swirling sea of disparate elements and influences, which seems to be the case with Altar Eagle, the project of Digitalis head honcho Brad Rose and his partner Eden Hemming (who played together previously as psych folk duo Corsican Paintbrush), whose new lp under the guise Altar Eagle, is a heady swirling morass of murky dreampop, cold wave drift, eighties style shoegaze shimmer, and post industrial pop flecked fuzz, and is truly divine, but more importantly, manages to sound wholly original amidst a glut of bands attempting to create something similar.
Opener "Battlegrounds" with its bubbly propulsive beat, hazy vocal harmonies, and swirls of soft focus synth fuzz, definitely set the stage, for a sort of drugged out lazy afternoon fuzz pop drift, not all that far removed from Beach House, Mazzy Star, Cocteau Twins, Galaxie 500 and the like, but these two keep piling on the layers of buzz, letting the synths whirl and hum, the voices (and pretty much everything else) swaddled in reverb and echo, almost like some eighties classic slowed way down and doused in effects. "Honey" is similarly fuzzy and poppy, the boy/girl vocals pulled straight from some eighties C64 single, but settled amidst something much more modern, a stuttery rhythm and a tangle of warm liquid synths.
"You Lost Your Neon Haze" might be the 'hit' if bands like this actually had hits, with its looped mesmerizing rhythm, gnarled electronic backdrop, and buried in the murk vocals, a gorgeous chunk of smoldering slowcore, barely audible through the washed out dreamlike haze. Although a few tracks later, there's "Monsters", a total gloom pop anthem, like Cold Cave's "Life Magazine", that sounds ripe for someone to snap up and toss in a hip commercial. Swirling synths, a propulsive beat, a killer hook (still buried under layers of fuzz and buzz) a crazy catchy chorus, with some awesome ooohs and ahhs background vox.
And so it goes, the rest of the record unfurling like some sort of drugged out hazy sonic fever dream, eighties pop transported to the nineties, leaving a twisted spray of swirling shimmering gloomy new wave doom pop contrails in its wake, warm and woozy and daydreamy, and easily one of the best things we've heard in this new wave craze of retro synth wave dream pop. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Battlegrounds"
MPEG Stream: "You Lost Your Neon Haze"
MPEG Stream: "Monsters"
MPEG Stream: "Pour Your Dark Heart Out"

ANDERSON, LAURIE Homeland (Nonesuch) cd 24.00
A legend and pioneer in not only performance and video art but also in how to intertwine those arts with music in a mystifying, engaging, confusing, question-raising, mind-blowing way. We could go on and on about the people Laurie Anderson's work has had a huge influence on. Fever Ray, Tracy & The Plastics, Miranda July, Sadie Benning, Oneohtrix Point Never, Planningtorock, Bjork, Kathleen Hanna, Gang Gang Dance, etc. She really is one of the few people who has been successful in merging the worlds of performance art and music, with captivating and breathtaking results. Her 1982 debut, Big Science, remains for many of us as one of our favorite records of all time. Decades later, Homeland taps into a very similar approach to sound as that iconic album. It's a record that really encapsulates what Anderson does best which is to both provoke, confuse and create an overall feel that operates in a different dimension.
While Anderson is mostly first thought of as a performance artist and thinker, it should not be overlooked what an incredible violinist she is, not to mention composer, and pianist too, always getting such interesting sounds from her keyboard. And she has such a keen sense for bringing together a wide range of instrumentation and vocal deliveries to create such striking moods. On Homeland she enlists the amazing voices of Tuvan throat singers as well as a great cast of players including Eyvind Kang, John Zorn, Kieran Hebden, her husband Lou Reed, and Antony, who contributes the most ethereal vocals on one of the albums stand out moments, the song "Strange Perfumes".
Homeland is a meditation on American life over the last decade. It really creates this insular zone in which you get completely entranced by its sounds and words and lose touch with everything around you. It's best to listen to this really loud and when you are in a place to fully surrender and be completely present. It's not a throw-on-when-you're-hanging-out-with-friends-and-talking kind of record, but when you blast it on headphones the next time you're on an airplane or while sitting on a long bus/train ride you will be so thankful to have this record for the intense and beautiful spaces it transports you to. So awesome to know that some artists stay as great as they were when they first made their impact on culture and continue to challenge themselves and make such stunning work.
MPEG Stream: "Strange Perfumes"
MPEG Stream: "Transitory Life"
MPEG Stream: "Falling"

AYERS, ROY Lots Of Love (Universal Sound) cd 19.98
Wow, this one's a real surprise, because as much as we're fans of jazz vibraphonist Roy Ayers' early to mid-seventies rare groove and jazz albums, his later output that we knew of, pretty much fell into cheesy disco and RnB. So when Universal Sounds re-issued this album from 1983 that we had never heard of, we were a bit wary but also highly intrigued. Released on his own independent label Uno Melodic while he was between major-label tenures with Polydor and Columbia, Lots of Love clearly shows Ayers independence as he freely explores many styles of post-disco dance music from the Afro-beat inspired "Black Family", the electro-funk of "Fast Money", and the minimal house of "Chicago", while "D.C. City" hearkens back to the simmering rare groove classics he recorded with Sylvia Striplin and Ethel Beatty. He also gets in a couple of grooving instrumentals with the vibes, showing that he never lost his chops. His best record since 1976's Everybody Loves The Sunshine!
Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Black Family"
MPEG Stream: "Fast Money"
MPEG Stream: "Chicago"

BIRKIN , JANE & SERGE GAINSBOURG s/t (Je T'Aime....Moi Non Plus) (Light In The Attic) cd 14.98
We'd be hard pressed to think of a more romantically beautiful and sexually provocative song, that doesn't fall prey to cloying sentiment or cheap thrills, than Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus". But apparently the Pope at the time didn't agree and universally condemned the song which only garnered more international attention for the song and the couple who sang it. When will the Catholic Church ever learn?
This 1969 eponymous record is another classic reissue in the Gainsbourg catalog from Light In The Attic which also features the amazing songs "69 Annee Erotique" and "Jane B.", a french pop re-working of Chopin's Prelude No.4 in E minor. Sensual, playfully lurid, groovy, and albeit a bit corny at times (especially where they timely delve into pre-war popular song nostalgia), it's definitely a document of a controversial couple in love in full view of the world, and they're playing up the show with as much verve and joie de vivre as they can muster, which for the coolest of cool couples is one hell of a lot! Both the cd and the lp include liner notes with lyrics in French and English, original drawings and a telling interview about the recording with Jane Birkin herself! The 180 gram lp comes with a bonus 7" and a never before seen Serge and Jane comic drawn by David Lasky.
MPEG Stream: "Je T'Aime....Moi Non Plus"
MPEG Stream: "69 Année Érotique"
MPEG Stream: "Jane B"

BLACKSHAW, JAMES All Is Falling (Young God) cd 12.98
Latest from long time aQ fave, UK guitarist / composer James Blackshaw, and it's his most ambitious record yet, eight movements woven into a single sprawling piece, continuing in his constant evolution from one man, Fahey style neo-Appalachia finger picker, to full fledged composer and band leader. On All Is Falling, Blackshaw plays guitar, piano, glockenspiel, percussion and sings, and is accompanied by a handful of other musicians on violin, flute, saxophone, and cello, the results are stirring and dramatic, lush and totally gorgeous, drawing on classic folk music, modern chamber music, classical and the avant garde. Every movement here is a miniature epic, dense and layered and lush, evocative and emotional, from dark brooding piano pieces, wrapped in clouds of Lubomyr Melnyk like flurries, to folk flecked chamber music, spidery minor key guitar melodies, underpinned by swoonsome strings, evoking a lost time, another era, to warm swirling tangles of Appalachia, here set amidst lush swells and more soaring strings. The first five movements all flow seamlessly, a dark gorgeous timeless bit of cinematic chamber folk, which culminates in the final three movements, beginning with "Part 6", a complex looped bit of folky lilt, with powerful percussion, and what sounds like someone counting our the strange time signature, which leads right into the 12 minute "Part 7", beginning with a post rocky strand of looped guitar, which is soon mirrored by the strings, ratcheting up the tension, and the motion, a dizzying almost round, growing more and more dense, more and more complex, multiple melodies constantly shifting and intertwining, as the track seems to grow more atonal, as if it's slowly crumbling, detuning, eventually winding down completely, before the final movement comes in, a slow building, softly pulsing swell, a gorgeous hazy bit of layered drone music, the various overtones creating muted rhythms, and strange harmonies, lush and ominous and hauntingly lovely. A strangely and beautifully abstract ending to an otherwise deeply melodic and wonderfully lush bit of modern composition.
Until the next list, the cd version of All is Falling will be on sale, $2 off the normal $14.98!!
MPEG Stream: "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Part 8"

BLOOD OF KINGU Sun In The House Of The Scorpion (Candlelight) cd 12.98
Record number two from this Ukrainian black metal horde, fronted by Roman Saenko, who plays or played in some other bands you might be familiar with, Hate Forest, Drudkh, Dark Ages, Lucifugum, and featuring members of Kladovest, Astrofaes, Lutomysl, Definition Sane, it's like pretty much the whole Ukrainian scene is represented here. But Blood Of Kingu is definitely Saenko's baby, a seething, blasting, filthy, hateful black metal baby at that. Still focused thematically on Sumerian, Egyptian, Tibetan and Indo-Aryan mythologies, the big change this time around is sonic, a way heavier production, as well as more metal and less folky interludes. The first record, De Occulta Philosophia, was marked by ambient breaks between most of the tracks, rhythmic and abstract, folky and moody, a method that seemed more about atmosphere and vibe than sheer power, but if anything on Sun In The House Of The Scorpion, Blood Of Kingu has managed both, evoking mood and atmosphere big time, but cranking up the crush, the riffs are massive, the sound is epic, dense and thick, blurred and droney and trancelike. The vocals are deep and bellowed and shamanistic, the songs are cyclical and repetitive, ritualistic and totally hypnotic, thick slabs of crumbling buzz and relentlessly blasting beats, a howling furious heaviness that few other black metal outfits could ever hope to achieve. The bulk of the record is frantic and frenzied, but the various tracks are infused with haunting mysticism, swirling atmospheric ambience, even the grimmest blackest parts exuding a strange spiritual quality, culminating in an awesome cover of Beherit's "The Gate of Nanna" complete with chanted monk-like vocals, long stretches of plodding doomy dirge, blasts of insanely frantic blasting buzzing blackness, some seriously demented effects drenched demonic vokills and a suffocatingly grim and bleakly abject atmosphere, a killer cover truly worthy of the original.
Fantastic Zdzislaw Beksinski cover art (same guy who did the artwork that adorned Leviathan's Verrater)!! And dedicated to the memory of H.P Lovecraft, of course...
MPEG Stream: "Those That Wander Amidst the Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Cyclopean Temple of the Old Ones"
MPEG Stream: "Incantation of He Who Sleeps"

CAUCHEMAR La Vierge Noire (Nuclear War Now!) cd ep 8.98
Some seriously kick ass true metal from the great white North, a Canadian modern true doom / speed metal hybrid fronted by none other than Annick Giroux, who most definitely knows a thing or two about metal, not only did she edit the awesome Hellbent For Cooking heavy metal cookbook, but she's also responsible for the legendary Canadian metal zine Morbid Tales!
Cauchemar perfectly captures the mood and vibe of classic seventies and eighties metal, equal parts NWOBHM riffery, witchy occult speed metal a la Acid and the epic true doom of groups like Pagan Altar. There's even a little Motorhead in there. The riffs are killer, the guitars loud and thick, the drumming powerful, the bass thick and slithery, but it's Giroux's vocals that really make this, sung all in French, haunting and powerful, reminding us of groups like The Devil's Blood and Jex Thoth, in fact ANYone that digs those groups should check this out for sure. But the thing is, the music here is so much more classic metal sounding. The opener is pitch perfect eighties speed metal, laced with plenty of doominess, epic and majestic and heavy as hell, while the second track slows it down for some seriously doom-ed crush, with a swirling psychedelic bridge, Giroux's vocals bewitching and demonic, the whole record sort of slips back and forth between pounding riffery, and plodding dirge, the vocals and overall seventies foresty vibe makes the whole record sound way more psychedelic than most new metal, definitely tapping into the classic Sabbath sound, and making this the sort of band that should appeal equally to the true metal massive, but also dabblers looking for tripped out psychedelic heaviness...
MPEG Stream: "Le Voile D'Isis"
MPEG Stream: "Magie Rouge"

COCONUT Half Hoof / Sassafras (Land And Sea) 7" 9.98
The first Coconut release, Rain / Cocoanut / Hello Fruity, was a low-key handmade behemoth 3cd-r set that was the first of 2 parts of a planned box set (the idea being that both sets would form a cube. box set, get it?). That quickly sold out and went out of print and while the band tells us the second part is still planned, they are taking their sweet time. The core duo of visual artist Colter Jacobsen and multi-instrumentalist Tomo Yasuda, who also plays bass for Tussle, are busy folks after all, making both art and music, releasing hand-pressed books and exhibiting art or curating shows or touring and playing everywhere in various musical incarnations. They have recently expanded their line-up to a foursome, and released this vinyl debut for local artist-run production house Land and Sea, who make small runs of artist made books and records and plan art-centric gathering events in various places such as the Berkeley Art Museum, the mountains of Ukiah and most recently Grace Cathedral where this 7" was released. Coconut performed with a full choir for that event which was quite beautiful in the setting, with lit candles and a projection of a dark cove looking out toward the ocean behind them. They musically move in many directions from fragile folk songs to chamber pop to more rhythmically inspired mantras and experimental noise excursions, often pulling lyrics from found poems or pop songs that can be quite off the cuff and humorous. For this 7", the two songs are in a folk-pop vein sounding like the mesmerizing Latin-tinged folk of Jose Gonzalez mixed with the angular structures of Deerhoof, or comparable in style to the Tenniscoats and Tape collaborations for which Coconut share similar affinities. These are on "random-colored" vinyl (sort of a washy silvery grey with specks of pinks, blues and greens - each one different) and come in handsewn sleeves with a beautiful nest drawing by Jesse Schlesinger on the cover. Limited to 100, we have 10 and not sure we'll be able to get more. So Nice!

