(Tummo) cd 14.98

PINKISH BLACK s/t (Handmade Birds) lp 17.98
We knew nothing about these guys when we first heard them, we were definitely intrigued by the band name, and the song title, "Tell Her I'm Dead", and then when the music started, thick, buzzing, almost synth sounding guitars (or maybe actual synths, hard to tell), with big booming drums, sound like some sort of metal / cold wave fusion, and when the song proper started, that only furthered that idea, the churning distorted bass line, soft focus synth swirl, churning propulsive rhythm, and super dramatic crooned vox, when all of a sudden, the song exploded into a burst of furious blasting, a sort of black metal cold wave, accompanied by some strange sci-fi squiggles, and as soon as it started, it was right back into that gorgeously miserablist mope rock. The second time that burst/blast surfaces, it's accompanied by hellish shrieks, and then explodes right into a crazy drum/synth jam, with the drums pounding wildly in a field of swirling new wave synths, a twisted hybrid that somehow is something we always wanted to hear, but never knew it. The song continues to confound, with creepy falsetto vocals, over a synth heavy doom creep, before finishing off in a squall of FX swirl and psych wave weirdness.
Holy shit, one song is all it took, and the rest of the tracks here are just as good. A little digging revealed that Pinkish Black is in fact a group with roots in an old aQ favorite, the late great Texas prog-psych outfit Yeti, and suddenly the sound of PB made a lot more sense. After Yeti, came The Great Tyrant, and it seems like every band these guys were in, endured all sorts of personal tragedy and loss of life, the sort of thing that would most definitely inspire the sort of gloom and doom Pinkish Black traffic in, and while based on Yeti, it's hard to see just what may have influenced the actual sound here, the last record from The Great Tyrant found them delving into similar territory, super gothy and dramatic, but not so fully realized, PB sounds like where The Great Tyrant might have eventually ended up, the whole record held together with that impossibly distorted buzz, be it synth or bass or guitar, it's a constant presence, whether churning malevolently, or droning blissfully, it's what gives the sound of PB its heft, it's grim black energy, and it's the drums that drive everything else, the playing dense and intricate, powerful and mathy, by turns metallic and brutal, deft and almost krautrocky, those two combined are the framework, over which all manner of soundtracky synth melodies drift and squiggle, and the vocals, a dark soporific croon one second, a washed out almost shoegazey reverbed bellow the next, the songs slipping from dense driving gloom rock to tripped out psych-goth space jams, often some dizzying mix of the two.
After Vaura's recent aQ Record Of The Week, we might not have been surprised to find this being released on Wierd Records, cuz for all its metallisms, and its punk/metal pedigree, this is essentially a super dark, super heavy new wave record, the synth melodies especially had us imagining what a Gary Numan record might have sounded like had he been making his first records 30 years later, and we definitely think they might have sounded something like this. Instead it's on the limited edition Handmade Birds label, run by the guy from Pyramids, who always bring us interesting stuff.
Haunting and heavy, brooding and brutal, imagine some sort of black metal / new wave hybrid, or perhaps a sort of noise rock / goth rock fusion, fans of all that Goblin / John Carpenter worship who might be into something much darker and heavier should check this out, but really, everyone who digs gloomy heaviness will dig this big time, and and if like us, the thought of a sort of metallic new wave gets you all riled up, then this just might be your new favorite record. It is ours!
MPEG Stream: "Tell Her I'm Dead"
MPEG Stream: "Bodies In Tow"
MPEG Stream: "Everything Went Dark"
MPEG Stream: "Tastes Like Blood"

BEBEY, FRANCIS African Electronic Music 1975-1982 (Born Bad) cd 16.98
When we first heard a track from this album a few months ago, our immediate reaction was A) wow, we really had better find a way to get it for the store and B) if and when we do, it'll probably have to be a Record Of The Week. And that was just from hearing ONE song. Fortunately, we did manage to get some of these imports, and the rest of the record only confirmed and amplified our first impression. Record Of The Week it is! (Actually, some of us here, like Andee, were already Bebey fans from way back, but for others of us, gosh, what an introduction...)
As you know, we've certainly seen a bunch of great groovy African reissues lately (in fact, there's a couple others elsewhere on this week's list). But this collection of the late Cameroonian composer & writer Francis Bebey's music is rather unique, to say the least. And it's got something in common with another cool item we're reviewing this week, the vintage "electronic soul" compilation Personal Space. As the title indicates, the focus here is on the especially electronic side of his discography, from the era when multi-instrumentalist Bebey experimented with the latest gear - tape recorders, keyboards, drum machines - to record his own music at home in Paris, making for delightfully dancey, avant-garde Afropop.
The track we had heard was the first one here, "New Track", an over 8 minute long number that starts off with tinkling thumb piano before blaring synth stabs, burbling keys, and ticking drum machine rhythms kick in... pretty soon, the song has become dense with loops and layers, repeating vocals about bananas and potatoes and politics creating a kind of cheerfully confusing mantra. It's as fresh and charming and mesmeric and groovy today as it was when Bebey recorded it in back in '82.
Though this would pretty much be worth it just for that memorable song alone, the rest of this 14-track collection is full of further futuristic Afrofunk highlights. Meaning, more blurting synthesized horns, head bopping basslines, thumping electronic beats augmented by hand percussion, and laidback vocals - some spoken, some sung, in various languages (Duala, French and English). Bebey's talent on classical guitar is also evident. It's quite an amazing mix altogether; 'makossa' music from Cameroon meets "Blow Your Head" style Moog outbursts (as on the woozy instrumental track "Super Jingle", with its skronky synth shiver set amidst hypnotic percussive pulsations). Sometimes the mood gets emotive in other ways, Bebey bringing the beats down and singing sadly in a soft, ragged voice... Here we will go out on a limb, and make a wild hypothetical rock crit "cross between this and that" equation, of Konono No.1 + Arthur Russell, whattya think?
Basically, this is as cool as anything you could imagine something called "African Electronic Music 1975-1982" might possibly sound like! And maybe even cooler than that.
Packaged with liner notes in both English and French.
MPEG Stream: "New Track"
MPEG Stream: "La Condition Masculine"
MPEG Stream: "Pygmy Love Song"
MPEG Stream: "Savanah Georgia"

3 LEAFS En Super Forme (self-released) cd-r 6.98
We gave away a handful of these on Record Store Day, the most recent release from local SF psychedelic space rock minimalists 3 Leafs, and if you came by aQ on the Sunday after RSD, you might have caught them performing live in the shop (with a very special guest for part of the show, one year old Brix on the keyboard). But if you missed out on the free copies, and seeing 3 Leaves live, fear not, we now have copies for sale of En Super Forme, a live set recorded back in 2011 at Amnesia, right down the street from aQ. And while most 3 Leafs records are recorded live, and are thus essentially live records, much editing is involved before we get to lay our ears on it. So it's exciting to hear what these guys can manage in a live setting, no editing at ALL. And as you might not be surprised to discover, they sound much like they do on their records, if anything a bit more loose and loud. In this case definitely loud, cuz there was much talking going on in the crowd, and while the band started off quietly, the sound darkly rhythmic and peppered with field recordings, almost like an orchestra tuning up, it really only took a couple minutes for all the pieces to fall into place, the dubbed out bass, the busy skittery krautrock drumming, the thick billowing clouds of chordal shimmer, the Necks vibe we've mentioned in other reviews in full effect, spidery guitars, the sound exploding in little psychedelic squalls, while the rhythm section remains locked tight. About ten minutes in, the vocals (by Tim Cohen, also of The Fresh & Onlys, etc.) come in, a dark reverby croon, that here definitely have a bit of a Doors vibe, slipping into a falsetto before fading out.
The rest of the set unfurls similarly, the drums busy and tribal, gorgeous Eastern sounding guitar melodies drifting over sinewy basslines, and soft swirls of effects, the vocals giving the sound a definite pop vibe, but a sort of drifty psych pop vibe, in fact, the second track sounds a bit like a more blissed out Animal Collective in places, strangely enough, while the third track is very krautrocky, and very dubby too, a sort of krautdub, not funky necessarily, but certainly groovy. And finally, the band do their "Guacamole Window" from Canal Smarts, and it's the most propulsive of the bunch, reminding us at times of Tortoise, at times of This Heat, a sort of post punk psych jam, super rhythmic, and a killer closer. As always fantastic stuff. And thus highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "As Space As Impossible"
MPEG Stream: "Spirit Week"