CORE OF THE COALMAN Box Of The Last Heap (Zum) cd 11.98
We've loved everything we've had heard from Core Of The Coalman, a one man noise drone outfit from right here in the Bay Area (but now based in the Czech Republic), making dark crusty corrosive dronemusic that we described as sounding like Phill Niblock on steroids at one point, intense and blown out and hypnotic, the sounds corrosive and crumbling and in the red, impossibly soothing while being seriously dark and dense. But something must have changed since then, cuz this new COTC, while still droney and hypnotic, seems to have shed all the filth and buzz and crust, instead, what we have here is a gorgeously hypnotic assemblage of looped mesmer, sounding more like Phill Niblock than ever, but also a bit like Philip Glass, long stretches of repeated motifs, layered strings, chopped and stuttery, the repetition creating constant shifts in perception, the tones and notes beating against one another, creating rhythms, and strange overtones, subtle harmonies, woozy and psychedelic, some seriously divine minimalism.
The first half of the record, "Inertia II" and "Inertia I", sounds like a string quartet chopped and screwed, in the beginning, a constant flutter and flurry of clipped notes, but as the song progresses the strings become more distinct, the melodies emerge, becoming more and more calm, before right near the end, blossoming into an even more dizzying bit of looped repetition.
The second half of the record, "Last Help", takes a simple subtle bit of folky steel string guitar, left mostly alone during the intro, but then during the 20 minute piece proper, again delicately recontextualized into a warm tangled swirl of interwoven melodies, of constantly shifting textures, never getting super washed out or blurry, instead, retaining the guitar's sound, and the main melody, mostly adding a haze of echoes and shadows, doubling some of the notes, harmonizing others, the result, not nearly as dense and dizzying as the first half of the record, but equally as blissed out and beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Inertia II"
MPEG Stream: "Inertia I"

CUT CHEMIST Sound Of The Police (Stable Sound) cd 17.98
Cut Chemist really needs no introduction, he is a pioneer in the worlds of hip-hop and turntablism, being a part of one of the most refreshing and innovative hip-hop acts ever, Jurassic Five, as well as playing in Ozomatli, collaborating with folks like Madlib and DJ Shadow, and releasing his own solo albums that showcase his awe inspiring turntable skills. With Sound Of The Police, you can tell that he and Madlib are in a similar state of mind as far as really appreciating psychedelic sounds from the past and from all around the globe. Here CC takes amazing sounds from obscure records from South America and Africa as well as some modern tracks influenced by those musical movements, to make a seamless hip-hop spirited mix that is as infectious as it is flawless. What's totally mind blowing about this record is that it was recorded live with Cut Chemist creating the mix using only one turntable, one mixer and a delay pedal. No laptops involved in this creation and it really shows, as you hear the warmth and the crackling vinyl of these groove filled sounds that he pieces together into a distinctly hip-hop mix but while still being totally respectful and so appreciative of the sounds being sampled. Definitely turning into one of our favorite end of summer jams!
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

DERAKUSHI s/t (PSF) cd 16.98
First heard these guys (and girl, it appears) on Tokyo Flashback Vol. 7, now here's their PSF full-length, packaged in a nice miniature-lp style gatefold sleeve. Very little information is available about 'em. So we'll just make do with describing the music. Avant garde free jazz improv, kinda, but also psychedelic free rock too, from a quartet consisting of alto sax, guitar, drums, and bass. Sometimes super heavy distorted bass! Definitely a lot of electricity to this unit. Along with plenty of human-powered pounding and screaming... PSF compares 'em to Borbetomagus, but that's not quite right. They're wild, but not -quite- that dense and noisy. PSF's own Ahousen would be a better comparison, if you liked that, you should check out Derakushi too. Sax honking and squealing, bass shuddering, guitar stabbing, the pipe fighting percussion sometimes skittery, sometimes straight up rocking, right through the freakout, and it's not at all wall-to-wall freakout, there's dynamics and stop and go and sudden silence... Emotional, mayhemic, yet controlled. Derakushi know how to do it, or they wouldn't be on PSF. The dark psych guitar rock elements that bleed into their freeform "jazz" are what grabs us about this, and that's also a definite PSF specialty.
MPEG Stream: "Gateway"
MPEG Stream: "Pegana"

DRUNKDRIVER s/t (self released) lp 14.98
Full length number two from this East Coast noise rock trio, finally available, self-released on vinyl by the band on their own label, whose recent set at the aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase blew us all away. An insanely kinetic display of tense mathy crush, pounding feral filth, and blasting, churning, grinding, blown out heaviness. It's hard to translate that sort of live energy to disc for sure, but this new album comes pretty close. The guitars impossibly distorted and in the red, pegging the meters and seemingly transforming into some strange looped and clipped chug, the drums pounding and relentless, the vocals howled and barked and buried in the mix, the band locking into full on feedback drenched hypnorock, before letting it splinter into strange stuttery stop starts, or almost blast beat driven bursts of black energy.
A few of the tracks slow it down a little, but that's about all the respite you'll get, and even the dirgier numbers are still oozing grit and filth, threatening to destroy your speakers and bloody your ears. A couple favorites, "All The Dead Dogs", with its super distorted riffy churn, bizarre blown out percussion, and killer main groove, all chug and thud, with little flurries of all out noise peppering the otherwise tightly controlled crush. "Quality Of My Life", with its opening salvo of layered feedback, pounding drum stutter, and the way the drums and guitars lock into this weird rhythmic throb, before exploding into some serious skull crushing heaviness. But hell, we could pick any of these jams, they're all fierce and fucked up and awesome, the whole record playing out like one massive, multi movement, damaged and demented noise rock epic. Essential ear punishment for fans of Brainbombs, Mayyors, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Rusted Shut, Billy Bao, White Mice, Anals, Liquorball and other similarly unhinged noiseniks.
It's worth noting, though, that Drunkdriver broke up recently, under difficult circumstances, as it turns out there were some serious allegations about DD's drummer and some alleged fucked up shit in his past, and while he vehemently denies everything, and his bandmates supported him (although some online sources report otherwise), the band finally decided they just didn't want to deal with all the rumors and the constant pressure of all that nothing-to-do-with-the-music bullshit, just so you know, even though we figure if you don't have a problem with a band called Drunkdriver to begin with, you can probably separate enjoying the album from any alleged problematic actions of the persons involved in making it, after all the music's still the same awesome noisy punk rock we liked before all this hit the fan.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, packaged in really nice heavy jackets...
MPEG Stream: "All The Dead Dogs"
MPEG Stream: "Quality Of My Life"
MPEG Stream: "The Accident"

EARLY MAN Death Potion (The End) cd 12.98
We've been fans of Early Man since their early days, we used to get their self-released 3-song demo cd from Matador of all places, who then put out their debut full-length in 2005. Yeah, they played metal for PBR-swillin' Brooklyn indie scenesters, and got a lot of attention 'cause Dave Pajo of Slint was in the band for a while, but that had nothing to do with why we liked 'em (though, we do like Dave Pajo and Slint). Heck, even if Dave Matthews was in the band, it wouldn't have made any difference. It had more to do with us, and them, liking Black Sabbath, Diamond Head, and Metallica a hell of a lot. Over the years they've gone from hipster metal (that rules) to retro-thrash (that also rules). Their 2008 ep Beware The Circling Fin was the thrash-tastic teaser for this new album, their 2nd full-length, finally here and causing many heads to bang. Frantic battery, chugging guitars, squealing leads, it's 1989 all over again. It's on The End label but we can't help but expect to find a Megaforce logo on this slab of speedy, heavy, ripping rifferama. The clearly sung vocals sometimes sneer like Mustaine, sometimes do the tough guy croon like Hetfield. Also in the vocalist's arsenal are a wailing power metal shriek, a stoned monotonous chant, and a rapidfire hardcore patter.
For a second we thought track five was a cover, but no, wait, it's not, it's a new version of Early Man's own "Fight", a killer track originally from that 3-song ep that started it all. Definitely one that lead to Metallica comparisons, though elsewhere on this disc we're hearing the influence of Anthrax, Overkill, Slayer, and Nuclear Assault as well. They also re-do "The Undertaker Is Calling Me", another of the songs from that self-released 3-song ep (the remaining track from that disc, "Death Is The Answer To My Prayers", they had already re-recorded for their Matador debut). Also "Unseen Tormentor" is a version of "Tormentor Of The Unseen" from their more recent split 7" with Rammer in the Relapse "Speed n' Spikes" series. The album is 12 tracks long, though, so you get plenty of brand new material too! Produced by grunge guru Jack Endino, who has been twiddling the knobs on a lot of metal releases lately (3 Inches Of Blood, Skeletonwitch), this is recommended to all the heshers out there, hipster or otherwise.
MPEG Stream: "Death Potion"
MPEG Stream: "Fight"
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Child Of Evil"

ELECTRIC BUNNIES, THE Pretty Joanna / I Swear I'll Never Let You Go (Sacred Bones) 7" 5.98
One of two new Sacred Bones releases on this week's list, and the first we've heard from the Electric Bunnies, although a quick check of the internet perhaps suggests that we're a bit out of the loop on this one. But no matter, we're digging these two new jams BIG time, starting off with a squall of feedback and some pounding psychedelic drum damage, the song blossoms into something much more moody and epic, with brooding deep vocals, and plenty of buzz. What sounded like a jam that could have exploded into some serious noise rock, instead sprawls into some fuzzy post punk cold wave crunch, gloomy and gothy, but wrapped in thick sheets of feedback, and swirling cloud of whir and skree, the rhythm motorik and relentless and hypnotic.
The flip side offers up a whole different side of the band, with falsetto vox, Beach Boys harmonies, tumbling tribal drumming, a total "Don't you, forget about me..." eighties teen flick soundtrack vibe, but filtered through the current cracked sonics of the new wave of lo-fi warped garage pop. Awesome stuff, definitely has us hankering for more.

EMMANUEL, J.D. Wizards (Important) lp 23.00
Newly reissued on vinyl once again!!! In a much more swank and deluxe edition...
New age gets a bad rap. And rightfully so in many cases, but it's not fair to paint it with such a broad brush, there have been plenty of artists who have dabbled in new age, explored meditative musics, and made some amazing sounds. When it's done right, it can be dark and lovely, deeply spiritual, soothing and hypnotic, complex and intense, without being cheesy. All of the modern DIY drone music should be evidence enough, what is all of that if not a contemporary extension of new age music... dreamy, contemplative, mesmerizing, minimal....
Here we have a lost legendary 'new age' synth classic from 1982, from J.D. Emmanuel, while unknown to us the first time this was reissued, according to some friends of AQ and some customers definitely had a certain hipster cache, tracks and whole records being outsider music holy grails...
With song titles like "Attaining Peace" and "Prayer" and "Focusing Within", Wizards - Music Of Other Memories, is a five part meditation realized in extended synthesizer soundscapes, gorgeous, languorous, all soft focus melodies, soaring and shimmery, stretched out into blurry streaks of sound, peppered with the muted bloop bloop melodies, nestled deep down in the shimmery softness.
Some of the tracks are more active, one almost proggy and spaced out, another sounding a bit like a more dreamy Kraftwerk, all propulsive synthesized krautrock.
Absolutely recommended for fans of Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, IASOS, Terry Riley, Steve Reich as well as the softer side of all the modern cd-r dronemusic we all love so much...

ETRAN FINATAWA Tarkat Tajje / Let's Go (Riverboat / World Music Network) cd 16.98
We've loved everything we've heard from this great Saharan outfit, but with this latest outing they have definitely made their best record yet. With ex-members of all time aQ faves Tinariwen they exist in a similar sonic realm that sweeps us up in a desert trance, every single song on Tarkat Tajje is a stunner. One of those records that when you blast it loud there is no way not to get drawn in by the repetitive and hypnotizing guitars, polyphonic singing, call and response refrains, hand claps, heady percussion that drives all the songs with such a warm groove and steady pace, a sound that resonates with such beauty. For sure influenced strongly by Ali Farka Toure, EF continue to grow so much as a band and really deserve so much more attention and praise then they receive. This is an album that is as great as anything Tinariwen has released, in fact we think we might even be more in love with it then the last Tinariwen album which was pretty smoking in its own right. One of those records that doesn't need so much to be described, all you have to do is listen to the sound and the music speaks loud and clear for itself. So damn great!
MPEG Stream: "Aitimani"
MPEG Stream: "Ndiiren"
MPEG Stream: "Daim Walla"

FENNESZ, CHRISTIAN / DAVID DANIELL / TONY BUCK Knoxville (Thrill Jockey) lp 15.98
This is pretty much an aQ dream team, guitarist / lap top technician / abstract dronehaze alchemist Christian Fennesz, teamed up with Tony Buck, drummer for outsider minimal jazz legends the Necks, and David Daniell, guitarist for the late great slowcore combo San Augustin, all gathered up for a night of abstract improv noise making.
The session begins with a slow building minimal post rock meander, and over the course of about 8 minutes, the sound grows from spidery and shimmery, a sort of washed out melodic drift, all sun dappled and gauzy, to full on ferocious free form psychedelic freakout, an explosive squall of woozy guitar chords underpinning wild clouds of octopoidal drum damage, Buck letting loose, no Necks-like restraint here, the climax of the track like a free jazz Godspeed / White Heaven hybrid, while weirdly, beneath the skree and crunch, the guitars still moan mournfully, giving the jam, even at its noisiest a strange sort of instrumental pathos.
The second number begins with a shimmer of cymbals, some swirling looped guitar, flurries of muted percussion, a heaving hazy whirl of abstract drone, which about halfway through seems to suddenly expand into a slow motion supernova of smoldering sound, building to a blast of Nadja-like shoegaze dronedoomdrift, before fading back into a reverbed echo of the chaos that came before.
Buck then creates a drum drone using just a snare roll and some cymbal sizzle, while Daniell and Fennesz add their own shadowy minimalism, the washed out ambience the most Fennesz sounding of the bunch, as if all of the sounds created were winding their way through his guitar, then his laptop and out through the speakers, the cymbals getting more and more busy, sounding like rainfall, another sonic climax, but this one a more subdued subtle bit of cymbal driven swell, starkly dramatic and so lovely. Finally, the trio finish these off with another bit of softly chaotic clatter, the scattered bits of percussion and jagged shards of guitars, slowly coalescing into something rhythmic and driving, building to a gloriously effulgent climax, a blinding spray of prismatic sound, a high end ur-drone, that fades gradually again, allowing the set to settle to the ground, in a soft fog of hiss and sizzle, rumble and whir. Fucking fantastic.
The bad news is, the vinyl version of this is somehow already out of print, so we only have 4 or 5 copies, and that's IT. But, we WILL have the cd version next week, got some of those coming from the label (everyone else is out!), so if you want that, just ask...
MPEG Stream: "Unuberwindbare Wande"
MPEG Stream: "Heat From Light"