ACTRESS R.I.P. (Honest Jons) cd 16.98
Welcome to the next bejeweled terrace in the hypnogogic sonic cave that is the music of Darren Cunningham, aka Actress! And holy shit, R.I.P., his third full length, is a wonderful terrace indeed! A beautiful and unique sound world in which subtly detailed, psychedelic sonic prisms drip playfully onto murky haunted fuzz-drones, other worldly squelches and squiggles interplay with analog drum machines, and science fiction melodies get tangled up with hazy, half remembered samples, creating an electronic alchemy that of which this world has never seen!
R.I.P is a musical expedition through a bizarre alien landscape. Starting off with the title track and moving into the second, titled "Ascending", you feel as though your entering some sort of strange galactic portal. The kind of "relaxation" music you might hear if you were stuck on the space station from Tarkovsky's Solaris. The soothing synths rub up against analog hiss, everything ping ponging blissfully inside the caverns of your space brain head, headphone magical to be sure. "Holy Water", the third track, starts to introduce a stronger rhythmic element, although we haven't entered the club yet. As the title suggests, everything is dripping and cascading on this one. There's a consistent hi-hat upbeat, and a load of squelchy hyper color drifting atop. Its all blippy and beautiful, clicky and ice cavern reverberated. The sounds transporting and trance inducing, rippling outward, and perfectly easing the listener in to the first beat we hear, "Marble Plexus".
This one is all hiss and dub, with a four on the floor pulse to anchor the proceedings. That warm hiss is the glue to the R.I.P. sound. In a lot of ways "Marble Plexus" is classic Actress. We hear all the echoes of ghostly rave-tones that made their former Record Of The Week Splaszh and earlier Hazyville so special. Inhabiting similar territory as Burial, albeit from a more dreamy dark Detroit kind of perspective (as opposed to UK Garage ghosts). It's not so much dance music, but more of an extraterrestrial reinterpretation of the common tropes. There's equal amounts of glistening bubble as there is dirty texture. And it organically flows along, a beautiful synth solo floating over the rhythmic miasma, adding a lovely touch of personality to the tune.
Before long we are back out on the open Martian frontier, where the cricket chirping and plucked strings of days on Earth long gone remind us of our isolation in this desolate new world. "Jardin" is a gorgeous respite, plinking and plonking electric piano melodies whirling around the mind's ear as bits of lovingly placed static provide the rub. Honestly reminding us of a more brightly hued and less earthbound approach that Circle took to cinematic soundscapery on their double cd Miljard from a few years back. An infectious sonic cloudburst, enveloping and strangely emotional.
"Shadow From Tartarus" is by far the heaviest tune of the bunch. And by heavy, we mean HEAVY!!!! This is another 4/4 adventure, but the chord progression is wrought out with a sort of droney, dare we say it "metallic" fuzz bass line. Imagine a buzzing SUNNO))) like monolithic noise underpinned by a dirty bass drum thump, laced with the kind of cosmic synth drift arpeggio sounds propagated by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Pulse Emitter, flying upward and upward into an endless heaven of sound. A beautiful and unique combination to be sure!
Cunningham's work is always solid and original, but as is widely recognized by the blogosphere as well as the critical vanguard (blogosphere elite), R.I.P. represents his finest work to date. It is an album that is constructed as a whole work, a true piece of modern electronic music. We kind of imagine this music arriving on Earth buried deep within the remnants of a wayward meteor, clicking and pulsing from inside the cosmic rock, beckoning the discoverer to chip away until the full sonic transmission is exposed! Or better yet, R.I.P. would make the perfect time capsule of jams to be discovered by some highly intelligent, and futuristically funky race of alien space travelers, perhaps long after we're gone, if only to prove that in the year 2012, on this rock called earth, there was a dude by the name of Actress making some super groovy and hyper evolved, deeply personal yet transcendentally universal, glistening, yearning, and overall BEAUTIFUL sonic tapestries for his fellow earth dwellers (and perhaps for said Martians as well)! TIP! BEYOND RECOMMENDED, ESSENTIAL ACTRESS!!!
MPEG Stream: "Holy Water"
MPEG Stream: "Jardin"
MPEG Stream: "Shadow Of Tartarus"
MPEG Stream: "Tree Of Knowledge"

AETHER / TREPANERINSGRITUALEN Edifice of Nine Savaustikas (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98
One of two new reissues on this week's list from Swedish dark ambient alchemist Trepaneringsritualen, who on tape is teamed up with another previously unknown to us artist, Aether. It's difficult to tell from the liner notes or the packaging, which is which, but it really doesn't matter, as these two like minded dronescapers both draw from the same poisoned sonic well, thick corrosive low end rumbles, blurred blackened synth thrum, layer upon layer of black blur and grinding muted crunch, this is definitely dronemusic, but a sort of hellish minimal variant, super dense, and dark, and heavy, the sound rife with overtones, the various textures and elements constantly shifting to reveal subtle tonal variations, the sound progressing toward something much less bleak and buzz, and more blissed out, with drifting voices hovering in epic expanses of grim shimmer and hushed hazy hum.
The flipside (again not entirely sure which side is which, or even if it's a collaboration), is much more industrial, lots of booms and crashes, what appears to be a super slo-mo doom, stretched out into a grimly psychedelic landscape of long tones, and heaving rhythmic churn, lots of percussive filigree, the sound less droney, and more sort of abstract and cinematic, driven by a skeletal, but seriously crushing rhythm, the beats miles apart, making it seem even less like a proper rhythm, and more like occasional bursts of caustic crunch, the results though are intense, and gorgeous, and super hypnotic, the sound evoking some sort of otherworldly hellscape, which manages to be both beautiful, and brutal at the same time.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!! Packaged in beautifully silkscreened gold inked three panel J-cards.

ALICE DONUT Freaks In Love (Howler / Alternative Tentacles) 2cd+dvd 23.00
With the release of Freaks In Love, from weirdo New York noise rockers Alice Donut, we realized we had never reviewed a single Alice Donut record. Ever. Most likely because most of them predated the list, but even so, that's no excuse, considering Alice Donut are one of our favorite bands EVER. And we know, it's a little like crying wolf, constantly trumpeting bands and releases as being the best ever, but we have loved, and been borderline obsessed with these guys for almost 25 years, playing every single record to death, seeing them live every time they played in San Francisco, and since they were on Alternative Tentacles, and played here so much, for a while, we just assumed they were an SF band, which really they might as well have been, cuz they were, and are, just the right amount of freaky and heavy, noisy and catchy, and are responsible for some of our favorite jams of the eighties and nineties, and many a mixtape has included at least one AD jam, often their kick ass cover of "War Pigs" with the vocals replaced by TROMBONE!
Anyway, recently a documentary about the band came out, and is presented here along with a two disc sort of greatest hits, which for the uninitiated, might just blow your mind, some of the finest weirdo rock EVER. And not just weird, but catchy as fuck to boot. Just check out the samples below for "Egg", and "Mrs Hayes", and "Dorothy", and of course the best titled song ever: "The Son Of A Disgruntled X-Postal Worker Reflects On His Life While Getting Stoned In The Parking Lot Of A Winn Dixie Listening To Metallica". Frontman Tomas Antona has one of the weirdest, coolest voices ever, and the songs, so twisted and weirdly hooky, this stuff sounds as weird and wonderful now as it did the first time we heard it. And while this 'greatest hits' is missing some of our favorites, odds are if you end up digging this, it won't be by half measures, and you'll find yourself tracking down all the records anyway.
But the real reason for this release is the documentary, which is actually super entertaining, we even watched it with someone who knew nothing really about Alice Donut, and not only dug the movie, but ended up wanting all the records afterwards. It's a pretty standard rock doc, notable for being super fun to watch, even though there were no deaths, or drugs, or overdoses, as dramatic as it got, was people getting kicked out of the band or tours getting fucked up, but all the band members are super cute and likable, and that only makes the music that much cooler.
The packaging is super sweet too, a weird oversized digipak, with a strange fold out triple disc holder, as well as a massive full color booklet, with liner notes and lyrics, and every available surface adorned with Antona's awesomely disturbing illustrations.
MPEG Stream: "Egg"
MPEG Stream: "Mother Of Christ"
MPEG Stream: "Dorothy"
MPEG Stream: "Mrs. Hayes"

ALKIBAR GIGNOR La Paix (Mississippi) lp 14.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
La Paix is the very first US release from Alkibar Gignor, a garage rock band from Mali, who spends much of their time touring local villages, ferrying their gear around in a donkey cart, and over the last few years, they have become one of the most beloved underground groups in Mali. The songs hear appear to be recorded live, you can hear children laughing and playing, conversations, city life in the background, which only gives the music that much more of a lively intimate feel, there are even a few points where you can hear children singing along faintly in the background, not to mention the occasional blast of feedback. But this is not garage rock how we imagine it, the sound of Alkibar Gignor is a fusion of Western influenced rock, classic African high life, folk music, in fact, the opening track is super stripped down, just acoustic guitar and vocals, gorgeous and intimate, the vocals soaring and passionate, the guitar playing lush and dexterous, but that's only really one facet of the group's sound, the next track is all warm spidery melodies, a shuffling groove, call and response vocals, and a wild solo played on an instrument that sounds like a fiddle, and ends up sounding super psychedelic. Elsewhere, the band slip easily into buzzing almost raga like jams, still rife with playful folky melodies, before returning to the hushed folkiness that opened the record, then onto something way more bombastic and wild, megaphone vocals, shouted whoops and hollers, lo-fi buzzing guitars and crunchy pounding rhythms, and then back again. The sound so spirited and energetic, intense and alive.
Housed in a thick black and white jacked, and includes a fold out poster/liner notes.