GLITTERBUG Supershelter (C Sides Label) cd 16.98
We totally flipped for the new Glitterbug record, Privilege, reviewed a couple lists back, the work of Till Rohmann, a German DJ / producer / artist, whose Glitterbug sound was exactly what we had been hankering for, a glorious blend of processed field recordings, soft pulsing glimmering synthscapes, stripped down minimal techno, abstract kosmische krautdrone and pop ambience, so when we discovered there was another, previous Glitterbug, we knew we had to check it out. And once again, were were not disappointed. Supershelter is another heady blend of Kompakt style skeletal techno, and warm swirling synthy drones, dark ominous rumbles, and ethereal after hours party music, skittery, and stuttery, washed out and hypnotic.
After a gorgeous slow melodic intro, that sounds like it could have been plucked from a Burzum record (at least before the plink plonk piano counterpoint comes in), the next few tracks unfurl the beats, wrapped around playful keyboards, percolating clicks and chirps, some sweetly melancholy melodies, even some soaring faux strings, "The Things I Long To Do" almost sounds like a Bjork backing track. "Oh My Hick!" is another skittery techno, warm liquid ambience hybrid, while "Unforgotten" is a brief stretch of hissy static rumble, leading into "Reference System" a low slung slab of synth wrapped late night shuffle, groovy and subtly funky, which butts right up against the warped and muted "Brontohouse" which does evoke some sort of giant beast, with its muddy thumping rhythm, and warm whirring buzz. The record plays out similarly, flitting from minimal thump and pulse, to woozy washed out drift, and quite a few stops in between.
Imagine a less clinical, more playful Kompakt, this will definitely hit the spot if you've been digging any of the recent weirdo electronica from folks like Actress, Pantha Du Prince, Klimek, Vex'd, T++, Thomas Fehlman, Oneohtrix and all the rest...
MPEG Stream: "Intro"
MPEG Stream: "Reference System"
MPEG Stream: "Brontohouse"
MPEG Stream: "Up North"

GRASS WIDOW Past Time (Kill Rock Stars) cd 15.98
There was a time when just about anything on Kill Rock Stars was guaranteed to be totally fucking great. Oh that special era of the '90s and the early '00s, when KRS were putting out records by folks like Unwound, Sleater Kinney, Elliott Smith, Erase Errata, Biking Kill, Quixotic, The Gossip, etc. By being one the most visible outlets for rad female and queer artists it was a label that really tapped into the best and most soulful parts of punk rock's past. All the bands had their own sound and unique vision, running the gamut from intimate folk to angular post-punk and anthemic physical minded and super smart art-punk. Sadly over the last several years the label has scaled back quite a bit and not everything they release is as special as it once was. But Grass Widow really do sound right at home and tap into that golden era of the label with a sound and spirit that really represents the essence of what made so many of us so inspired by the Kill Rock Stars vision to begin with.
Grass Widow is one of those rare bands that you could tell had something super special about them from the get go. Our local college radio station KUSF got a handmade cd-r release from them before they had an official release out and it immediately became a big hit at the station. And then they released a 12" and lp on Make A Mess and Captured Tracks that we all went crazy for, and now with their debut for Kill Rock Stars they have put out their most fully realized set of songs yet. Past Time wastes no time jumping right into the punchy harmonies and vocal melodies that drive the record from start to finish. Carrying a Raincoats torch with such ease and undeniable conviction. We're also reminded of a slightly more twee version of Sleater Kinney. As well as their peers like Wet Dog, Effie Briest, and Brilliant Colors they are part of a new wave of post-punk bands with a spirit and sound that is so goddamn good right now. And while we love all the aforementioned bands, we might just be most in love with Grass Widow. For sure the best release to come out on Kill Rock Stars in a long time. So great!
MPEG Stream: "Shadow"
MPEG Stream: "Landscape"
MPEG Stream: "11 Of Diamonds"

GUIDO Anidea (Punch Drunk) cd 14.98
It's hard to put our finger on what exactly it is about this record from UK electronic / dubstep producer Guido that has us so obsessed, but all it took was a single listen, and we were hooked. We haven't been able to stop listening to it since.
The first three tracks are pretty much perfect, not quite dubstep, not quite electro, but super melodic, a little skittery, playful and weirdly soulful, The opener pairs a spare beat to a dreamy minor key melody, letting the song develop slowly, the notes sounding like pizzicato strings, the vibe spare and skeletal, but very cinematic, synth stabs surfacing in the background, while little melodic flurries swirl around that main melody and that stuttery beat. "Orchestral Lab" might be even catchier, with its main squelchy synth melody, totally irresistible, almost anthemic, and then when the track switches gears, and gets all moody and minor key, it sounds again like the weirdo synth soundtrack to some super dramatic sci-fi space opera, laced with soaring strings, and then some cool dubby dubstep bass counterpoint, giving it some groove and heft, but then it slips right back into that main melody. The third track "Woke Up Early" just seals the deal, beginning with a sputter of stumbling beats, before a woozy squiggly synth melody gets all tangled up in there, and some fizzing spacey swirls of hiss and shimmer, lurching along, sun dappled, a little psychedelic, a lot groovy, stuff like this is often to light for us, but this is so goddamn good. The only real bummer is, that these first three songs are so awesome, we've barely made any further headway onto the rest of the record. There are definitely worse problems, and giving the rest of the record a quick once over right now, reveals that there's most likely more favorite tracks to come, more ridiculous sonic obsessions, including a handful of vocal driven tracks that rule, fuzzy and buzzy and skittery and a little spacey, the vocals chopped up and wrapped around the lurching beats, the record closes with a fierce chunk of late night dubstep, driven by some seriously thick bass wobble, an ominous and dark bit of stutter step that pretty much matches the opening trio in terms of complete radness. And be sure to stick around, there's a secret track tucked away at the end.
Another new electronic favorite for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Anidea"
MPEG Stream: "Orchestral Lab"
RealAudio clip: "Woke Up Early"

HANOI JANES Specks Ho! (Captured Tracks) 7" 6.98
Five new short sweet blasts of fuzzy, warbly lo-fi dream pop from this German one man band, whose last few releases we went pretty crazy for around here. And like those, this too is all sunshiney retro jangle garage pop, but even more stripped down and sun dappled, rife with reverbed harmonies soft focus psychedelic fuzz, as well as some surprising calypso like grooves that sound almost like a more garage rockin' Ducktails. The rest is all organ driven indie pop crunch laced with playful xylophone melodies, squiggly lo-fi casios, acoustic guitar strum, loads of reverb, echo and some total classic power pop vox. Loose and playful, a bit ramshackle, another perfect collection of summer sunshine pop, that sounds way more California than Germany!

IMBOGODOM The Metallic Year (Thrill Jockey) lp 16.98
Recorded on old machines, in the darkened halls of the BBC, after hours, when the rest of the workers had gone home, Imbogodom's The Metallic Year is the work of multi-instrumentalists Alexander Tucker and his partner Daniel Beban. They holed up in these dark temporarily abandoned studios, playing music on various instruments, capturing them on analog tape, manipulating the tape, and recontextualizing the sounds, creating ghostly soundtracks to otherworlds, music for late night strolls through darkened hallways, a glorious ghost world. Looped pianos and sonar like pings, becomes lush crescendos of dramatic tension, voices are transformed into sitar like buzz, and layered into heaving swells, like s tuning up orchestras woven into minimal dronemusic accompanied by slowed down monk-like chants, pianos and strings swirl ominously like a Bernard Hermann score pressed onto warped vinyl, swirling streaks of gauzy melody drift over clouds of warbly xylophone like tones, reverbed harmonics drift like dust motes in hazy rays of washed out light, warm whirring buzz creeps through soft tangles of detuned guitars and deep moaned vox, billows of processed swoops and swirls float above the weird backwards hiss of reverse tape ambience, ghostly voices float above wheezing chords and thumping distant rhythms, a lugubrious spectral creep that leads into the final stretch, an extended sprawl of ghostlike voices, a collage of haunting incantations, over an orchestra of burbling witches' cauldrons, the sounds all melting and oozing into each other, a slowly decaying vocal dirge, a black sea of doomic drift, that sounds exactly how you would imagine those haunted halls would sound, cloaked in darkness, free of life, as if Imbogodom were simply channeling some sonic spirits, capturing a blurred indistinct snapshot, burned like some ghostly image to magnetic tape.
MPEG Stream: "The Endless Body"
MPEG Stream: "Indosoap"
MPEG Stream: "Bvsh House Ghost"

INCURSUS Eternal Funeral Trance (Forever Plagued Records) cd 14.98
Featuring members of a whole mess of USBM outfits, most notably, Nightbringer, Demoncy, and Kult Ov Azazel, Incursus are a seriously grim and furious black beast, who after a brief bit of ominous piano, and crumbling ambience to set the mood, explode into a murky morass of Deathspell style gnarled blackness, frenzied riffing, soaring majestic melodies, slipping from woozy midtempo dirges to lightning speed blurred blowouts, and it's at that lightning speed that these guys spend most of Eternal Funeral Trance, but it's not all about speed, although the intense buzz and blast, creates a seriously trancelike vibe, sometimes the sound so fast and buzz drenched that it almost sounds like an undulating black drone, but the band are equally capable of conjuring up hypnotic and weirdly mesmerizing atmospheres, haunting and horrifying, every note infused with a demonic darkness, the sound a sort of Norwegian style blackness, but filtered through a twisted, tangled distinctly American underground sound, infused with the black spirit of Deathspell, Katharsis and Nightbringer, a furiously chaotic, misanthropic, ultraviolent collection of black hymns to the cursed and the fallen. Thus, 'tis WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "A Ravenous Despair"
MPEG Stream: "When Death Enthrones Our Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "Phantasmagoria"

INTELLIGENCE, THE Males (In The Red) cd 13.98
We first heard The Intelligence on a split with Thee Oh Sees, which makes sense, considering both bands traffic in the same sort of stripped down, raw and sweaty garage punk, and we were pretty nuts about The Intelligence's first full length, Fake Surfers, which demonstrated that these guys weren't nearly as blown out or in the red as many of their compatriots, their sound more low slung, reminding us of groups like the Wipers and the Leaving Trains as much as groups like the Mayyors, Blank Dogs, Wavves and the like. The guitars muted and muddy, a crunchy jangle, the vocals less a distorted wail, and more a reverbed croon, the songs simple and stripped down, but catchy as fuck, and super poppy, raw and urgent, most hovering around the two minute mark, short sharp blasts of fuzzy reverby garage pop, replete with buried in the mix synths, and some fuzzy background vox... and what on the surface sounds pretty straight ahead, will crumble right before your ears as the band unleash some sort of insanely hook filled chorus, or a bad ass earworm of a bridge, like on the awesomely titled "Tuned To Puke", which features a pounding rhythm and a looped sounding cyclical woozy main riff, the vocals sticking close to the main melody, but then the guitars soar, unleashing a shimmering bit of jangle, laced with some 'ooooh'-ing vox, and then it's right back to the churn and crunch again. But it's those moments that make The Intelligence so special, and make their songs stick in your head. And like Fake Surfers before it, every listen of Males just makes us want to hear more...
MPEG Stream: "Bong Life"
MPEG Stream: "Tuned To Puke"
MPEG Stream: "Sailor Itch"

JONNYX AND THE GROADIES TV Party: Re-Runs And Lost Episodes (JX:ATG) cd 10.98
We listed the brand new record from the crazed Northwestern party black metallers a few lists back, and were a bit surprised that more people didn't TOTALLY FREAK OUT the way we did over these guys. Could it be describing them as "party black metal"? Not a phrase we coined, or one that's even all that applicable really, especially here. Could it be the name? JonnyX And The Groadies might be a goofy name, but these are goofy guys, the music though, ANYTHING BUT. The sound of JXATG is brutal and epic and heavy and fierce and twisted, a sort of new wave black metal hybrid, WAY heavier on the black metal. In fact, when someone was playing this up front this morning, we were all trying to figure out what black metal band it was, never occurring to us, for some reason that it could be JXATG. Which should speak to the power of this crew's black crush.
TV Party collects loads of older tracks, from various splits and demos, culled from the early days of the band, and are even more raw and fierce and furious than the new record, which is saying a lot. In fact, if these guys were called Satanic Skullfuck or something and were from Norway, people would be shitting themselves, but they're not, deal with it, they're fucking called JonnyX And The Groadies and they're from the Pacific Northwest and they slay, they destroy, they brutalize. Don't believe us? Check out the sound sample for "Organ Failure", it may only be a minute long, but it's still the soundtrack to some subterranean Teutonic march, the musical accompaniment to an army of orcs destroying some ancient civilization, pounding beats, buzzing frantic riffing, shrieked demonic vox, a killer almost industrial breakdown, with some serious chugging, and a bitchin' riff. Hell every track here could be the soundtrack for some epic battle, or you know what, some CRAZY PARTY? This is raging, blasting, crusty, pounding blackened heaviness, and it utterly rules. We'd put these guys up against any of the black metal heavies, and not only could they hold their own, they'd whip out their buzzing synths and leave the grim buzzing blasters in the dust, and would probably be having a fuckload of fun while doing it. Definitely one of our favorite bands going, they should be yours too!!
MPEG Stream: "Spelunking the Caverns of Torment"
MPEG Stream: "Organ Failure"
MPEG Stream: "Broadsword"
MPEG Stream: "Get Your Technology Out of My Spine"

JUPPALA KAAPIO Sporing Promenade (Omnimemento) cd 21.00
Juppala Kaapio is a project with a Finnish name and Finnish credentials, but not a Finn amongst the lot. The parties responsible are the husband and wife duo of Carole and Hitoshi Kojo (the former Swiss and the latter Japanese by birth), but Hitoshi in particular has spent a fair amount of time in the Finnish hinterlands, and had made an appearance on the recent Kemialliset Ystavat album Ullakopalo. That said, Hitoshi has a small but impressive catalog of material recorded over the past decade under the moniker Spiracle. There, thick masses of texture piled on top of each other, creating thick drones with ghostly melodies flickering about, much like the archaic sounding recordings of Organum and the more compacted albums of Andrew Chalk. All of this culminated in the 2cd Ananta opus released back in 2009, and Hitoshi shifting his focus to the collaborative project Juppala Kaapio, whose name translates vaguely as the Juppala Dwarf. The two hint at the thickening drones of Spiracle, focusing more on a clattering, psychedelic ritualism that is more in keeping with all things Fonal - spluttering acoustic guitars, toy synths, Tony Conrad inspired viola drone, hand percussive tappings, prolonged flute tones, lots of bells, found forest objects, and vocalized mantras as if the personal soundtrack to a private ritual for wandering spirits who found themselves in a moss-covered cabin somewhere in the northern reaches of Finland basking in the midnight sun of an endless Arctic summer. Playful, fantastical, haunting, and thoroughly tripped out, Juppala Kaapio is highly recommended to any one keen on Jewelled Antler, Fursaxa, Taj-Mahal Travellers, Parson Sound, the freakiest end of the freak-folk spectrum, and of course the aforementioned Kemialliset Ystavat.
MPEG Stream: "Meganze Zaru"
MPEG Stream: "Souffle"
MPEG Stream: "Lamellations"
MPEG Stream: "Lunastus"

LES RALLIZES DENUDES Blind Baby Has It's Mothers Eyes (Phoenix) lp 24.00
Now available on vinyl! Les Rallizes Denudes on wax, how cool is that!
All right, time to crank the stereo! There's no way to listen to these, but loud. Two rather crucial entries in the distorto-delic discography of seminal '70s Japanese underground rock band Les Rallizes Denudes are now reissued, on proper compact disc for what we think is the very first time, these having being previously only "available", if you can call it that, as cd-rs. Blind Baby Has It's Mothers Eyes, and Heavier Than A Death In The Family, woah, you know with titles like that they've gotta be good. And before you go running to your Japrocksamplers to look 'em up, we'll save you the trouble: Julian Cope rated these two albums at #11 and #3, respectively, on his top 50 of Japanese psych artifacts. Deservedly so.
Heavily mythologized and mysterious, this lo-fi, in-the-red, sunglasses-wearing, Motown-loving, airplane-hijacking (??!), studio-recording-avoiding, raw outsider rock and roll unit provided the inspiration for every latter day underground Japanese psych band who have ever slipped on shades, cranked up their amps, and had a Tokyo Flashback. (Like Fushitsusha!) And these two discs, both equally recommended, are essential documents as to how and why.
Heavier Than A Death In The Family features six songs, all but one of 'em in the double digits, with some great titles, no less than three of 'em referencing the night in some form or other: "Strung Out Deeper Than The Night", "The Night Collectors", "Night Of The Assassins", "Enter The Mirror", "People Can Choose", and "Ice Fire". All were apparently recorded live in '77 (except one from '73). Blistering is the word. Super echoey, reverbed out, almost like Ariel Pink producing Wooden Shjips or Comets On Fire gone dub... Sounds also like some Siltbreeze shitgazers, or current psychsters like Heavy Winged, plodding and throbbing. And "Ice Fire" is 16 minutes of proto-Merzbow meets Hawkwind howl. Wow.
Frayed and fried, ULTRA fuzzed and feedback-y, of course, and yet for a Rallizes release, the sound isn't all that "bad", compared to some of their stuff we've heard wherein the tape hiss competes with the guitar for domination. Not that that's a bad thing, either, but this will take less getting used to.
Meanwhile, Blind Baby Has It's [sic] Mothers [sic] Eyes consists of three tracks, but clocks in at 54 minutes total: the title track, "An Awful Eternity" (aka "An Aweful Eternitie"), and "The Last One". Presumably also recorded live, we don't know when, sometime in the '70s, the sound here is similar sickness. More of their charismatically clangorous chaos, getting quite hypnotically repetitious across the lengths of these three wandering, wah-wah wailing epics. We'd recommend this as a good gift for your friend who likes the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray", Circle, and primitive black metal such as Striborg... if they haven't heard Les Rallizes yet they'll be thanking you!
Although due to the confusing nature of the Rallizes catalog, we imagine that some of these tracks might appear on other Rallizes discs that you may or may not have, but in any case these two albums are essentials in their entirety. Get 'em while they last.
MPEG Stream: "Blind Baby Has It's Mothers Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "An Awful Eternity"

LES RALLIZES DENUDES Heavier Than A Death In The Family (Phoenix) 2lp 34.00
Now available on vinyl! Les Rallizes Denudes on wax, how cool is that!
All right, time to crank the stereo! There's no way to listen to these, but loud. Two rather crucial entries in the distorto-delic discography of seminal '70s Japanese underground rock band Les Rallizes Denudes are now reissued, on proper compact disc for what we think is the very first time, these having being previously only "available", if you can call it that, as cd-rs. Blind Baby Has It's Mothers Eyes, and Heavier Than A Death In The Family, woah, you know with titles like that they've gotta be good. And before you go running to your Japrocksamplers to look 'em up, we'll save you the trouble: Julian Cope rated these two albums at #11 and #3, respectively, on his top 50 of Japanese psych artifacts. Deservedly so.
Heavily mythologized and mysterious, this lo-fi, in-the-red, sunglasses-wearing, Motown-loving, airplane-hijacking (??!), studio-recording-avoiding, raw outsider rock and roll unit provided the inspiration for every latter day underground Japanese psych band who have ever slipped on shades, cranked up their amps, and had a Tokyo Flashback. (Like Fushitsusha!) And these two discs, both equally recommended, are essential documents as to how and why.
Heavier Than A Death In The Family features six songs, all but one of 'em in the double digits, with some great titles, no less than three of 'em referencing the night in some form or other: "Strung Out Deeper Than The Night", "The Night Collectors", "Night Of The Assassins", "Enter The Mirror", "People Can Choose", and "Ice Fire". All were apparently recorded live in '77 (except one from '73). Blistering is the word. Super echoey, reverbed out, almost like Ariel Pink producing Wooden Shjips or Comets On Fire gone dub... Sounds also like some Siltbreeze shitgazers, or current psychsters like Heavy Winged, plodding and throbbing. And "Ice Fire" is 16 minutes of proto-Merzbow meets Hawkwind howl. Wow.
Frayed and fried, ULTRA fuzzed and feedback-y, of course, and yet for a Rallizes release, the sound isn't all that "bad", compared to some of their stuff we've heard wherein the tape hiss competes with the guitar for domination. Not that that's a bad thing, either, but this will take less getting used to.
Meanwhile, Blind Baby Has It's [sic] Mothers [sic] Eyes consists of three tracks, but clocks in at 54 minutes total: the title track, "An Awful Eternity" (aka "An Aweful Eternitie"), and "The Last One". Presumably also recorded live, we don't know when, sometime in the '70s, the sound here is similar sickness. More of their charismatically clangorous chaos, getting quite hypnotically repetitious across the lengths of these three wandering, wah-wah wailing epics. We'd recommend this as a good gift for your friend who likes the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray", Circle, and primitive black metal such as Striborg... if they haven't heard Les Rallizes yet they'll be thanking you!
Although due to the confusing nature of the Rallizes catalog, we imagine that some of these tracks might appear on other Rallizes discs that you may or may not have, but in any case these two albums are essentials in their entirety. Get 'em while they last.
MPEG Stream: "Strung Out Deeper Than The Night"
MPEG Stream: "The Night Collectors"

LETHE Catastrophe Point 7 & 8 (Invisible Birds) 2cd 19.98
Here's the regular (and much more reasonably priced!) edition of the ultra deluxe Lethe 2cd set we reviewed a few weeks ago.
For many years now, Kuwayama Kiyoharu (aka Lethe) had been recording the resonance of various abandoned spaces, first around his native Japan and more recently from sites far far away. He seeks out an old warehouse, airplane hanger, the hull of a ship, or any massive slab of architecture shaped by concrete and/or steel which happens to have an open door (or broken window) and a choice amount of natural reverb and resonance. There he collects whatever he can find within the space to use as source material to resonate those industrial spaces: slabs of metal, empty water tanks, sodden wood, broken glass, small bones, and the flotsam that had collected on the floors after years of neglect. Out of these found objects, Kuwayama has an uncanny knack for producing natural, acoustic drones which hold a haunted aesthetic amplified through the cavernous reverb of those crumbled cathedrals to industry. Given the seemingly surreptitious nature of Kuwayama's wanderings, these recordings are swaddled in the darkness of night with only candles or a bonfire somewhere in the far corner of the building as his illumination. It has to be said that Kuwayama does overlay and edit all of his recordings into composition, following liked minded artists such as Tarab, Eric La Casa, or John Grzinich.
Catastrophe Point 7 begins with this process at a site deliciously referred to as Arsenic in Lausanne, Switzerland. Well, it turns out that Arsenic is a contemporary theater space in current use, and despite his non-feral residence, Kuwayama offers an incredible assortment of acoustic drones, noises, and textures. Bellowing tones emanate from a variety of long plumbing pipes, replicating the circular breathing strategies of Yoshi Wada; and around these leaden flutterings, he scrapes uneasy textures and builds clattering crescendos. The point about Arsenic not being a totally disused space comes to the forefront about halfway through Catastrophe Point 7 as he rolls a piano into the empty theater space and sets forth a melancholy series of clustered piano tones, much like his one time collaborator Jonathan Coleclough produced on his signature album Period.
Catastrophe Point 8 was recorded in an abandoned space. This time, it's a former power station in Scotland. A mournful acoustic drone, perhaps from a similar set of plumbing pipes heard in the Swiss recordings opens this disc, with small crumblings of wood, glass, and concrete positioned close to the microphone. Set in spatialized contrast to these closely miced sounds, Kuwayama captures various clanks, thumps, and other bumps in the night all decaying in the prolonged reverb of that power station. It's a much more Spartan affair than the first disc, but just as effective in its haunted sensibility. Highly recommended listening!
MPEG Stream: "Catastrophe Point 7.2"
MPEG Stream: "Catastrophe Point 8.1"
MPEG Stream: "Catastrophe Point 8.3"

LUNDBORG, PATRICK The Acid Archives: The Second Edition (Lysergia) book 46.00
Now available in a second edition, the out of print first one from a few years back fetching big money on eBay, but this one has tacked on 100 EXTRA PAGES of material!!! And the record cover pics inside are in color this time! Get one for your reference shelf, before they're gone....
Check this out, a tome devoted entirely to American private press musical weirdness from the psychedelic era; its subtitle is "Guide To Underground Sounds 1965-1982". And yes, it's an A-to-Z of bands, each release getting an opinionated write-up, sometimes from more than one reviewer, who don't always agree! Not just psych bands, but also folk-rock, hard rock, "incredibly strange music", sunshine pop, all sorts of stuff. As long as it's rare and obscure and has collectors salivating...
Here's a few of the bands included: Anonymous, BF Trike, Cromagnon, David Allen Coe, Euphoria, Francisco, Josephus, New Hobbits, Charles Mason, Peace Pipe, Ya Ho Wha 13... that's a very small fraction (hey I bet Fraction is in here... let's see, yep) of what you'll find. There's literally hundreds and of entries. Hours of browsing to be had.
In addition to this "Acid Archive" of reviews, which include discographical info on both the original releases -and- (where applicable) reissues, there's some other special features to this volume. You'll find top tens and "fave raves" from the book's various contributors, also a buying guide for collectors on a budget, and a forward by Mike Stax of Ugly Things magazine - and if you're a dedicated Ugly Things reader, you definitely want this book!!
15 years in the making, this is as authoritative and indispensable as it gets, when it comes to weird music from way back. The second edition is full color, with 400 pages packed with album covers, record labels, promo photos and more! Trippy!!

MAC BLACKOUT Don't Let Your Love Die b/w Sometimes (Sacred Bones) 7" 5.98
Can you imagine some strange mix of Black Bug, Depeche Mode and Varghkoghargasmal? Well you can now. Sounds like an aQuarius mad sonic scientist dream come true and it IS. This latest Captured Tracks single, from Mac Blackout, aka the dude from the Functional Blackouts and Daily Void, has to be our new fave single of the year, the A side is a ferocious and catchy as fuck chunk of gothy retro cold wave synth soaked gloom pop, stumbling and warped, with cool shrieky vocals, squiggly synths, total Nintendo wave, hooky and a little heavy, but so gloriously noisy and poppy and buzzy and twisted and fucking AWESOME. The flipside is just as good, taking that same sound, but mixing in some thick swaths of dense fuzzed out M83 style swirl, some super dramatic vocals, and crumbling crunchy almost industrial rhythms, still infused with some eighties pop jangle and some anthemic teen movie soundtrack pathos, but all blurred and blasted into something much more fucked up and far out. So good.

MCGUIRE, MARK Off In The Distance (Cylindrical Habitat Modules) lp 23.00
Yes, it's another solo album from Emeralds' guitarist Mark McGuire, and yes, it's totally awesome. Off In The Distance was originally a cassette that came out briefly back in 2008, but had been so beloved by the dudes who put out the tape that vinyl became a necessity. And it's a perfect format for McGuire's kosmische zoner jams, with all his continued allusions to Ash Ra Tempel, Gunter Schickert, Michael Rother, Popul Vuh, and Achim Reichel that stretch into grand movements of psychedelic melancholy. Slow-motion, aquatic bubblings of analog synths percolate upon an undulating bed of guitar drones muffling the growls from a distortion box. All the while, McGuire layers his signature elliptical guitar arpeggiated melodies that snap into locked grooves only to mutate effortlessly into doubles and triples of themselves, resulting in the passages of spaceship lift-off on a exploratory mission towards the heart of glowing nebulae. Towards the end of the first side, McGuire transitions into a particularly maudlin riff of intertwined and overlaid guitars, making some of us here think back to that incredible Dreamies album of symphonic psychedelic mope. Off In The Distance strikes that balance found in so much of the Emeralds / McGuire axis of music making, that of the inner-cosmonaut in pursuit of transcendence and/or tranquilization on one hand, and on the other, he channels something profoundly sad as McGuire's aware that such pursuits can only be fleeting at best. Undoubtedly beautiful stuff from McGuire. Limited to 500 copies.

MINKS Ophelia (Captured Tracks) 7" 6.98
The first 7" we heard from Minks a few months ago immediately became one of our favorite singles of the year. We love when bands use 7"s as a way to introduce themselves, offering up a few perfect jams on a handful of singles before releasing a full length. And Minks are doing just that, as these three songs show once again that that debut single was no fluke. Minks are able to tap into the best parts of The Cure without sounding like clones, and part of the reason is that while so many other bands who are influenced by The Cure tend to focus so much on trying to emulate Robert Smith's vocals, Minks instead explore the overall sound and dirgey instrumentation that those great Cure albums were rife with. Minks conjure a hazy and washed out vibe, creating a sound that is like a much darker and dingier side of shoegaze. So excited for a full length but until then we have three more songs from Minks to play over and over and over!