ANDERSON, BRUCE Bresson (Petit Mal Music) 3" cd-r 5.98
A mighty fine collection of improvisorial acoustic guitar solos from Bruce Anderson of MX-80 fame. That said, Anderson's solo guitar work is miles away from the sharp, incessant cacophony of the mutant-punk of MX-80 from back in the day. It's more of a Loren Mazzacane Connors feel, but played on an acoustic guitar with classical tunings. Or perhaps as our regular customer Monte opined, "sounds like Derek Bailey, if he learned to play melodically." Yeah, that's it! Anyway, with the quiet, rather ascetic nature of these recordings, we're guessing that the reference in the title is to Robert Bresson, the new wave French film director. The dulcet plucks and slow deliberate pacing of Anderson's work would certainly make for a complementary soundtrack to any number of Bresson's films even with their noted lack of musical accompaniments. Lovely stuff, and limited to just 75 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Bresson"

BLACKSHAW, JAMES Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death (Important) cd 16.98
Of all the modern Appalachia-ists, James Blackshaw is definitely one of our favorites, playing solo guitar, he is most definitely a master, but he seems to have long abandoned that sort of playing in favor of something much more lush and composed, with each record seeming to push the sound, and Blackshaw's skills as a composer even further, this most recent one is no different, which once again finds him augmenting his guitar with grand piano, vibraphone and a Hammond B3 organ, and joined for this record by vocalist Genevieve Beaulieu.
The opening three track songsuite doesn't veer to far from Blackshaw records past, intricately finger picked nylon string guitar, nested in soft chordal swells and laced with delicate vibraphone melodies, sounding classical one second, old time Appalachian folk the next, and brooding chamber music the next. His playing so fluid and graceful, the sound lush and vibrant. It's not until the fourth track, where Blackshaw is joined by Beaulieu, that the sound changes dramatically. That track, mostly piano, sounding like some old ballad, Beaulieu's voice rich and throaty and quite unique, but it definitely suits the sound, reminding us of scene from some old movie where the female lead is perched on a piano belting out a torch song, as the male lead observes from the shadows, the sound minor key, haunting and darkly melodic.
The second half of the record, at least the two songs following that torch song, find Blackshaw back in Appalachia mode, and as always, his playing is stunning, impossibly intricate and liltingly melodic, his Appalachia infused with a bit of classic guitar it sounds like, and the result is stunning. And finally, the record finishes off with a gorgeous mostly solo piano piece, that sounds very cinematic, like some indie film soundtrack, wistful, melancholy, bittersweet, culminating in a super dramatic coda, the vibraphone adding a second melody, haunting and quite lovely.
MPEG Stream: "Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death"
MPEG Stream: "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever"
MPEG Stream: "A Momentary Taste Of Being"

CAMINITI, EVAN Night Dust (Immune) lp 22.00
Latest solo outing from one half of SF dronedoom duo Barn Owl, coming right on the heels of another solo record, that one from the OTHER half of Barn Owl, Jon Porras, a former aQ-er, whose Black Mesa we dug quite a bit. It would be tempting to try some rock nerd math, and imagine that Black Mesa plus Night Dust might simply BE Barn Owl, but strangely enough, the sounds Porras and Caminiti conjure up on their own, while not really deviating sonically too much from the soundworld they've created with their group, do end up being markedly different. And in many case more experimental and abstract than the twang flecked smolder and drift the two conjure up together. Caminiti's new one might be the strangest (and perhaps coolest) of the bunch, although that strangeness definitely creeps up on you, as the opener, "Near Dark" does sound like it could have been plucked right off a Barn owl record, all billowy clouds of warm softly roiling guitar thrum, shot through with streaks of high end melody, and a warm washed out haze, but even hear, Caminiti pushes the sounds, and the sound itself, pegging the needles, and moving WAY into the red, with sound buzzing and distorting in a way that gives the song a strange outsider psych vibe. But it's on the next track "Returning Spirits" where things get really good. A haunting sprawl of ethereal shimmer, peppered with deep pulsations, and dubbed out percussion, the guitars unfurling little tangles of melody, which get super distorted, a gorgeously muted blown out space-psych (those sounds could be synths, hard to tell, but both Porras and Caminiti, have been experimenting with synths, in Barn Owl, and on their own), but those little soft squalls are gorgeous, and haunting, the vibe super cinematic, dark and otherwordly. Then Caminiti lets loose with a glimmering starfield of super high glistening harmonics, that sound almost like chimes, all over a slow building swell of lush chordal thrum, just might be our favorite Caminiti track yet. But don't want to speak too soon. The rest of the record definitely continues to explore less familiar territory, the pulsing glitchy synths that underpin the warm guitar whorls on "A Memory Or A Mirage", the dense, crumbling, super distorted organ like wall of sound, that churns its way through "Star Circle", the brief blast of wild Neil Young like guitars draped over a woozy tranquil low end drift on "Moon Is The Hunter", the almost Nadja like doomgaze of "Last Blue Moments", the haunting blackened kosmische of "Slow Fade Of Stars", that sounds like Loren Mazzacane Connors playing in some massive cave, wreathed in thick, warm reverb, delicate and skeletal, drowsy and dreamlike, and finally, the two part closer "First Light", which stretches out incendiary guitars into keening dronescapes, again laced with glimmering harmonics, and deep mesmerizing tones, before drifting off into the ether with a final few minutes of spare, soft focus drone-psych blues, wreathed in clouds of whir and hiss, a haunting lo-fi soft noise coda.
Gorgeous full color gatefold sleeves with super striking original art by Caminiti. Includes a download coupon.
MPEG Stream: "Near Dark"
MPEG Stream: "Returning Spirits"
MPEG Stream: "Moon Is The Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Last Blue Moments"

CHEVAL SOMBRE Couldn't Do (Trensmat) 7" 7.98
One of two new super limited 7"s from Trensmat on this week's list, the other, a brand new one from psychedelic apace rock legends The Telescopes, and this one, from dreampsych combo Cheval Sombre, their second for Trensmat, and another glorious slab of sun dappled psych drift, all washed out shimmer and lazily strummed acoustic guitars, mumbled soporific voices and hazy sitar like melodies, a dreamy druggy take on the Spacemen 3 / Galaxie 500 school of slowcore dream pop, the A side is a mantra like dirge, soft focus and hushed, the acoustic guitar and vocals, wreathed in a gorgeous cloud of FX, from dense buzz, to strange sci-fi skitter, beginning very balladic, before gradually blossoming into a prismatic burst of glimmering psychedelic swirl. The B side is a Stones cover, "As Tears Go By", the sound similar to the A side, with the group adding some organ warble and some Beach Boys style orchestral percussion, and wrapping the guitars in woozy effects, the hushed croon hovering on a bed of blurred bleary dreampop, the Stones classic transformed into a perfect slab of psych pop bliss out.
Super limited, with Trensmat releases we generally only get one shot, and once the batch we get runs out, that's it, which means, of course, you should grab one of these before they're all gone for good. Includes a download code as well.
MPEG Stream: "Couldn't Do"

CIRCLE Manner (Hydra Head) lp 24.00
Although of course we like to say that EVERY day is Record Store Day, officially Record Store Day 2012 was a couple weeks ago - but that doesn't mean we're entirely done with the special limited edition RSD stuff. That's right, thankfully, we managed to get more copies of this, the album from one of our faves, Circle, that came out, on vinyl only via Hydra Head, for Record Store Day. (Hard to believe they had any left, but just maybe Circle is a little more popular with our customers than at other record stores?). So, yay, now we can list it!
Manner is Circle's latest studio album, and it's a doozy. Naturally. Like the last one of theirs we listed, Rautatie, there's a distinctly '70s prog vibe to some of the proceedings, and in fact they do a cover here (their first ever cover, on an album?), of Brian Eno's "Here Come The Warm Jets", which comes across as very suitably "circular" in its pulsations here.
Fans of Circle know that the band's output is as as diverse it is prolific, and it would be far too simplistic to say that there's two basic types of Circle albums. But, maybe there are, at the extremes. There's the pensively moody & atmospheric (Miljard, Infektio, Hissi), and the metallicized & rockin' (Sunrise, Katapult, Tulikoira). Of course, most of their records somehow display both tendencies at once. Manner leans towards the latter, there's definitely some heavy duty hard rock action going on here, stuff that could even have fit in on alter-ego Pharaoh Overlord's stadium rock Out Of Darkness album, like the triumphant, full on prog/metal opus "Blue King" that precedes the Eno cover on the first side. A lot of this has that epic intensity, also familiar from Rautatie.
Frontman Mika Ratto's wiggy operatic croon is in full effect, on album opener "Lintu Joe", soaring up n' out nonsensically over dramatic crashing guitar chords, restrained rhythms, uneasy synth squiggle, and in general, weird Yes-like proggery. As an introduction to Circle for the masses of Hydra Head fanboys & fangirls who perhaps have never heard these freaky Finns before (this is Circle's first album for HH), it's a bit of a bold move, but heck why not jump in at the deep end?
Like we said, this is vinyl only, but four of the six songs here also appear in more recklessly thrashed live concert renditions on Circle's recent Serpent cd, which we had in stock very briefly at about the same time we originally got Manner. Eventually we'll get more of those back in.
Of note, the die cut cover art, which looks amazing. Limited to 1000 copies in three different colors. We had the "red eye" colored vinyl for Record Store Day, but aren't sure what color the additional copies we got are, probably black.

COLLEY, JOE Lonely Microphone (Senufo Editions) lp 21.00
Some 10 years ago, there was Joe Colley hulking over a four-track on the floor of 964 Natoma - a performance space in San Francisco that hosted the monthly Field Effects series by Aaron Ximm (aka Quiet American). Ximm populated the very large loft in that converted autobody shop into one of the best places to experience live music, by encouraging the audience to sprawl out on futons, couches, bean bags, and pillows in order to better zone-out and focus on the sounds at hand. While much of the work that Ximm would curate focused on sound ecology and phonography, he would bring in some more intense acts such as R.H.Y. Yau & Scott Arford's legendary Infrasound, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and Joe Colley. At the time of this performance in 2002, Colley was just starting to record under his own name after a stint using the far more abject moniker Crawl Unit. As the explosive and negating power of his earlier noise constructions matured into complex, more conceptual pieces, Colley began to develop into something akin to the Bruce Naumann of sound art - with repetitive, occasionally self-destructive actions that investigated psychological, behavioral, and cultural codes.
"Lonely Microphone" is a reconstruction from the original tape-piece that Colley presented at 964 Natoma; and our memory of the night doesn't recall much more than the view of the lumbering Colley crouched over his gear and the impact of his signature jolts of sonic juxtaposition. Here, Colley masterfully puts together an album that looks to the woolly electronic scrabblings of David Tudor, the expressive environmental collage work of Eric La Casa, and the dead-line feeds of CM von Hausswolff. Ugly buzzes from gutted consumer electronics, terse piezo chirps, blasts of wind-shearing noise, monstrous din from some infernal machine belching beneath the San Francisco urbane crust, and plenty of watery field recordings threatening to short out Colley's haphazardly constructed microphones and hand-soldered circuits. That sense of threat is a constant in Colley's work, the threat of disaster, the threat that nothing will be resolved, the threat of another dead end, the threat that 'no' might be the only answer. "Lonely Microphone" is one of the more subtle presentations of Colley's work, and more self-contained than the post-structuralist ellipsis of his opus "Disasters Of Self." Recommended as with pretty much everything he's ever done.

COMUS Out Of The Coma (Coptic Cat) cd 16.98
We're not sure which is more exciting, the first new music from legendary UK seventies acid folk legends Comus in FORTY YEARS, or a lost track, from back in the day, a song from the never released (or recorded) follow up to the godlike First Utterance, a song never heard by anyone outside of the band before NOW. Thankfully, this new record from this aQ revered combo gives us both, three brand new songs, and one, that aforementioned legendary lost recording. Our very own Andee actually wrote some of the liner notes for this release (alongside some by Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth), specifically talking about that long lost track, so we figured we might as well just reprint that part here (more on the new tracks afterwards):
"For those of us who consider Comus' debut album First Utterance the pinnacle of psychedelic seventies demonic acid folk (and we are quite suspicious of anyone who doesn't), the prospect of a lost second record is nearly too much to even imagine. And the idea that such a record was written, and performed, yet never recorded, is nearly heartbreaking. While subsequent recordings from the band veered into much poppier and more commercial territory, the Comus faithful continued to believe in the existence of an elusive song suite, forever convinced that there had to have been more, an untapped reservoir of dark sonic energy, the unleashing of which was held at bay by unscrupulous record label executives and their profit driven machinations, or even more ominously, those songs were in fact actually recorded and hidden away in some sort of dusty vault. And while the truth may be less sensational and conspiratorial than we perhaps imagined, the Comus faithful have indeed finally been rewarded, with this, a sprawling almost classical sounding psychedelic folk epic, unearthed after nearly 40 years, a fragment of the never completed follow up to First Utterance, the Malgard Suite, which offers a glimpse of what might have been, a fork in time's path untaken, an alternate timeline in which the band continued along that selfsame dark path, the sinister sound of First Utterance expanded upon, less immediately maniacal and harrowing, more expansive and lush, the vocals intricate and intertwined over swirling strings, and delicate crystalline guitars, fluttering flutes and the moaning melodies of the bassoon (played by Lindsay Cooper, who would go on to join art rockers Henry Cow post Comus). And while there's plenty going on here that foreshadows the sound of Henry Cow, there is also a darkly classical vibe, with much of the Malgard Suite sounding a bit like a more diabolical Prokofiev. Those elements are woven deftly into that classic Comus sound, frenzied and fraught with drama one second, soaring and majestic the next, always lush and lovely and dreamily psychedelic. And even in this, which is quite possibly the only existing recording of the Malgard Suite, a rough raw live performance captured on a handheld cassette player, it's impossible to deny the power and emotion in the music, a lyrical sonic fever dream, delivered in this mysterious missive from another time, lost for decades and resurfacing only now, and convincing us, the Comus faithful, that it was worth the wait."
So yeah, Comus fanatics will pretty much need this for just that track. There's also a spoken word intro from band leader Roger Wooten, describing the providence of that track, when and how it was recorded, and how it came to be rediscovered. And it's well worth the price of admission on its own. Which brings us to the new material, and while we have to admit we were a little wary of new songs, especially after FORTY years, our fears were definitely unfounded, cuz for the most part, these new songs sound like they could have come straight from the First Utterance sessions. Sure, some things are different, the vocals are maybe not quite as frenzied and maniacal, but they still sound pretty incredible, and the female backup vox still sound as harrowing and haunting as before. And the music, still so lush and layered and dense, and yeah, a bit demonic, incredible guitar playing, intricate finger picking, wild hand drumming, mournful violin, fluttering flute, the songs drifting into the same sort of dark psychedelic jam territory as those old classics, the lyrics appropriately morbid, the production lush and lovely, the sax being perhaps the only real difference, adding a different dimension to the sound, but it still sounds like Comus, classic Comus at that, and no one sounds like Comus, now or then, and we have to say, these new tracks were worth the wait as well!
MPEG Stream: "Out Of The Coma"
MPEG Stream: "The Sacrifice"
MPEG Stream: "The Maalgard Suite"

CORROSION OF CONFORMITY s/t (Candlelight) cd 15.98
In a way, it'd be way easier to review this if it was the debut album from some new, unknown band. Then we could just talk about how it's a dark, heavy album of often speedy stoner metal with cavernous, killer riffs and a seemingly old school hardcore punk edge to it, that SLAYS. There, we said it, and really, 'nuff said.
But, 'cause it's in fact the new album from the reunited three-piece lineup of seminal '80s punk/metal act Corrosion Of Conformity, the same lineup responsible for the CoC's all time crossover classic Animosity from 1985 (Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman, and Reed Mullin), it comes with a lot of baggage. Some folks, punk rock CoC purists, probably won't even listen to it, having given up on the band years ago after they "went commercial" in the '90s. And even fans of '80s CoC willing to give this a go, won't find an Animosity part II here anyway. Which could understandably have been the expectation, one subject to unavoidable disappointment. Others, into the band's latter day Southern stoner rawk thing, might not understand why they're doing an album without longtime frontman Pepper Keenan (he of Down fame, as well). So yeah, lots of baggage, that really we don't want to delve into much more here, 'cause what we're saying is, give this a chance on its own terms, it's actually damn good. This boldly self-titled album is its own beast, a blend of the old and the new really. And the trio for sure seem energized by this return (somewhat) to their roots. They sound like they MEAN it.
While Animosity it ain't, they did prove on tour not long ago that they still could rip it up on the old Animosity-era material live (causing many 40-year old fans to risk injury in the moshpit, boy that was a bit scary). And for sure some of the tracks here are written that way, like the feedback laden "Leeches" and the speedy chugger "Rat City", both barely over 2 minutes in length. But there's a lot more to this album than putting the punk back into CoC... they also bring the metal. So, it's more like if some of their (better) later stuff was done with Animosity-era attitude, by those same dudes. Certainly CoC's "Southern Sabbath" tendencies are on display on tracks like "The Doom" (natch). We know they were/are fans of Trouble, you can hear that here... Also (though it almost seems weird to say), some Melvins too.
And what about the vocals? At first, we too thought, hmm, if they're gonna have longtime bassist and former frontman Mike Dean sing again, wouldn't the idea be for him to growl and yowl like he did back in the day? Instead, he's much more melodic here than we remember (but still, sounds a heckuva lot more punk than Pepper). Dean snarls and spits, but also SINGS. And sounds pretty cool doing so, we think! Love his slightly gargled, high pitched, fists-clenched croon on the rippin' "Your Tomorrow" for instance. (Reed also takes the mic on a few tracks, too.)
So, for what it's worth to fellow CoC fans/followers, in our opinion this is definitely their best album since Deliverance, at least. And the most metal they've been since Blind. And the most punk since Technocracy.
But, we don't want only those folks who already knew what the initials CoC stand for to buy this! Anyone who hates bourgeois society but likes skateboards and Sabbath ought to check this out. Likewise if you're just into badass metallic doomed out rockin'. Like we said, it slays.
Oh, the Seldon Hunt version of the CoC skull that adorns the cover is pretty cool, by the way!
(We've got the digipack cd edition with 2 bonus tracks while they last, or the import vinyl version w/ bonus 7"...)
MPEG Stream: "River Of Stone"
MPEG Stream: "Leeches"
MPEG Stream: "Your Tomorrow"