MOEBIUS & BEERBOHM Strange Music (Bureau B) cd 17.98
Along with the Record Of The Week, Double Cut, we also have the duo of Moebius and Beerbohm's first outing together, Strange Music from 1982. And strange it surely is. Perhaps not as sonically perfect of a release as Double Cut, it goes in all kinds of intense directions. Starting with the urgent post punk drumming that opens the first track, "Subito", adding to it a swarm of buzzing synths that swirl and sting. Most songs here percolate and gurgle in brash noisy soundscapes, like an industrial swamp with affected vocal noises, and pulsating whirrs. Other songs lurk menacingly and pace creepily with ominous synth howls, reminding us of Throbbing Gristle's murky but dangerous vagueness. With only glimpses of Moebius's past life with Cluster, it seems the newly formed duo were trying their hardest to remove themselves from that past and into new unknown territory. A welcome exploration that only got better and more refined (and engagingly rhythmic) on Double Cut.
MPEG Stream: "Subito"
MPEG Stream: "White House"
MPEG Stream: "Clarks Shiraz"

MOUNT KIMBIE Crooks & Lovers (Hot Flush) cd 17.98
Equal parts J Dilla, Flying Lotus and Actress, the full length debut of London-based "post-dubstep" duo Mount Kimbie is easily our new favorite night time listens. With stoned soul edits, heavenly string washes, wonky ping pong rhythms, underwater electronic atmospherics and an off-kilter but hazy production, Crooks and Lovers is all about the post-club come down. Chill and subdued, often dreamy and strange but super immersive and narcotically propulsive. The kind of sound that wraps around you, compels you along into its strange slippery rhythms, before finally lulling you into a beautifully warped hypnogogic sleep state. Highest Recommendation!
MPEG Stream: "Would Know"
MPEG Stream: "Before I Move Off"
MPEG Stream: "Carbonated"
MPEG Stream: "Mayor"

ORCUTT, BILL Way Down South (Palalia) 12" 12.98
Avant guitar slinger Bill Orcutt, formerly of legendary noise terrorists Harry Pussy, returns with another lp-only offering, a starkly handsome one sided, one song record on crystal clear vinyl, documenting a performance from his recent tour of New Zealand. Anyone who heard Orcutt's limited (and sadly out of print) A New Way to Pay Old Debts lp can look forward to another slab of atonal neo blues performed in a frantic but highly focused way on a battered old acoustic with only 4 strings. Orcutt's runs up the fretboard also come off a bit like strange ragas as the strings resonate and sustain almost like a sitar at times. Though performed in front of an audience, there is a spaciousness to the recording that takes on almost cosmic proportions and works perfectly with Orcutt's guitar work, which sounds huge and menacing but also strangely melodic. Way Down South takes on a weird trancey quality, and one can only assume that Orcutt was definitely "in the moment" here. But unlike so many bands and solo artists now, who rely extensively on loops, pedals, and all kinds of electronic fuckery, this shit is stripped to its essentials - I mean, can you really get more basic than an acoustic guitar? - and ably performed by a guy who can simply shred balls. Way recommended, and not surprisingly, limited to 300 copies!

PAGAN ALTAR Lords Of Hypocrisy (Buried By Time And Dust) 2lp 27.00
Red letter day here for old school doom vinyl fanatics. Buried By Time And Dust bring us two essential reissues, the Witchfinder General lp boxset reviewed elsewhere this list, and this, a vinyl version of the 2nd album from those mystic, misty masters of British metal majesty, Pagan Altar. A truly "cult" doom act from the NWOBHM era, somehow still kicking in the here-and-now. Their debut was recorded in 1982, but kept secret and unreleased until almost the year 2000. They followed that with this album in 2004, featuring songs which were originally written back in the late '70s, early '80s by the brothers Terry Jones (vocals) and Alan Jones (guitar). While all Pagan Altar rules, this just might be our fave. Terry Jones' nasal voice is a dramatic, wizened croak and caw, that can soar with ravens in the night sky... evoking both both Roky Erickson and Ozzy Osbourne (which means, Witchcraft fans should hear Pagan Altar). His brother brings the Sabbathy riffs and lead guitar rippage, also playin' some banjo on twangin' folk instrumental interlude "The Devil Came Down To Brockley".
Throughout the album there's drifting soft folky parts and epick metal stormers, Pagan Altar combining a pastoral prog vibe with a Satanic metal one... sad and melancholic, with intelligent lyrics, and it doesn't get more DOOM than songs about nuclear armageddon! Somehow the overall sound reminds us of Ozzy (early solo, circa Randy Rhodes Blizzard Of Ozz era), but gone way underground and druidical. A classic that stands with the best of the NWOBHM even though it was released so many years later... like a time capsule from the '80s.
The original cd release of this we never were able to get enough of to list, so it's nice to finally review it and on vinyl, too. Not cheap, but super swank and of course limited... as you may recall, earlier this year we blew through Buried By Time And Dust's vinyl reissue of Judgement Of The Dead (aka Vol. 1), PA's first album, all too quickly. This one may or may not stick around longer...and in any case it's just as recommended. Brilliant stuff any NWOBHM and/or doom lover who's got a pagan bone in their body ought to own. 180g vinyl, heavy gatefold sleeve with lyrics, and it also includes the 2 bonus tracks ("Witch's Pathway" and "Flight Of The Witchqueen") from the original limited vinyl pressing by Miskatonic in '05, not found on the cd version.
MPEG Stream: "The Lords Of Hypocrisy"
MPEG Stream: "Sentinels Of Hate"

PALE SKETCHER Jesu: Pale Sketches Demixed (Ghostly International) cd 13.98
Pale Sketcher finds Justin Broadrick taking his post Godflesh project Jesu in an entirely new direction. Named for Pale Sketches, a collection of early Jesu demos and song fragments, unused parts and unfinished songs, which were presented on Pale Sketches as a collection of odds and ends, but here are reworked into a mysteriously minimal electronica. And to be totally fair, the sound, while on the surface seems radically different, really doesn't sound all that far removed from the sound of Jesu proper, sure the thick metalgaze guitars are stripped away, and the beats are a bit more skeletal and overtly electronic, but the lush shoegazey drift is still what it's all about. Thick swells of melancholy minor key shimmer, spidery melodies, hushed gauzey production haze, everything sun dappled and washed out and prismatic, it's not that hard to imagine that instead of this being a one time excursion, that this is in fact the direction Jesu was, or is, headed. Every record since the debut, Heartache, has consistently gotten less heavy, more and more mellow and dreamy, drifting ever closer to a sort of M83 style retro eighties shoegaze doom pop, so it would make perfect sense for Jesu to gradually be transformed into something warm and dark and electronic.
The sound here suits the songs perfectly, dreamy and minimal, moody and hushed, a little bit dubby, the heaviest parts are the swaths of buzzing dubsteppy bass that surface here and there, but otherwise this is like some spaced out soundtrack composed by Jesu, very cinematic, haunting and lovely, stripped down and abstract, the vocals ghostly and ethereal, in fact most all of the sounds here are ghostly and ethereal, allowed to drift and shimmer, held in place by muted pulses, and streaks of soft skitter, the whole thing ends up sounding so dreamlike, so otherworldly, the perfect next step in Jesu's constant evolution.
MPEG Stream: "Don't Dream It (Mirage Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Wash It All Away (Cleansed Dub)"
MPEG Stream: "The Playgrounds Are Empty (Slumber Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Plans That Fade (Faded Dub)"

PURO INSTINCT (PEARL HARBOR) s/t (Gloriette) 12" 12.98
We really loved the Pearl Harbor record on Mexican Summer, which is sadly already out of print, there was something about it that stuck out from the onslaught of new lo-fi minded garage pop bands. With this new record, the band is transitioning into a new moniker (Puro Instinct) because of catching some grief from the '80s SF band Pearl Harbor, but luckily while the name is changing their sound is only evolving and getting more entrancing and seductive. We recently caught them opening for Ariel Pink and it was such a perfect hazy swaying daydream experience. And we have to say we have never seen a band with collectively such amazing flowing blonde hair!! Vidal Sasoon should really jump on board and sponsor them. But beyond their mesmerizing hair, their music actually feels very similar to that folicularly glowing and flowing sensation. These four new songs continue their smart take on mixing a 4AD sensibility with a washed out pop aesthetic. Like Beach House covering the Cocteau Twins, or Nite Jewel stepping away from the late night dance floor and entering an even more smoke filled blissed out world of moody mystery. Makes us want to sit in our bedrooms lit only by candles, as we lay so dazed, eyes closed, letting the sounds from the vinyl just seep into our skin and course through our veins.

SALT Issue 9 magazine 5.00
It's hard to believe it's been two years since the last issue of Salt, but we're willing to be patient, after all it is possibly our favorite zine going, and as in our reviews of every issue of Salt, we really can't heap enough praise on this kick ass DIY zine, and as always, lament the fact that it somehow remains a zine, it seems like by now, Salt should be up there with Terrorizer and Rock A Rolla and Decibel. But you know what, fuck it, we love Salt just the way it is, virtually unchanged since issue #1, still black and white, a little oversized, same style layout, most of the illustrations done by Kevin, the guy who pretty much IS Salt, and the stuff he chooses to focus on, as always is weird and wonderful, varied and unlikely. Always something we're super into, always something else we've never even heard of, and even the stuff that seems like it would be of little interest, ends up being a fantastic read, always the sign of a great magazine.
This issue is especially exciting as it contains perhaps the first interview EVER with aQ fave and tUMULt recording artist, the mysterious Korean teenage black metaller Pyha, talking about life in Korea, black metal, mandatory conscription, protest music and more.
There's also a killer interview with Alicia from legendary crust doom outfit 13 (which also featured Liz Buckingham, now in Electric Wizard). There's a feature on doomdrone juggernaut Korperschwache, an extensive and WAY in depth review of the Some Bizarre Album, an extensive guide to getting drunk on cheap vodkas, a feature on indie poppers Grandaddy, and a guide to their best B-sides, a lengthy interview with comic artist Carla Speed McNeil, and an interview with the man behind new label The Great Pop Supplement (he also once upon a time ran both Enraptured and Earworm!). All that for five bucks! This time around there are no record reviews, and less pieces, but as Kevin explains in the intro, that's so the interviews and features could be longer and more extensive. Which they absolutely are.
What more do you need to know? You love music. You love reading about music. You love underground music, and underground zines, if you haven't been reading Salt, you've been missing out big time...

SANDWITCHES Makes Me Sick (South Paw) 7" 7.98
Hot on the heels of their awesome new 12" Duck Duck Goose, the ladies of The Sandwitches are wasting no time continuing their hot streak with these two brand new songs that continue to display what a cool range of sounds they're capable of conjuring. The A side "Makes Me Sick" is one of the most full on folk sounding songs we've heard from them yet filled with such a nice punch. Kind of like an updated version of a Karen Dalton track doused with a nice kick of piss & vinegar. The B side is the track we've been so obsessed with. "Idiot Savant" is so sparse and haunting, bringing us into a hypnotic world of sound filled with cobwebs and antique Oujia boards. With every step they take we keep falling for these ladies more and more. So good!

SCHICKERT, GUNTER Samtvogel (Wah Wah) lp 30.00
Years ago we fell in love with Gunter Schickert's Uberfalling, a 1980 late-krautrock guitarscape epic. The cd reissue of that is now sadly out of print, but we've recently been turned onto Schickert's first lp from 1974, Samtvogel, which at last has been reissued on vinyl courtesy of the Spanish Import label Wah Wah, who have also recently reissued Heldon, Vainica Doble, Inner Space and other international psych gems. Sure, they're a bit expensive, but everything we've heard from the label has been amazing, so they're pretty much worth it.
Especially this one, a three track epic of cavernous space guitar extrapolations and buried lysergic vocal incantations that sounds like an alternate soundtrack to Fantastic Planet. The first track, "Apricot Brandy" gently introduce us into Schickert's sound world, a spacy lyrical repetitive commune riff with murmured vocals and spindly multi-layered guitar percolations that gently float in an echo-y atmospheric chamber. The second track, "Kriegmaschinen, Fahrt Zur Holle" is nearly 17 minutes of space-echo, belltones and strange echo effects that slowly build into more intense repetitive and multi-layered motifs, sometimes urgent and cinematic, and other moments more billowy and sinuous, reminding us of Achim Reichel and Manuel Gottsching, and even obscure krautrock band Temple. The final twenty-one minute track, "Wald", brings the intensity to the fore, with a buzzing guitarscape that sounds like John Carpenter, but soon gives way to a more lilting spacey bubbling and exploratory improvisation before the intense riffs return and interject and subside in strange surges, finally dissipating in little clouds of helium. A beautiful piece of outsider kosmiche! Highly Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Kriegmaschinen, Fahrt Zur Holle"
MPEG Stream: "Wald"

SHIRAISHI, TAMIO Sax Solo Performance At Subway In NY (PSF) cd 16.98
Part field recording, part free jazz improv. As the title indicates, solo sax in the subway, that's what this is. But definitely not your usual "busker" fare! Beautiful, but also definitely dog-whistle intense. Japanese saxophonist Tamio Shiraishi has been active since the '70s, and played in an early incarnation of Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, we're told. He been living in New York City for at least a decade, collaborating with NNCK among others, and apparently likes to haunt the subway in Queens, with his sax, when he's in a pensive mood. The sax he blows here generates a thin, piercing, upper-register "whistling" sound, sometimes a subtle squeal, sometimes a haunting soul-cry, that we'd think would be lost in the clangor of the subway system. But, instead it sounds like he's playing in an abandoned area of the subway, it seems often almost totally silent, but for the saxophone. And except, now and then, for the sounds of a passing train. Clearly it's a lonely stop, late at night or very early in the morning... or maybe the sine-wave like tone of his saxophone has chased all the commuters away. When a train does "run though" the station where Shiraishi is playing, a whole 'nother dimension is added, the ambient, field recording character of this disc becomes apparent, that's definitely what makes this most interesting to us, as listeners. Rumbling, clanking, hissing, rhythmically choo-chooing in its subway way, first in the distance softly, then louder, then receding again to be replaced by the sax it didn't quite drown out... The loneliness of the delicately shrill saxophone soloing is accentuated as the train fades away, each a drone of its own, for moments in brief duet. More than the sum of its parts, we'd definitely rather hear Shiraishi in this subway setting than in a studio - and at the same time, it's NOT quite what you might have thought a subway platform saxophone recording would sound like. So, move over DJ Shadow, David Shire, and Charles Gayle... this is the new sound of the NYC subway system!
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 5"

SIX FINGER SATELLITE Machine Cuisine Companion Cassette (ABRN) cassette 9.98
Did not see this one coming... but GODDAMN are we happy about it. Originally released by the band themselves in 1994 as, you guessed it, a companion cassette to the band's mighty Machine Cuisine 10", this little bastard has been out of print for years, attaining somewhat of a mythic status and fetching some pretty hefty prices the one or two times it ever ended up on eBay. Now, with 6FS operating once again, they saw it fit to reissue this cassette for the hungry masses in 2010, complete with a digital download card tucked inside.
A polarizing band if there ever was one, Six Finger Satellite was one of the few groups in the '90s to utilize synthesizers to their full potential, which they integrated into a traditional rock band setup for some heavy, hateful, and totally rocking results. While the Machine Cuisine ep itself found 6FS sans guitars, sounding a bit like a smart ass Kraftwerk meeting up with Chrome, the cassette rocks furiously, with the band's trademark demented vocals, machine like drumming and some razor sharp riffage. It's unfortunate that these guys never gained more than a cult following, but not really that surprising either. Listening to this stuff now, it's clear that they were not only completely out of step with much of the "indie rock" scene of the '90s, but also WAY ahead of their time. This may be a bold statement, but we imagine time will vindicate Six Finger Satellite and eventually find them mentioned along with all the other great, nihilistic drug bands like the Stooges and the Birthday Party. Highest recommendation imaginable, and we would imagine quite limited.