CRASS Feeding Of The 5000 (Crassical Collection) lp 16.98
These anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. First cd, now vinyl. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all three of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Feeding Of The 5000 was the group's incendiary debut, originally released in 1978, and almost didn't come out, as the pressing plant refused to carry it due to the lyrical content of the opening song, an intense spoken word rallying cry against religion, against God, filled with violent images and foul language, all over a field of buzzing feedback. They replaced the song with silence, in protest, and then and there decided to start their own label, which then re-released the record the way it was initially envisioned. And even now, 30+ years later, FOT5K is a fierce, frantic chunk of pure punk rock, wild chaotic angular guitars, wild scowling urgent vox, caffeinated drumming, samples and snippets of spoken word, all wound up into something frenzied and frenetic, heavy on the hooks, whether intentional or not, these songs manage to be angry and caustic and intense, but still catchy as hell, the lyrical vitriol reflected in the relentless punk rock energy, just a glorious collection on intense, emotional, swaggery, ramshackle, energetic, sweat soaked, pop flecked, PUNK, that has definitely remained as fresh, and as lyrically relevant as it was all the way back in 1978. Which speaks well of Crass, but not so well for the state of the world...
Includes download card.
MPEG Stream: "Asylum"
MPEG Stream: "Do They Owe Us A Living?"
MPEG Stream: "End Result"
MPEG Stream: "They've Got A Bomb"

CRASS Penis Envy (Crassical Collection) lp 16.98
These anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. First cd, now vinyl. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all three of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Penis Envy was record number three, released in 1981, and was a serious shift for the band, and easily their most polished and accomplished, but the changes were big, first, all the vocals are female this time around, and in keeping with this new more feminine vibe (or more likely it was all a single concept), the lyrical focus of Penis Envy, as is suggested by the title, is sexuality, specifically how it relates to women: feminism, marriage, sexual repression...
And the music, wow, the opening track sets the stage, a little flurry of synthy weirdness, the sound strangely proggy, it quickly launches into a super hooky minor key angular punk pop workout, the riffs woozy, the guitar sound crunchy, the drums powerful, the bass thick and low slung, and the vocals incredible, powerful and emotional, passionate and BAD ASS, spitting out some seriously intense lyrics, a wickedly sarcastic tale of feminine subjugation.
And so it goes, the whole record a fantastically and fully realized groove heavy punk rock blowout, that seems to sonically foreshadow the various post punk bands that would eventually cite Crass as an influence, lots of tension and release, horns, even harmoniums, plenty of drones, and intricate arrangements, bizarre vocal harmonies, super distorted buzz, some almost funkiness, some proto-electronica, that dub vibe in fell effect, choral voices, swooping backwards sounds, super strange, but really kick ass production, hard to believe this record is 30 years old, especially considering how many bands are making sounds just like this now, and probably don't realize, Crass were doing it decades ago, and doing it better.
Includes download card.
MPEG Stream: "Mother Earth"
MPEG Stream: "White Punks On Hope"
MPEG Stream: "You've Got Big Hands"
MPEG Stream: "Darling"

CRIME Hot Wire My Heart / Baby You're So Repulsive (Kitten Charmer) 7" 9.98
Originally released for this year's Record Store Day, this seminal slab of SF punk is now available to the world at large, the first in what will hopefully be an ongoing reissue campaign of all the singles from these legendary punks. This 7" was originally released in 1976, and while some younger folks might not remember Crime, they probably remember the A side, "Hot Wire My Heart", as it was covered by Sonic Youth, and listening to the original, it's easy to hear why SY were drawn to it, with its droned out melodies, killer hook, and noisy guitars (especially for the time), in fact, it actually kind of sounds a little Sonic Youthy in its original form, which is pretty remarkable. The flipside "Baby You're So Repulsive" is all swaggery knuckle dragging snarl, and like the A side is surprisingly noisy and is definitely prescient, knowingly or not, of what would follow. There's some strange stuttery lurches too, which make this just slightly damaged, and a fucking killer jam that sounds as good now as it did 35 years ago!!
Digitally remastered from the original master tapes, housed in an exact reproduction of the original sleeve, pressed on crazy tri-colored red, white and blue vinyl, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

DARK DAY Window (Dark Entries) lp 15.98
To coincide with the reissue of another Dark Day lp, this former Record Of The Week is BACK IN PRINT, AGAIN!!!
So cool! And cold wavey. A wonderfully produced piece of vinyl to replace those crappy downloads which have been bouncing around the internet for the past five or six years. Dark Day was the project spearheaded by R.L. Crutchfield who first worked with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori in the earliest incarnation of the seminal No Wave band DNA in the mid '70s. By 1979, Crutchfield was striking out on his own as Dark Day; and at first, this band was an intentional reversal of roles within the trad-rock band with two women playing guitars and drums and a man behind the keyboards. The ladies for that incarnation were Nancy Arlen of Mars and Nina Canal of Ut; and they managed a few gigs and one hell of a great single - "Hands In The Dark" - which appeared many years later on a Soul Jazz No Wave compilation and has been covered spectacularly by the Chromatics. Canal and Arlen weren't terribly interested in continuing in the project, leaving Crutchfield to find likeminded folks to work with. The second (and last) Dark Day record was recorded in 1982, with Crutchfield going into the studio with a bunch of cheap electronics and toy synthesizers with Bill Sack to flesh out the accompaniments on similar instruments. Their interlocking arpeggiations are punctuated with blooping electronics that are equal parts Trio and Kraftwerk with an underlying dread to the spiralling songs that detoured from Kraftwerk's utopian vision of man-machine hybrids and down a paranoid vision of man being at the mercy of his machines, no matter how innocent their intent. Dark Day's songs are insistent and catchy despite their utterly simple structures. "Metal Benders" and "Danger / Dance" are probably the closest thing to being 'hits' on the album as weird / anti-romantic variations of Young Marble Giants with whip crack rhythms and spectral pre-X-Files electronic whistling melodies. Coming out of the NYC No Wave scene helped craft Dark Day into a something other than neo-Romantic post-punk outfit with electronics. This was a wholly unique band, who never got the attention that many of their contemporaries. Kudos to Dark Entries once again on a splendid reissue!

DARK DAY (R.L. CRUTCHFIELD'S) Exterminating Angel (Dark Entries) lp 14.98
Synth punk at its best! Here is the long overdue reissue of Dark Day's homage to the Luis Bunuel film of the same name. Dark Day was the project spearheaded by R.L. Crutchfield who first worked with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori in the earliest incarnation of the seminal No Wave band DNA in the mid '70s. By 1979, Crutchfield was striking out on his own as Dark Day; and at first, this band was an intentional reversal of roles within the trad-rock band with two women playing guitars and drums and a man behind the keyboards. The ladies for that incarnation were Nancy Arlen of Mars and Nina Canal of Ut; and they managed a few gigs and one hell of a great single - "Hands In The Dark" - which appeared many years later on a Soul Jazz No Wave compilation and has been covered spectacularly by the Chromatics. Canal and Arlen weren't terribly interested in continuing in the project, leaving Crutchfield to find likeminded folks to work with.
On Exterminating Angel (originally released in 1980 on the Lust/Unlust imprint Infidelity), Crutchfield recruited Phil Kline and Barry Friar to flesh out the Dark Day sound. At the time, Kline was an emerging composer who had worked with Glenn Branca and at least here, he styles himself after Mark Ribot or Arto Lindsay with his expressive shards and bends of guitar melody; and Friar follows the tom-heavy patter that Nancy Arlen brought to Dark Day on the "Hands In The Dark" single. But Dark Day is truly Crutchfield's vision, with his heavily syncopated synth chords, elliptical repetitions, and spiral staircase ascensions in lieu of the traditional verse-chorus song. Crutchfield preferred to keep a very restrictive use of synth tones and filters, all the while crafting a very claustrophobic, horror-laden atmosphere. The inventiveness of his minimalist melodies and twisted lullaby-like structures are all the more impressive, perhaps only matched by Young Marble Giants or Suicide. Motorik yet stumbling, Dark Day's songs are stark and bold in their poetry about freaks, suffocating anxiety, and the toxic life of contemporary society circa 1980. "Trapped" was a strange song to be the single for the album, as it's an epic, spiralling number with those ominous synths and siren-like blurts from a distant saxophone. Many of the other songs on the album were short and condensed, jabbing the grimly simple melodies deep into the ear-canal and then moving on. Like "Trapped" the album's finale - "No, Never, Nothing" - is another lengthy track, appropriating a Moroder like disco-syncopation to a sinister, nihilistic collage of texts taken from a children's book about raising unusual pets such as squirrels and chimpanzees. The more the song spins through it's punchy chords the creepier it becomes.
Exterminating Angel is the high-point of Crutchfield's recorded works, and stands also as one of lost gems of the No Wave era. This should have been released long ago, so we have to commend Dark Entries once again for their reissue campaign.
MPEG Stream: "Chameleon"
MPEG Stream: "Flightless Birds"
MPEG Stream: "No, Never, Nothing"

DEATH AND VANILLA s/t (Hands In The Dark / Kalligrammofon) lp 23.00
Death And Vanilla are a Swedish haunted-pop duo who have found themselves caught in the vortex of retro-futurism circa 1969. On the one hand, they've got a good grip on the baroque psychedelia of the United States Of America, Free Design, and even some of the more woolly tracks that Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg produced; and on the other, they're keen on the whole library music phenomenon augmenting their songs with plenty of sparkling synths, crackling radiophonic samples, EVP recordings (yup, that is Raymond Cass, we hear!), and tripped-out-to-space production tricks that would be right out of the Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire playbooks. There's even a track on this album called "Library Goblin"! If you might think all of this seems like the same strategy that Broadcast employed on their highly acclaimed collaborations with The Focus Group back in 2009-2010, you'd be pretty spot on. Even the unnamed female vocalist for Death And Vanilla sounds an awful lot like Broadcast's Trish Keenan, with her breathy delivery and unexpected melodies which soar above the monochromatic lullaby of many of the songs. As sacrosanct as it may seem, Death And Vanilla may be better songwriters than Broadcast; their cinematic pop gem "Cul-De-Sac" should be in the running for poptune of 2012 for sure with its complex interweave of harpsichord, vibraphone, fuzzed guitar, strutting basslines, and shuffling rhythms all driven by the vocal harmonies, which transitions rather deftly into the far more experimental avant-pop number "Sombambulists" which drifts aptly towards a dreamy headspace of loping basslines and percolating synths all bathed in sound-dissolving reverb. The filmic references also abound on tracks like "The Unseeing Eye" and the aforementioned "Library Goblin" as sublimely revisionist '60s pop numbers with bubbly vibraphones and seductive vocals amidst electronic filigree and charming synth blorp, before disintegrating into an otherworldly interlude of ethereal radio noise and cosmic vibrations. As such, it's a pretty irresistible album for any fan of Broadcast, Ghost Box, and Stereolab. The lp has already gone through a couple of pressings, but hopefully, we'll be able to keep this one in stock for a while. It's totally worth it!

DEATH GRIPS Money Store (Epic) cd 10.98
Originally released on vinyl for this year's Record Store Day, the Money Store is record number two from this weirdo outsider punk/noise/electro/hip hop trio from across the bay, whose debut, the twisted noise drenched Ex-Military was a huge hit around here, and The Money Store seems poised to follow suit. Although in some ways, this new record is a lot less weird, and a lot more polished, and while it's still fierce and fucked up, it's definitely not as outwardly angry, less a sonic brick in the face, and more like a carefully plotted and meticulously executed throat slitting, which we would imagine is a comparison these guys would dig.
As with Ex-Military, Zach Hill from Hella is one of the guys behind the production, and while there may be live drumming, it definitely sounds like he spent more time programming beats, the sound more electro than anything, and even moreso that Ex-Military, the sound much more fully realized, more lush and layered, opener "Get Got" has a loop and a beat that sounds like it could've gone in an entirely different direction, and been sort of weird pop radio hit, but with Stefan Burnett's twisted flow and frenetic delivery, it helps transform the songs' shoegazey electro-jitter into something more jittery and dizzying, like some malfunctioning double dutch jam. "The Fever" hews closer to the first record, the flow more of a belligerent bellow, the beat a stuttery skitter, but again, the production is super slick and makes the song a bit more palatable, without taking away from the ferocity, which is definitely a delicate line to toe.
The whole record is killer, every track here, all weirdo loops, twisted flow, sick beats, massive production, this is the sort of shit you imagine being blasted from a booming system in the car of THEE scariest dude in the hood, fucked up and fierce, but also groovy and funky, a little bit loopy and twisted, especially when they do the whole sped up soul sample thing, which here just makes things sound weirder then ever.
Lots of this record remind us of one of our favorite weirdo outsider hip hop records EVER, Too Bad But True, by Fever, released on DHR way back in 1998, the same sort of disregard for standard song structure, typical rapping, lots of distortion and murk, fractured beats, twisted loops, almost like both groups decided to reinvent the genre from the ground up, and just inadvertently touched on the various elements that DEFINE the genre in most cases, but here those bits and bobs just got all fucked up and came out the other side practically unrecognizable, and got all tangled up into an already head spinning, bafflingly brilliant sound. Hip hop record of the year? Quite possibly, but word is there's gonna be ANOTHER Death Grips later this year, so we might have to reserve judgment until then!
MPEG Stream: "Get Got"
MPEG Stream: "The Fever"
MPEG Stream: "Double Helix"
MPEG Stream: "System Blower"

DRAGONTIME s/t (Psychic Arts) cd-r 7.98
We may have unfairly pegged local guitarist Matt Baldwin. His records are big time faves around here, gorgeous mesmerizing guitarscapes, from raga infused psychedelic folk to Fripp / Rother style cosmic guitar explorations, we sell them like crazy, and they get played all the time in the store as well, so when it cam time to review a recent release on Baldwin's Psychic Arts label, we were all prepared for some blissed out guitarscapery, but instead, we got Cryptic Cross, a twisted lo-fi weirdo metal band from the East Bay, whose sound was murky and buzzy and psychedelic and sort of insane, and really about as far as you can get from Baldwin's solo records. So we were determined not to make the same mistake with this most recent Psychic Arts release, from the strangely named Dragontime, another group from Oakland, the cd featuring some cool psychedelic Rainbow Brite style paste on cover art, that definitely points to something a bit on the weird side.
And it's that artwork that maybe gives the biggest clue to what's going on here, cuz it's as far removed from the warped metal of Cryptic Cross as it is from Matt Baldwin's records. The opening track is all pulsing rhythms and synth swirls, kind of new agey, a little bit like video game music, a bit of swirly kosmische shimmer, quite cool actually, but definitely not what we were expecting, a sort of prismatic glistening rainbowscape. The second tracks adds ethereal female vox, and it's transformed into a soundtrack to some low budget fantasy film, a little 4AD, a little swoonsome shoegaze dreampop. After that the record continues to mutate and shift, from fuzzy, warbly organ minimalism, to an almost jazzy sounding lo-fi synth heavy tropical ballad, and from strange alien Asian video game folk music, all processed vox and dreamy melodies, to a murky, softly buzz shimmerscape, and from skeletal sun dappled folk pop, to droned out ominous cinematic synthscapery.
Definitely far out, and seriously super cool too, a little like a female Fastest, conjuring up her own sort of 8-bit shoegaze soundworld, that we can't seem to stop listening to...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, hand numbered!
MPEG Stream: "Futures"
MPEG Stream: "Sombra Sola"
MPEG Stream: "Beltane"