SOL / BLODTRU Old Europa Death Chants (Paradigms) cd 17.98
We've heard Sol before, the one-man Danish dooooooooooomster whose debut on Van we compared to both Skepticism and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and recommended also to fans of such acts as Svarte Greiner and even Woven Hand, due to the "apocalyptic doomfolk" elements of Sol's sound. Now, we've got some new Sol, a collaboration on the always interesting Paradigms label with another Danish artist named Blodtru, and it's even more of a mashup of ultra doom, militaristic neo-folk, ambient, goth, and classical (the first track adapting music by 17th century English baroque composer Henry Purcell). Instrumentation ranges from accordion and glockenspiel to feedback and programming... Musically, it's both menacing and melodic, usually molasses-like and mesmeric. Across the six long tracks of this 77 minute disc, you'll encounter rumbling low-end bass, some sombre singing, shimmering cymbals, martial drum rolls, acoustic string pluck, and long lovely stretches of quietly wavering electronic drone. The occasional vocals sound somewhere between Antony of Antony & The Johnsons and Gregorian monk chant, or get scarier with a guttural black metal like rasp. Stunningly effective, super heavy when it's heavy, totally blissed out when it's blissed out, sometimes both at once, so atmospheric, and recommended! Could equally appeal to fans of Der Blutharsch and OM, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat and Aun. Limited to 500 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Crippled By Emotions We Die In Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "Where Did We Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Death Chants For Old Europa"

SOUNDCARRIERS, THE Celeste (Melodic) cd 16.98
Not sure how this great UK band has manages to remain so far under the radar here in the States, as they create such bright and fully realized pop songs played with major chops and such immaculately crafted precision. They explore similar sonic landscape as folks like Stereolab, in the way they tap into the best of light psych-pop from years past while creating songs that have such a driving force and are filled with swirling melodies and kaleidoscope vision. Every element in their sound is so top notch. From the perfect soft and dreamy vocal delivery, to versatile instrumentation that is beholden to the best kind of sugary pop as it is to the power of krautrock like repetition and gliding psych excursions. Sounds sort of Saint Etienne and Broadcast coming together to make songs in the spirit of some awesome combination of the most catchy and poppy side of Can along with the carefree groovy '60s pastoral pop of The Free Design!!
MPEG Stream: "Last Broadcast"
MPEG Stream: "Morning Haze"
MPEG Stream: "Rolling On"

STONEWALL s/t (Kismet) cd 17.98
All right, time to get yr underground proto-metal kicks! Remember the new album from San Francisco longhairs Dzjenghis Khan we highlighted last list?? Well THIS is exactly the sort of thing those retro-stoners were going for. Step up for an authentic '70s hard psych experience. Stonewall's rare, awesomely fuzz riffed record was recorded in '69, but not actually released until 1974, and even then without the band's knowledge, due to exploito-label shennanigans. Read the liner notes for more about that. (Actually, other sources claim this was recorded circa '71-'72, and then released in '76, we don't know what to believe, but either set of dates sounds plausible.)
Stonewall pump out stompin', rockin' boogie, durn heavy for '69 (or '71), fronted by an expressively raspy vocalist, gripped by the spirit of rock n' roll at its countercultural best. He also busts out the occasional harmonica wail. But it's generally guitars to the fore, and fuzzed-out. There's some Hendrix and Cream influences of course, maybe Led Zep too depending on when this really was recorded, and we're treated to some total organ jammin' blues rockin' on "Try & See It Through", while "Atlantis" hints at the slightly proggier riffage of Captain Beyond's debut....
Definitely for fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, Dust, Bang, Jerusalem, etc. Also if you remember a much more recent (but very retro) band from the '90s called The Want, who did a disc for Southern Lord, this sounds pretty much just like them. Which is cool 'cause we really digged The Want. Maybe they really digged Stonewall?
Oh, and yes, this IS the same Stonewall album that was previously reissued on cd some years back by the Italian label Akarma, with a different cover and title (Akarma called it Stoner, and the cover had a wall of Marshalls, with blood seeping from several of 'em.) Presumably this is the how the original lp really looked.
MPEG Stream: "Right On"
MPEG Stream: "Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "Outer Spaced"

SUN RA AND HIS OMNIVERSE JET-SET ARKESTRA Beyond Purple Star Zone / Oblique Parallax (Art Yard) cd 21.00
Man, it seems that's there's ALWAYS a new Sun Ra reissue or archival release. And that is, of course, a good thing. Though we can't always list every one of 'em. But this one definitely caught our attention, a 2-on-1 compact disc reissue of two rare Saturn label elpees, featuring material recorded live in concert in Detroit around New Year's Eve, 1980. Maybe it's the title (who wouldn't want to go Beyond The Purple Star Zone??), maybe it's the particularly unhinged and exuberant version of the classic funky Ra chant "Rocket Number Nine" that appears here, maybe it's all the wicked Sun Ra synth soloing (yeah, there's lots of spaced out Moog, also hard to resist!). Other than "Rocket", all the compositions are original to these two records, it appears. Great stuff, well recorded, with Ra's (Omniverse Jet-Set) Arkestra in fine form. That ensemble included such regulars as John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, June Tyson, Michael Ray, and many others. We were amused to note The Bell Brothers credited with, of course, "bells".
With wonderfully off-kilter keys, uncredited electric guitar, percussive skitter, moody melodic horns, AND massive wailing freak-outs, this is definitely for those into the more far-out, sci-fi, and downright noisy aspects of the Sun Ra sound as well as his sentimental side.
MPEG Stream: "Beyond the Purple Star Zone"
MPEG Stream: "Oblique Parallax"
MPEG Stream: "Celestial Realms"

SUN SON SUN Lady Wind (Imminent Frequencies) cassette 4.98
One of two new releases on the Imminent Frequencies tape label, the other from long time favorite Zomes, this one from the curiously named Sun Son Sun, who craft, gorgeous and ominous soundscapes of bass clarinet and manipulated tapes, creating a haunting low end drift, long moaning melodies suspended in a field of tape hiss and natural reverb, a cavernous free jazz slowed down to a near crawl, a subterranean sonic crawl, glacial tangled melodies, looped and recontextualized into blurred textural streaks and fragmented melodies, slipping from warm and washed out and melodic to rumbling distorted throb, often hovering somewhere right in between. Mysterious and otherworldly, equal parts abstract improvisation, dark ambience, and psychedelic dronemusic. Cool.
LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!

SWORD, THE Warp Riders (Kemado) cd 13.98
It's The Sword....in SPAAAAAAAAACE! Well, that is, the popular stoner doom quartet that so many "troo metallers" love to hate have released their third long-player, and this time trade their lyrical fixation on Norse mythology for more of a science fiction theme. Or cover art, anyway. And, really they don't sound too much different as a result. Still super heavy and riffy and kinda catchy despite the vocalist's limitations, and just as worthy of Guitar Hero inclusion as they ever were. What we are noticing, though, is maybe their Texas roots coming more to the fore, The Sword's typically Sleep-like sound now infused with some serious '70s boogie! The single "Tres Brujas", for instance, has a Southern Rock feel for sure, same with "Lawless Lands". Meanwhile, the cowbell-rockin' "Night City" and others like closer "(The Night The Sky Cried) Tears Of Fire" reveal The Sword's debt to another '70s influence: Thin Lizzy.
Delving into this disc, though, we do discover that the sci-fi (or rather, science fantasy) deal is for real: this is in fact a full-on concept album, with a cryptic nerdy narrative running though such heavy tracks as "Acheron/Unearthing The Orb", "The Chronomancer I: Hubris", and "The Chronomancer II: Nemesis". Hmm, we almost suspect that their brief two weeks of touring two years ago with San Francisco's Slough Feg somehow rubbed off on 'em. There's even Space Pirates in the story!
So, If you like The Sword (and we do, even if sometimes we get a bit bored if we hear too many of their songs in a row) and don't mind 'em doing something just a bit different, you'll likely like Warp Riders; to possibly damn with faint praise it's their least boring album yet!! No, seriously, we're digging it. Not as doomy as they once were, but more hard rockin' is what we're sayin'.
And if you don't like The Sword (or don't think you do), c'mon and give this one a chance anyway, as they're definitely trying out some new (old) stuff here and doing it well. And maybe the haters can give 'em a break now, as they're 3 albums in, and that counts as paying some dues, right?
MPEG Stream: "Arrows In The Dark"
MPEG Stream: "Lawless Lands"
MPEG Stream: "Night City"

TATE, DARREN Late Afternoon (For Keijo) (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
Once a collaborator many years ago with Andrew Chalk in a project called Ora, Darren Tate has been steadily self-releasing his own diversions of drone, field recording, and eccentric sound-design at quite a brisk pace. Late Afternoon is already the fourth album he's released in 2010, and we might have actually missed one or two. We're pretty sure that the Keijo he's dedicated this album to is the freaked-out Finnish psychedelic minstrel with boatloads of albums on PseudoArcana, Digitalis, Last Visible Dog, etc. Unlike many of the recent Tate records, which had been heavy on the weirdo-synth tip, this one finds Tate adopting the beloved Jewelled Antler strategy of recording out in the wilderness, allowing all of the incidental sounds - manmade, natural, and otherwise - to tread upon whatever musical notes might be generated. Tate doesn't let on to where this recording was made, but it's got something of a natural concrete reverb, it's near an airfield, and it's infested with pigeons. Tate's minor intrusions include a set of chimes which tinkled gently in the thickened reverberations, an acoustic guitar which Tate strums occasionally in brightly ringing chords that again cascade in that reverb, and there's one big cough about 18 minutes into the disc, which Tate purposefully leaves in the mix. Forest folk minimalism meets field recordings! Limited to about 100 copies, of which we have only a handful.
MPEG Stream: "Late Afternoon"

THOU Summit (Gilead Media) cd 14.98
Full length number three from these Louisiana heavies, and it just might be their weirdest, most experimentally sprawling and prettiest release yet. It seems like we're in the age of post doom, or avant doom, with bands moving well beyond the sounds that have so far defined them. We recently featured The Body's latest record as our Record Of The Week, which at its core was a sludge/doom record, but incorporated a choir, multiple drummers, drum machines, strange editing and collages, horns, all adding to the whole, but never taking away from the band's sound, or the ultimate heft and heaviness of the music. A delicate balance for sure, one that Thou seem poised to strike as well, with Summit. But it's not like they weren't a weird band anyway, they definitely had their own take on the ubiquitous post metal / sludge metal thing, even transforming a classic Nirvana jam into their own gnarled and twisted chunk of downtuned crunch. The changes here though are not as dramatic as those undertaken by the Body, the band offer up some blackened blastbeats right at the beginning of the record, there's piano, viola, trombone, other horns, female vocals, but most of those are all contained in a single track, an interlude of sorts, a hazy bit of slow building jazzy warble and drift, wreathed in clouds of cymbal shimmer and peppered with muted percussion, a brief respite amidst the otherwise thunderous proceedings. Some of those elements do show up elsewhere, but they're super subtle, and easily overwhelmed by the surrounding heaviness.
No, the main change seems to be a shift toward melody, where as before the band veered most frequently into serious abject crust-sludge Eyehategod territory, here, they tend more toward the post metal / metallic post rock end of the spectrum, unfurling majestic slow building Isis / Pelican style epics, still dipping occasionally into some filthy dirgery, but mostly crafting gorgeously soaring downtuned almost symphonic sounding heaviness, sounding at times almost like a black metal Explosions In The Sky, and other times slowing things down, dialing back the chug and crush, and resembling some sort of extra heavy sludgy slowcore outfit. But it suits them for sure. Summit definitely plays out as the perfect mix of pretty heaviness and fierce brutality, with just a smidge of experimental weirdness thrown in for good measure.
Another fantastic record from a group who pretty much only make fantastic records, some seriously epic sludge and surprisingly listenable ultra heaviness, fans of all those post metal combos like Rosetta, Baroness, the Body, Grails, The Ocean, Angel Eyes, Tides, Souvenir's Young America, Mouth Of The Architect, Irepress, Indian, Conifer, who have yet to discover Thou, this is the record for you....
MPEG Stream: "By Endurance We Conquer"
MPEG Stream: "Grissecon"
MPEG Stream: "Prometheus"