DWELLERS Good Morning Harakiri (Small Stone) cd 14.98
We don't always get everything that stoner rock specialists Small Stone put out, but the stuff that we do, is always really good. Case in point, this new disc from a trio we'd never heard of before, Dwellers. We're guessing there's some sort of Lovecraftian connotation to their name, though the ropy intestines / psychedelic tentacles in the portrait painting of the band on the cover are presumably referencing the album title too, but not in a gross way. Anyway, Dwellers are a heavy duty stoner metal band from Salt Lake City, with some grunge going on, the vocals in particular definitely giving it a bit of that old school Seattle vibe.
Actually, after getting this Dwellers in, and digging it, we realized that while we hadn't known who they were, we HAD reviewed, and really liked, an album by the singer/guitarist's previous band, Iota, also on Small Stone. These lines from our review of Iota's Tales pretty much also apply to Dwellers' debut: "A mixture of trippy Hawkwindiness and more aggressive blues based hard rockin', sorta like (early) Soundgarden or Skin Yard meets the heavier, more spaced out sounds of Sons Of Otis or UFOmammut. One reason we mention Soundgarden and Skin Yard is 'cause of the grungy melodic vocals, which bear a certain resemblance to that of those bands, but otherwise this is HEAVIER and SPACIER than any Seattle grunge for sure."
So, sweet. Dwellers definitely continue to a large degree in that Iota tradition, these six tracks being damn heavy, fuzzed-out, and graced with the gruff, drawling, grunge-worthy vox of Iota's Joey Toscano (the rhythm section here having their own pedigree, being from the band Subrosa). Maybe in comparison to Iota there's something a little bit earthier, and even bluesier, to these jams, which while they can get lengthy (up to ten minutes), don't orbit quite as far out in space as some of Iota's more extended, alien assaults. Instead, there's a greater focus on, say, Southern-fried slide guitar in service of Dwellers' gritty rockin'. There's slowburn builds ("Old Honey") and catchy groovers ("Lightening Ritual"), Good Morning Harakiri sometimes stompin', and sometimes spaced out, with lots of loping riffage and raspy holler. Maybe imagine a much more succinct Earthless, gone grunge? Dead Meadow channelling some Alice In Chains? CoC circa Blind, playing the blues?? Ah, we're not quite getting it right. But anyway, if you're into the stoner rock stuff and want a good dose (of something a bit different, but still familiar), give this a listen! Recommended.
By the way, we like how this album, despite being on cd, is obviously sequenced with a Side One / Side Two concept in mind, the tracklist on the back cover making this obvious with a gap between tracks 3 and 4.
MPEG Stream: "Secret Revival"
MPEG Stream: "Black Bird"
MPEG Stream: "Ode To Inversion Layer"

EARTHEN SEA Seeking Enlightenment 12 Oz. At A Time (Twonicorn) cassette 5.98
Originally reviewed way back in 2006, a small stash of these was discovered at Earthen Sea HQ, and so now here's one more chance to nab one of these before it's really gone for good!
Earthen Sea, what a killer name, however, the tape's title, Seeking Enlightenment 12 Oz. At A Time, had us expecting some sort of lo-fi, damaged and drunken sludgerock slugfest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Earthen Sea craft delicately developing drones, that begin life as a droney ultra minimal krautrock / postrock hybrid, with lots of swirling low end, pulsing melodies, propulsive barely there rhythms, a murky kraut jam like listening to Neu! practice six floors below you in an -almost- soundproof rehearsal room. Those various elements eventually begin to come apart, and blur together, becoming a thick tangled swirl of low end grind and throbbing, rumbling thrum, shot through with subtle sonic colors and glistening melodic sparkles. Nice.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES!!!

EARTHEN SEA Waves (Imminent Frequencies) cassette 5.98
Originally reviewed back in early 2011, a small stash of these was discovered at Earthen Sea HQ, and so now here's one more chance to nab one of these before it's really gone for good!
A gorgeous new batch of hazy transcendental keyboard dronemusic from this SF based one man band, once a member of Mi Ami and Black Eyes, although you'd never know it from these two sprawling minimalist explorations.
Unlike the propulsive almost krautrock-ish murk of his first tape, Waves is more a sort of barely moving, lush layered lysergic new age, the sort of keyboard kosmische that folks into Emeralds and Expo 70 should go nuts for. The melodies are subtle, the movements muted, the various tones and overtones float and hover and wash into one another like, well, waves. There's definitely a Niblock vibe too, but filtered through a more modern lo-fi space drone floorcore aesthetic. The A side for all its spaciness and dreaminess is also thick, and in its own way heavy the sounds raw, and a little abrasive, it's mesmerizing and ambient, but also intense.
The B side however is WAY more ethereal and ephemeral, those same waves of sound are now more monochromatic, pulsing in slow motion, woozy swells of muddy melody that mask a barely there propulsion, the track seems to fade and crumble, before finally switching gears as a distant melodic hum, the backdrop to a mysterious set of field recordings, a warm whirring bed for a soft swirling clouds of Philip Jeck like click and hiss. Nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

EN Already Gone (Students Of Decay) cd 12.98
A stellar follow-up to 2010's The Absent Coast on Root Strata, Already Gone from this local San Francisco drone duo, Maxwell Croy and James Devane, aka EN, finds theses two with an even more focused and nuanced dynamic sensibility. Of course that sensibility centers around Croy's classically trained koto playing, which plays a large part in EN's overall sound, but here that element is really given ample room to stretch out and breathe. Instead of being merely one component in a layering process of cascading shifting dronescapes, the high relief sound of the texture of strings, the slow growing lyrical motifs and the solemn resonant pauses between phrases set up the pieces as they bloom into delicate shimmers and then oceanic swells of drifting unsettled moods. Pushing the momentum along on the first track, "Lodi" is the loping bass pulse of Trevor Montgomery (The Drift, Date Palms, Tarantel), that has us surfing waves of sound before settling into a swirling miasma of crystalline tones and airy phases. Taking us to the final track, "Elysia", the longest track at 20 minutes is set up by a long introduction of gorgeous and breathtakingly spacious koto playing that like falling leaves in gusts of winds unfurl into bellows of sky high cloud drones, gathering and darkening in fields of rich pulsating grey thunderous tones and then watercolor washes of blissful ambiance, the storm cleared and fading away, set to awaken in some far-off place. Beautiful!
MPEG Stream: "Lodi"
MPEG Stream: "The Sea Saw Swell"
MPEG Stream: "Elysia"

EYE Center Of The Sun (Kemado) lp 16.98
This is the first we've heard from this Ohio psychedelic prog rock combo, whose sound the label compares to King Crimson and Pink Floyd, and which we're pleased to report is really not all that far off the mark, although the group take that classic prog sound and filter it through a much more modern sound, adding some serious guitar crunch, instrumental heft and some dense tripped out production. But that said, at its core, this stuff sounds pretty classic seventies prog, with soaring strings and epic synths, serious, properly sung vocals, dizzying solos, incredible harmonies, intricate arrangements, and of course loooooong songs.
Just check out the record opener, which takes up all of side A, a nearly twenty minute four part song suite called "Center Of The Sun", that channels Magma and ELP as much as it does Mugstar and White Hills. In fact the abundant progisms should definitely not keep all you space rock and psych rock freeks from digging into this stuff, cuz it most certainly IS both space-y and psychedelic, but instead of the usual endless jamming, these guys fuse killer jams, to actual songs, sprawling EPIC songs, "Center Of The Sun" being the best example, the band slipping easily from old school proto-metal sounding crunch, to dizzying mathy space-prog workouts, some cool classic rock bits, some shredding lead guitar, and some full on heart-of-the-sun space-psych freakouts, tempered with woozy washed out folk flecked drifts, and all somehow deftly woven into a seriously rad modern prog rock epic.
The three shorter tracks on the B side are equally heavy, and proggy, and intricate, killer riffing, busy drumming, weird arrangements, some soaring synths, lots of mathed out rhythms, gorgeous lush textures, and still more killer guitar jams, not to mention FX galore, definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of the current crop of psychedelic space rock, and folks like us, who find little to love in modern prog. And while you don't have to love prog to dig these guys, it definitely doesn't hurt.
Includes a download code! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
MPEG Stream: "Center Of The Sun Parts 1-4"
MPEG Stream: "Usurpers"

FOISY, ANDRE After The Prophecy (Land Of Decay) cassette 7.98
We got a big ol' batch of tapes from the Land Of Decay label, run by none other than Andre Foisy, one half (or maybe now it's one third) of aQ beloved doomdronedirge outfit Locrian, the tapes include new jams from ITHI, Number None, Wraiths (all reviewed elsewhere on this week's list) and this, the latest solo release from the man himself. And while we were all prepared to say something about how this doesn't veer very far from the sound of Locrian, all it took was about ten seconds to realize it really does. Sure it's still droney and broody and dark and mysterious, but instead of the bleak minimalism and heaving low end thrum of Locrian, Foisy has conjured up two gorgeously heady slabs of folky looped string raga, mandolins and violins unfurl woozy layered loops, constantly shifting, hazy and fuzzy, definitely sounding like snippets of some lost Comus song blurred into a roiling bit of dense folk swirl, while the whole thing is wreathed in a thick churning fog of guitar buzz and rumble, a blackened halo of feedback and thrum, gorgeous stuff for sure.
The second track offers up another variation, a mesmerizing skeletal guitar loop, which is soon joined by droned out violins, sounding a bit like Tony Conrad, all underpinned by deep rumbling guitar swells, streaks of controlled feedback, the sound growing more and more dense, and dreamily blown out, clouds of FX drift in, some tabla like rhythms, the song exploding in slo-mo into a sort of Skullflower/Sunroof! style bliss out, but with a strange sense of raga folk at its core.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