TWILIGHT Monument To Time End (Southern Lord) 2lp 23.00
NOW ON VINYL!
Whoa. Just when we warmed ourselves to the idea that this would NEVER happen... it happened. The return of Twilight, described out of necessity as a "black metal supergroup", a bad description for something so awesome, but more or less to the point. The core lineup of Blake Judd (Nachtmystium), N. Imperial (Krieg), and Wrest (Leviathan/Lurker of Chalice) soldiered on without past contributors Hildolf (Draugar) and Malefic (Xasthur), and made themselves even more super with the additions, on this recording at least, of Sanford Parker (Minsk/Buried At Sea), Aaron Turner (Isis, etc.), Robert Lowe (Lichens, 90 Day Men, and now OM apparently), and Stavros Giannopoulos, who is new to us but whose presence is at the very least justified by the his awesome name. And yes, we realized how many bands we had to list in parentheses, but if anything, that should accommodate you to the awesome pedigree on display here, letting you know that there is no way in hell it could be anything except completely awesome.
Monument To Time End is not only great, but full of unexpected turns throughout. Unlike its self-titled predecessor, which was pretty much as black as black metal can get (opening song "Woe Is The Contagion" being one of the most terrifying things EVER), there is a surprising amount of diversity here. For example, would you have ever expected this horde to whip out an emo-ish breakdown with disco beats? Probably not, and the good news is that it doesn't suck at all, it just confounds in the best way imaginable and makes you love this band even more. And while the other album was created by swapping tapes through the mail with the fidelity being pretty much what you would expect from such, Monument is a work of well thought out, amazingly produced ART. This no doubt has much to do with Parker's presence and the use of his Volume Studios, not to mention the amount of time that has passed since the first album. Best of all, none of these upgrades in any way represent a more subdued or cuddly Twilight; on the contrary, this shit sounds even more dangerous, unstoppable, and out to kill. But enough rambling, let's talk songs here.
Doomy opener "The Cryptic Ascension" sounds a bit like a more evil Pelican, and Turner's signature is in full effect for the aforementioned emo-ish breakdown replete with disco beats. Imperial's vocals, however, definitely help bring things to another darkened realm. And while we really don't need to say this, we will: FUCK is Wrest an amazing drummer, and his bell heavy work on the ride cymbal helps carry this song to its amazing fadeout before everything is overtaken by Parker's spaced out synth buzz. The word "epic" is thrown around all the time in metal these days, to the point where it seems to have lost its meaning, but here Twilight completely own the term. Really no other word will do; this shit is EPIC. "Fall Behind Eternity" is up next, sounding a lot like Leviathan's creepy ambient moments with more spacey synth until the brutality kicks in with a dizzying blast. On "8,000 Years", things manage to be both soaring and pummeling, and the combined talents of these guys gives birth to some of the most adventurous and impressive metal we have heard in, well, forever. "The Catastrophe Exhibition" opens up with some ominous acoustic strumming and weird ambience with effected martial drums before venturing into unknown terrain where the band sounds a bit like an evil Don Cab being broadcast out of a portal to Hell. The album closes with "Negative Signal Omega", another awesome surprise that begins as a crumbling drone experiment and ends with a choraled vocal chant that is stunningly beautiful. Did you ever think we would use words like "stunningly beautiful" to describe this band when they first came out? Neither did we.
We say a lot of things about all the metal coming in these doors, but Twilight have set the bar pretty high with this album. Monument To Time End will without question end up on many year end best ofs, and with good reason. The greatest success here is the fact that everybody's dirty, blackened fingerprints are all over this project, but the end result is something totally of its own creation. Not many guys could pull this kind of thing off without seeming at least a little bit self-indulgent. Twilight have surprised us all by putting out one of the best metal records in recent memory. Until we fully understand what the fuck happened in Chicago, where the album was recorded, we're just going to be blasting it nonstop. While words may fail to convey just how amazing this is, we give it our highest seal of approval and have no doubt you too will agree...
MPEG Stream: "The Cryptic Ascension"
MPEG Stream: "Fall Behind Eternity"
MPEG Stream: "8,000 Years"

V/A Afro-Beat Airways: West African Shock Waves, Ghana and Togo 1972-1979 (Analog Africa) cd 24.00
Analog Africa does it again! The hardest working Afro-beat reissue label brings us another amazing comp of psych-tinged, long-lost Afro-beat, this time from Ghana and Togo recorded between 1972-1979. Raw, sultry, and totally ass-shaking, pretty much all of the tracks have never been released outside the region. Funky Latin rhythms, organ-driven psych, and cosmic soulful percussive trance-outs by 11 bands. Comes with amazing 44 page booklet with pictures and histories. Wow, deluxe package, incredible music. We can go on, but do we really need to? Analog Africa hasn't let us down yet. 100 percent Solid! Trust.
MPEG Stream: K. FRIMPONG & HIS CUBANO FIESTAS "Me Yee Owu Den"
MPEG Stream: MARIJATA "Break Through"
MPEG Stream: ITADI "Live In Other World"
MPEG Stream: DE FRANK PROFESSIONALS "Afe Ato Yen Bio"

V/A Been Here All My Days (Mississippi) lp 14.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Been Here All My Days, the latest in Mississippi's incredible series of compilations, another blues comp, but in the hands of the curators at Mississippi, this is anything BUT just another blues comp.
We sometimes joke, that running a record store, and doing our weekly New Arrivals list is a lot like making mixtapes for a living, digging up cool sounds, and compiling them and then sharing them. We like to think we're pretty dang good at it by now, but the guys at Mississippi, they actually DO make mixtapes for a living, the only difference is that they dig through blues archives and old 78's, and then press their mixtape onto vinyl, much to our delight, and the delight of pretty much everyone we know. Which makes sense considering how great these mixes/compilations are. The perfect mix of long time favorites and total unknowns, of classic tracks and utter obscurities, but beyond that, Mississippi comps flow, one song into the next, whole sides, in some ways, after a few listens, it's hard to imagine these tracks came from other records, they sound so organic and perfect nestled there on that slab of wax.
As we mentioned above, Been Here All My Days is a compilation of old timey blues, and features a whole bunch of names you'll no doubt find familiar: Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson, Furry Lewis, Jesse Mae Hemphill, but a bunch you probably don't, Green Paschal, Precious Bryant, John Lee Ziegler...
All culled from an incredible collection of field recordings compiled by George Mitchell, a fan and field recordist, who travelled throughout the rural South, just like the Lomax's and a bevy of others, meeting folks, buying records, recording musicians on their porches, in their parlors, and as is stated in the liner notes. for Mitchell, it was all about the love of the music, not an expert in any way, his recordings are rough and raw, made on inferior equipment sure, but infused with warmth and life and vitality, due in no small part to the fact that Mitchell was a regular guy, and ended up befriending folks as much as chronicling their lives and sounds.
The basic sound here will no doubt be familiar to blues fans, but as always, it's the nuances and the characters that make the music here special, especially some of the lesser knowns, who totally impress and like with all great mix tapes, whose songs will have you hankering for and hunting down more more more.
The one thing we've noticed with the recent spate of Mississippi releases, is that finally they've seemed to abandon their mysterious barebones approach. Older releases had little in the way of liner notes, just a track listing and nothing else, but on Been Here All My Days, there are multiple inserts, a huge essay on George Martin, his life and history, as well as pages of notes on each of the tracks, and the artists, featuring notes from both the compilers and Mitchell himself. Fantastic stuff. And as always, WAY recommended!
This actually came out a few months ago, but the majority of the pressing was defective, so we've been waiting for the repressed vinyl to show up, and now it finally has!!

V/A Classic Blues Artwork From The 1920's 2011 Calendar (Blues Images) calendar + cd 17.98
There's been no shortage of amazing blues reissues recently, especially on vinyl (and especially via the Monk label), Blind Blake, Dock Boggs, Ishman Bracey, Sleepy John Estes, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Tommy Johnson, Furry Lewis, Blind Wille McTell, Charley Patton, Charlie Poole, but weirdly, we never really paid much attention to these classic blues cd / calendar combos, even though at least one of us has had one hanging in our house for the last couple years, they're actually really cool. The cd is an amazing collection of classic blues, featuring some of the above mentioned artists, classic tracks from Charley Patton, Ma Rainey, Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi Sheiks and others, including a handful of ultra rarities (remastered from the only surviving copies) from Tommy Johnson, Furry Lewis, Jaybird Coleman and Charley Patton! And even cooler is the calendar, which features original artwork for each of the 12 tracks, early advertisements, record sleeves, old flyers, as well as quotes and liner notes related to each record and its artwork, and the calendar is of course marked with various blues related dates, births and deaths of all the greats, in fact, even if for some reason you didn't want to use it as a calendar, it's pretty fun just to read through and check out all the illustrations, it's almost like having a proper lp sized set of liner notes for the cd! And we should mention one of our new (old) favorite song titles: "Will The Coffin Be Your Santa Claus"!

V/A Horse Meat Disco 2 (Strut) cd 14.98
Horse Meat Disco have proven to be not only some of the best dance / disco DJ's on the planet but also such awesome ambassadors of preserving and celebrating the spirit and soul of classic disco for a whole new generation. Their compilation and mix from last year was one of our favorite collections of dance jams we'd heard in ages and with this second volume they continue to show that there is an endless vault of rare disco gems to be excavated and revisited, and we're so stoked they are putting their love and appreciation of that time, and sound, and making these awesome compilations.
This time out it's a collection of tracks by so many folks that have slipped under even the most disco loving of the AQ staff's radar as well as a few people we know and love (Stephanie Mills, Madleen Kane, Scherrie Payne). But damn what a rad schooling in so many unsung heroes of disco past as we've been moving with big wide smiles on our face to tracks by folks like First Love, Bravo, Electra, Nightfall, etc. If luck had been a little different for some of those artist's their names and songs would be as well known as folks like Gloria Gaynor, Thelma Houston, Gwen Guthrie, Donna Summer, Evelyn "Champagne" King, Labelle, Anita Ward, etc. Horse Meat Disco understands that true disco spirit is so much about the pure emotional energy that was bringing people together on dance floors in total bliss and unity, and it translates in the awesome parties they throw in the UK and with these compilations they have put together. Everytime we play this in the store it's awesome to see how everyone shopping immediately starts tapping their feet and getting in such a good mood. This is impossible music to feel dour while listening to, and as much as we love bleak and brooding sounds around here, we also know that it's important to also have the good stuff to go to when you want to get in a fun, physical dance state of mind, and when you do, it don't get much better then this. So awesome!
MPEG Stream: FIRST LOVE "Don't Say Goodnight"
MPEG Stream: LEONORE O'MALLEY "First Be A Woman"
MPEG Stream: STEPHANIE MILLS "You Can Get Over"
MPEG Stream: ELECTRA FEAT. TARA BUTLER "Feels Good (Carrots And Beets)"

V/A Menagerie #2 (Blackest Rainbow) lp 25.00
People have been clamoring for this long in the works compilation from UK label Blackest Rainbow, mostly for the two looooooong exclusive tracks from SF space kraut combo Moon Duo and French psychedelic dronefolk duo Natural Snow Buildings, and those tracks do rule, and are well worth the price of admission on their own, but there's way more going on, both sonically and visually. Eight exclusive tracks on the lp, including a handful of bands we had never even heard of, as well as a printed full color zine, featuring original artwork from 8 different artists, presumably with each artist's piece representing one of the tracks.
Let's start with the vinyl, and with Moon Duo, who offer up another fantastic, sprawling synth heavy psychedelic space groove blowout, looped, motorik and mesmerizing, the guitar and keyboard locked into pulsing fuzzed out melodies, the guitars buzzy and crunchy, the synths thick and spacey, heavily reverbed vox floating over the top, the whole thing laced with awesome super melodic, warped and woozy psychedelic leads. Murky, dreamy, druggy, a whole lot of Spacemen 3, a whole lot of krautrock, nods to fellow astral travelers like White Hills and the Heads, and like Moon Duo related outfit Wooden Shjips, a little Doors as well, albeit WAY more tripped out and abstract.
The other main attraction comes courtesy of Natural Snow Buildings, who offer up a gorgeous soundscape of luminescent layered guitars and sprawling epic slow motion melodies, the vibe dreamily dark and majestic, a little brooding and ominous, a smoldering slow build, that eventually settles and slips back into a more tranquil drift, an almost new agey haze, laced with soaring wordless vocals, steel string guitars and deep lush astral shimmer.
Beyond that, there's Akron/Family's warm soft sun dappled psychedelia, crystalline acoustic guitars, clouds of processed melodic drift, sweetly dramatic and lush, WAND's seventies style West Coast country folk pop, acoustic guitars, piano, simple percussion, and heartfelt vocals, Joanne Robertson and Matthew Ashworth's hushed doomfolk dronescape, all blurred buzz and spidery melodies, Married In Berdichev's dreamy washed out psychfolk, gauzy streaks of fractured melody, layered loops and jangly percussion, underpinning more dramatic vocals and finishing with a squall of soft noise, Seadog's poppy folky soft psychedelia, rife with lush strings and muted drones, sounding spacey and almost Pink Floyd-ish, and finally, The See See, who sound like they time traveled from the late sixties / early seventies, their sound total pitch perfect classic California country pop, the Eagles, the Byrds, Fleetwood Mac, gorgeous harmonies, and incredible arrangements.
The accompanying booklet/zine, is about DVD sized and includes all sorts of artwork, from a bunch of cool artists, most notably, long time fave Pete Fowler, the art ranges from super abstract and colorful, to stylized rock poster designs, to simple and cartoony, to druggy and seriously tripped out.
Pressed on nice heavy vinyl. Both the jacket and booklet printed on heavy stock. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.

V/A Total 11 (Kompakt) 2cd 17.98
Latest in the ongoing series of Kompakt's Total compilations of minimal techno, a series that runs concurrently with their other, more blissed out series under the Pop Ambient banner. And like we seem to always mention in these reviews, we definitely lean toward the pop ambient side of the sonic spectrum, although it seems that the chasm between the two sounds grows ever smaller. Not sure if that's indeed the case, or our tastes have just gradually mutated, but it hardly matters, we now find ourselves just as excited for a new Total collection as a new Pop Ambient one. And this one especially is totally hitting the spot, maybe the weirdest of the bunch so far. Right off the bat, DJ Koze, offers up a twisted bit of electronic cabaret, with some clipped synth warble, and what sounds like muttered vocal garbling of some Tom Waits / Louis Armstrong hybrid, gurgles and grumbles, before a pulsing modulated bass pulse comes in, then some crooning, can't imagine that this would go over well on the dancefloor, but it's pretty wacked out and weird and wonderful. And while the rest of the music here is maybe not SO far out, it is all pretty wonderfully weird, especially by techno standards. New music from The Field (a whirling swirl of kosmische synths and warbly low end buzz, hazy and dreamy and krautrocky), Wolfgang Voigt (a super minimal clipped beatscape, all murky and mysterious, but laced with some strange hazy jazziness), Matias Aguayo (a fantastically festive looped party jam, anchored to a solid 4 on the floor, but wrapped in creepy haunted house synths and funky basslines), Superpitcher (an awesomely "I'm Too Sexy" chunk of techno pop), Justus Kohncke (total eighties style electro pop) and on and on. Other new jams from recent aQ faves Walls, Jurgen Paape, Jorg Burger, Thomas Fehlmann, Michael Mayer, Gui Boratto, Jonas Bering and more more more. So great, and yeah, recommended even for those of you, like us, who claim to not be so into techno or electronic music. This is exactly the sort of record that will change your mind.
MPEG Stream: THE FIELD "Caroline"
MPEG Stream: WOLFGANG VOIGT "Robert Schumann / Clara Wieck"
MPEG Stream: DJ KOZE "Der Wallach"
MPEG Stream: JURGEN PAAPE "Mensch Und Maschine"

VENETIAN SNARES My So-Called Life (Timesig) 2lp 17.98
What can we say, we just love Venetian Snares, pretty much everything he does, whether it's twisted tangled electro, lush symphonic string laden electronic soundscapes or super complex drill and bass, Aaron Funk, the man who is Venetian Snares, just has the magic touch. His drum programming is INSANE, head spinningly dense, frantic and frenzied, the samples ridiculous and WAY over the top, but woven seamlessly into the tumbling explosion of beats and buzzing basslines, the songs managing to be super catchy, even though they're so explosively frenetic. My So Called Life is the sound of VS we like the best, a wild, wickedly fun and funny, super fucked up and freaky, relentless and dancefloor destroying collection of jungle/rave/drill & bass mashups, laced with dancehall style toasting, or choruses created from awkwardly stitched together samples, but those are just filigree for the main attraction, the speaker shredding, ear drum blasting avalanche of wildly twisted beats, as if someone took a handful of the most intense jungle beats, tossed em in a blender, poured the resulting mix into bazooka, and fired it directly into your earhole. So fucking great! Compact disc version due out in 2 weeks, vinyl is here now!
MPEG Stream: "Posers And Cemera Phones"
MPEG Stream: "Cadaverous"
MPEG Stream: "Ultraviolent Junglist"

VON GOAT Septic Illumination (Nuclear War Now!) cd 10.98
What more do you really need to know? Goat, frontman for legendary Bay Area black metal horde Von, teamed up with Wrest of Leviathan, recorded by John Gossard of Weakling, Asunder and Dispirit. That's some serious black metal firepower for sure. Von Goat is not merely the sum of its constituent parts though, nor is it simply some sort of Von rehash, no, this is something completely different, and plenty twisted.
A murky muddy raw primitive blackness, shot through with all sorts of woozy guitar damage, rumbling growling gurgling vokills, pounding blasting drumming, all wound into lurching lumbering outsider black brutality. Just take album opener "The Gathering", which on the surface sounds like some old school blasting black metal, but it's weirdly melodic, not obviously so, and then there's this constant extra guitar laying these warped keening high end sort-of-leads over the top, that make everything sound detuned, or like the instruments are slowly melting in the hellish heat, the effect is odd, but it's that oddness that makes this stuff so compelling and fucking genius.
"Poison Bottle" is a fantastic dizzying dirge, a murky slow motion death metal churn, all tightly wound riffage, lurching start/stop tempos, more guttural bellows, convoluted and mathy, the whole track oozing blackness, a chugging black creep with brief streaks of minor key melody, and occasional bursts of grinding crunch. "Thru Your Skull" is another muddy blur of deconstructed black riffage, pounding jackhammer beats and monstrous demonic grunts, not to mention another head spinning squall of detuned lead guitar that ends up sounding seriously psychedelic. As does the whole record. This stuff is so dark and twisted and out there, some sort of seriously damaged psychedelic blackness, that should definitely appeal to both the true grim hordes, and folks who like their black metal as fucked up and far our as possible.
As for us, we might just have us another contender for black metal record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "The Gathering"
MPEG Stream: "Thru Your Skull"
MPEG Stream: "My God, Your God"
MPEG Stream: "Private Horror"

WITCHFINDER GENERAL Death Penalty + Friends Of Hell (Buried By Time And Dust) 2lp box set 38.00
Oh yeah! We've been eagerly awaiting this ever since we heard Buried By Time And Dust was putting it out. A deluxe box set containing 180g vinyl reissues of this cult NWOBHM band's original two full-length albums, 1982's Death Penalty (featuring classics like "Free Country" and "No Stayer") and 1983's Friends Of Hell (equally cool, with such songs as "Love On Smack" and the under-rated "Music"). Part Sabbathy doom, part psychedelic punk, and part party metal. Initially best known for their risque album covers, featuring topless witches/wenches in tableaus that combined "historical reenactment" with Page Three Girl cheesecake, WfG's lasting legacy has more to do with their Sabbathy sound, they being one of the first (and few) bands in the '80s to so overtly worship Ozzy, Tony and Co., and establish the "doom metal" genre, along with Saint Vitus, Trouble, Pentagram, and Candlemass.
With this collector's set, you get not just the two lps, and nice box to keep 'em in, but also a huge 20 page booklet featuring unpublished outtakes from those infamous album cover photo sessions, plus full lyrics, liner notes from guitarist Phil Cope, newspaper clippings, and more previously unseen photos (live and promo shots), making this quite a treat for all true WfG fans.
Here's what AQ's Jim Haynes (not our usual metal reviewer!) had to say about these two albums when we first listed compact disc reissues some years ago...
Death Penalty is one of the lost metal albums from the early '80s, falling victim to its own indecisiveness, not that such is a bad thing. Never really staying "true" either to the glam metal of Hanoi Rocks, Fastway, and Motley Crue or to the shocking horror shows of Ozzy and Iron Maiden, Witchfinder General alternated between both worlds, with the first half of Death Penalty being rowdy party numbers about drinking beer and dropping acid. These songs followed standard blues based rock, but as Witchfinder General was pretty amped up on the aforementioned substances, they were quite a bit more distorted and quick tempoed. By the time Witchfinder General gets to their anthemic "Witchfinder General," this album takes an impressive turn down the dark path of mythologically laden proto-doom metal, loaded with super-heavy (for 1982) Sabbathy grooves and aggro lyrics mostly about killing witches. They also throw in some grave robbing, just to prove how evil they are. A confused classic... Witchfinder General's second album Friends Of Hell picks up right where Death Penalty left off, with an album split evenly between the party rock elements from the New Wave of British Metal back in 1983 and their undeniable influence from Sabbath. Just as bipolar (between comical and evil) as the first album, and just as great. One of Jim's (!) favorite metal bands, and that goes for most of the rest of us here at AQ too.
Not that probably if you're in the market for this, you need US to tell you that Witchfinder General is great. Though, we were shocked, shocked, to find out not long ago that one of our good friends and customers, who shall remain unnamed, had not only never heard any Witchfinder General but had never heard OF them, despite being a huge fan of Sabbath specifically and stoner, doom, black and other metal music in general! We were like WTF? How can you not know WfG??! What are you, -not- high?
MPEG Stream: "Free Country"
MPEG Stream: "Witchfinder General"
MPEG Stream: "Love On Smack"
MPEG Stream: "Shadowed Images"

WORK / DEATH Tender Comrades (Semata Productions) cd 12.98
A stark half-toned reproduction of two idealized proletariat workers graces the cover of Work / Death's debut full length album. This along with the stencil text of the album's title gives the impression of this being somewhere not too far from the anarcho-punk of Crass or the sadistic noise of Con-Dom or Grey Wolves. In fact, Work / Death's fizzing synth-drones are far from these grim signifiers. At one time, this Rhode Island one-man band might have abused his audience with sheer hellish miasma. But even though he still uses the self deprecating slogan "garbage in, garbage out" to describe his working process, Tender Comrades is nothing at all of a noise record, creating mesmerizing assemblages of layered static, soft blurry orchestrations of electronics, and sustained drones which come together much closer to the likes of Tim Hecker or Lawrence English than anything previously mentioned.
The album opens with a wispy swirl of aerosolized hiss situated above a Charlemagne Palestine style church organ drone, slipping into an Oneohtrix Point Never melody on the synth presets for horns by the end of this uncannily gorgeous piece. The second track may be more in keeping with Work / Death's earlier compacted noise, with motorized clickings and dampened alarm bells perched upon a carcinogenic hum of MB style sonic rumbling and electro-acoustic brutalism. But the gauzy approach returns on the third through a quiet set of guitar strummings behind another engulfing mass of thickened grey/white noises, with all of the sharp edges burnished off, like a shoegazed approach to noise construction, matching the mood of the plaintive guitar strums. By the album's finale, Work / Death offers something of a post-noise homage to Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon or Jonathan Coleclough's Period, with small clusters of piano hanging on a smoldering backdrop of rasping Brendan Murray-like minimalism. Very nicely done and a quite a nice surprise.
MPEG Stream: "The Grey Elk Plummets To Earth..."
MPEG Stream: "Ascension Of The Many Steps To Porter Square"

WOVEN BONES I've Gotta Get / Hey Kid (Hardly Art) 7" 5.98
Of all the new bands coming out of Austin, TX, we think Woven Bones just might be our favorite. Their dark & punky garage rock just comes flowing out with such pure conviction. We're stoked to see that Hardly Art took notice of the great music the band has been making and added them to their roster. This new 7" finds the band at their most catchy, without losing any of their dark chops. So driving and full of gusto, and there is something so timeless and true about these songs. It's cool how Woven Bones can make as much sense next to todays lo-fi garage rock peddlers like Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Fresh & Onlys, yet they have much more of a primitive post-punk driving vibe a la the Wipers. If you loved the last full length as much as we did, then for sure you need to grab this, and if you haven't had your moment with Woven Bones yet this is a great way to jump into the fold.

YOUNGS, RICHARD Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits (Jagjaguwar) lp 16.98
We never know what to expect from Richard Youngs, after years and years and tons of releases, a sound that runs the gamut from wild free form ur-drone skree, to tangled guitar / Casio crunch, to dreamy deconstructed shimmer, to hushed folky ambience, to electronics laced layered vocal soundscaping, even to Youngs just reading train tickets, not to mention about a million collaborations, many of them noisy and seriously out there, a proper pop record is maybe the last thing we might have expected. Which is good, cuz this is anything but a proper pop record. But it IS a pop record. And we're talking POP record. All of Youngs' music has had melodic and pop elements, but this is the first time he's totally gone for it, crafting a set of truly pop songs, albeit, filtered through his distinctly cracked sonic sensibility.
On a dare from a friend, Youngs created this pop song suite, which was then released as a super limited micro cd-r edition on said friend's label, but now, finally, Beyond The Valley Of The Ultrahits in unveiled to the public at large, which will no doubt appeal to a whole new audience, and will most likely also alienate older fans who might not be so open to such unabashed melodiousness, but we're loving it. Really when you get right down to it though, the hype around this record has been a bit overblown, it's not like Youngs hasn't spent a good deal of his career crafting proper songs, crooning and playing piano or acoustic guitar, playing some sort of folk or prog, but always it was a sound that seemed to constantly flirt with the boundaries of pop music, so to long time fans, this record might not seem all that far out, but at the same time, it's just so catchy, reminding us more of groups like the Moles or the Chills or even the Smiths, a sort of heartfelt twee pop, the vocals absolutely the focal point, the music muted and merely background for Youngs' crooning popsmithery. The rhythms skitter, while guitars and organs whir and swirl creating streaks of sound, a hushed minimal backdrop for this retro almost new wave sounding pop, sequenced synths, processed rhythms, but it's the melodies and the vocals that define the music, "Like A Sailor" totally sounds like something you might have heard on MTV in the eighties, a sound that would fit pretty comfortably alongside songs by Talk Talk, Ultravox, Echo And The Bunnymen and the like.
But it's Youngs, so it's not nearly that simple, a swirling pop song will be laced with some grinding buzzing crunch, but also some super catchy, almost cheesy lead guitar, then the whole song will be wrapped in a gauzy otherworldly haze, other songs get almost funky, the bass becoming more pronounced, reminding us a lot of The Style Council, all soulful and shimmery, but then the record will shift gears again, and Youngs will pair vocals with some electronic rhythms, multitracking his voice, strange harmonies and falsettos battling with the strange swooping rhythm underneath, and then it's right back into something more straight ahead and poppily new wave. Here and there, Youngs melds minimal folk to this new pop sound, or infuses some tracks with John Carpenter like synths, and that sort of eighties action movie credits vibe that's so popular with the hypnogogic pop crowd, but when wedded to crazy catchy off kilter pop, Youngs creates something entirely new, or perhaps not strictly 'new', but a sound that's original but with enough of a retro new wave vibe, that everyone into the cold wave / synth wave revival, who are up for a poppier take on that sound, might end up as obsessed with this record as we are.
Includes a download code.
MPEG Stream: "The Valley In Flight"
MPEG Stream: "Collapsing Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Summer Void"
MPEG Stream: "A Storm of Light Ignites My Heart"

ZOMES Improvisations 1 & 2 (Imminent Frequencies) cassette 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The last time we heard from Zomes, aka Asa Osborne, he of the mighty Lungfish, and later, the stripped down but equally mighty Pupils, we couldn't get enough, declaring his self titled debut on Holy Mountain our Record Of The Week, a stunning collection of fragmented loop music, single melodic figures, repeated and layered into trancelike shortform miniature ragas, as shamanistic as his long time partner Daniel Higgs, but taking a much more subdued and kosmische path.
On this way too limited cassette, Osborne continues on his sonic path, but expanding his sound, or rather the scope of his sound, the source is still minimal, warm layered synths, but here, those layers are stretched into slowly undulating sidelong swells, like Riley or Reich, Osborne, unfurls lush melodies, lately them drift and shimmer, melodies surfacing and then fading out, before a new set of melodies take their place, dreamlike and softly psychedelic, sun dappled and gorgeously gauzy, this is total krautdrone new age bliss, utterly lovely and serene and tranquil and divine. Both tracks here are transcendent and transport the listener to some hazy otherworld, everything blurred and muted and washed out and soft focus. Imagine a way prettier and more minimal Expo 70, and you'll get an idea of what sort of spaced out cosmic drift these 2 improvisations offer. So totally lovely.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Already out of print, these are the only copies we'll be able to get...