FUNKEES, THE Dancing Time: The Best Of Eastern Nigeria's Afro Rock Exponents 1973-77 (Soundway) cd 16.98
Once again, hot on the heels of reissues by Edzayawa and Rob, international groove digging label Soundway come up with a winner! And since this Nigerian band is named The Funkees, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect already, right? Of course, if a band from around here, now, called themselves The Funkees, they would probably be terrible if they played funk - and probably still terrible if the name were ironic and they played, like, acoustic indie rock or floorcore dronemusic. But a band from Africa, back in the '70s, called The Funkees, reissued by Soundway? Yep, they're good. Good and funky. Good enough to become East Nigeria's number one band, and their region's closest competitors to Lagos-based big city contemporaries like BLO. And good enough to move to London, and score a record deal.
This "best of" anthology includes the tracks from all of The Funkees' early Nigerian singles, plus crucial selections from the two albums that they recorded in while England. 18 tracks total, packed with irresistibly groovy rhythms, energetic arrangements, jamming organ, and fuzz guitar excess. Heck there's actually even a song here titled "Acid Rock"! They also do an Afrofunk cover version of "Slipping Into Darkness" by War. Hell yeah, it's "Dancing Time" all right...
Packaged with full liner notes that include an interview with original member Sonny Akpan.
MPEG Stream: "Abraka"
MPEG Stream: "Point Of No Return"
MPEG Stream: "Dancing In The Nude"

GENERAL SURGERY A Collection Of Depravation (Relapse) cd 11.98
A while back we reviewed the reissue of General Surgery's Necrology, which we joked was our favorite Carcass record, that Carcass never made, but it was only sort of a joke, cuz as nuts as the aQ metalheads are about Carcass, at least one of us (ok, it's Andee) likes Necrology as much as ANY of the Carcass records. Partially, because, as we mentioned in that review, as those Swedes attempted to make their very own Carcass record, they managed to create something that was both a ridiculous homage/rip off, and at the same time a slightly more twisted version of what they were shooting for, which in some weird way made Necrology sort of a more fucked up Carcass, which is not a bad thing at all. For all you Carcass loving metalheads who haven't checked out Necrology, do yourself a favor. For those of you, like us, who've already worn out your copy of Necrology, maybe more than once, this one is for you, a massive collection of B sides and compilation tracks, demos and unreleased jams and various songs from long out of print splits, not to mention a Carcass cover from a Carcass tribute, the ultimate irony, or is it? Regardless, this is some gut grinding metallic mayhem, total gorge grind bliss, utter Carcass worship, grinding metallic heaviness that kills.
MPEG Stream: "Pre-Bisectal Corrosive Immersion (Split 12" W/ The County Medical Examiners)"
MPEG Stream: "Unruly Dissection Marathon (Split 7" W/ Filth)"
MPEG Stream: "Necrodecontamination (Split 7" W/ Machetazo)"
MPEG Stream: "Maggots In Your Coffin (Corpus In Extremis Sessions)"
MPEG Stream: "Empathological Necroticism (Carcass) (Requiems Of Revulsion - A Tribute To Carcass Compilation)"

GOG In Our Architecture This Resounds (King Of The Monsters) 2lp 22.00
Latest sprawling dronedoom epic from this aQ favorite one man band. For whatever reason, we always forget to mention that the Gog guy once did time in some other aQ fave heavies Unruh and Wellington, but for the last little while has been trafficking in something much more minimal and abstract, that would be Gog, whose sound is a constantly mutating black sonic cloud. While already a strange beast, Gog seems to have gotten even stranger here. Four sides, all spinning at 45 (although they sound even murkier and sludgier at 33!), the first of which begins with a long stretch of grinding metallic industrial blackness, like the hum of machinery magnified into a glorious drone-y din, occasionally coalescing into something resembling SUNNO))) like riffage, before ultimately fading out in a blur of muted shimmer. The B side introduces some spaced out jazzy drumming, a strangely out of pace shuffling rhythm, draped over a fog of blackened whir, the vibe very Necks-like in its spacey almost looped sounding mesmer, rife with swoonsome melodies, and a final movement that's all washed out lo-fi drift and click splattered low end churn.
The second record begins as a thick, caustic industrial dirgescape, again flecked with some jazzy rhythms, that continually shift, and at one point transform into what sounds like looped fills beneath sheets of whirring buzz, only to explode into a corrosive finale, all keening high end skree. And finally, the D side unfurls a blurred bit of gauzy ambience, the loveliest of the bunch, at least briefly, a very Tim Hecker-ish feel, that quick grows more corrosive and caustic, the drums come shuffling in, the sound growing more rhythmic, tribal and dense, laced with samples, the whole thing subtly dubbed out and heavily effected, making it a sort of tripped out psychedelic coda. So cool.
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES!! Pressed on white vinyl, and comes with a 33"x22" poster!

GUDNADOTTIR, HILDUR Leyfdu Ljosinu (Touch) cd 15.98
Leyfdu Ljosinu translates from the Icelandic to "Allow The Light" and is a stunningly beautiful piece from the post-classical composer Hildur Gudnadottir, who recorded this in one-shot with no edits or overdubs with just cello, voice, and electronics. The liner notes and the press release make a big deal about the single take of this recording, but with how adept so many doom / drone / shoegaze / black noise musicians are a creating loops on the fly through computer or pedal or whatever, this shouldn't be the first thing to commend Gudnadottir on. What she should be praised for is her command over ALL of her instruments and how well she emotes a beautiful desolation through those instruments. At first, Gudnadottir sings a plaintive, wordless melody which she captures in a loop, as she abstracts that loop by stretching it and dunking it in reverb, she adds more vocal tones and melodies - more and more of which begins to blur into an ethereal cauldron of roiling sound somewhere between the elegant hypnosis of William Basinski and Grouper's elegiac hymnal deconstruction. After some 15 minutes, the cello makes a slow introduction, seamlessly overtaking the voice as the prominent instrument. Again, Gudnadottir filters the sounds of her cello through all of her effects, furthering the descent of her sounds to the very bottom of the ocean. By the conclusion of the piece, she eschews the reverb for a frantic, nervous dervish across the strings of her cello abruptly coming to a perfect conclusion.
MPEG Stream: "Allow The Light (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Allow The Light (extract 2)"

HAFLER TRIO, THE Seven Hours Sleep (Korm Plastics) cd 15.98
BACK IN STOCK!!! Originally released in 1985 as a set of 2 EPs on LAYLAH and reissued "wrongly" by Mute / Grey Area in 1992, Seven Hours Sleep marks yet another in the ongoing reissue campaign by Korm Plastics of work by The Hafler Trio. Seven Hours Sleep also happens to mark the last contributions from former Cabaret Voltaire member Chris Watson, although Andrew MacKenzie (the other founder of the 'trio') was still claiming that The Hafler Trio involved such fictional characters as Dr. Edward Moolenbeek and Robert Spridgeon. In recent years, MacKenzie has focused his activities upon the essentialization of the power of the human voice, as he has extracted intensely brilliant tonal fragments from the voices of Jonsi Birgisson, David Tibet, and Blixa Bargeld, stretching them into some of the most deliriously beautiful and acoustically powerful minimalism the world has ever witnessed. Well over two decades ago, the human voice was still central to MacKenzie's work in The Hafler Trio although in a slightly different context. Instead of focusing upon the essence of the human voice as a gnostic spark for enlightenment through sound, MacKenzie was far more interested in how perception and communication were intertwined, and how it was possible to create paranoiac atmospheres through the obfuscation of language's syntax. Within Seven Hours Sleep, MacKenzie rewires utterances, screams and megaphone broadcasts into a decentered collage of mediated fragments, rupturing flickering drones and unsettling field recordings. MacKenzie has demonstrated his power to confuse and delight through his complex laboratory of sound, mythology, and context; Seven Hours Sleep is no different. Sorry, no mp3 samples can be made available of the Hafler Trio's work.

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER Poor Moon (Tompkins Square) cd 16.98
Longtime SF locals probably remember The Court And Spark, on of our favorite local bands back in the day, their debut album released originally on Andee's tUMULt label, they played shows with Souled American when they were in town way back when, the band slogged away, making amazing record after amazing record, only to have the sort of success they so richly deserved escape them again and again. And thus like bands often do, they called it a day, with the core of the Court And Spark, M.C. Taylor and Scott Hirsch, continuing on as Hiss Golden Messenger, a group that traded in the traditional country influences of their previous outfit for some stranger influences, the Grateful Dead, seventies FM radio, classic rock, and of course that classic Laurel Canyon country pop, all woven into a sound, that while reminiscent of the Court And Spark was something all together smoother, and while we dug this new group, it wasn't really until this new one that we really GOT it. Not entirely sure what it is about Poor Moon, but everything seems to have fallen perfectly into place. Those same influences loom large, but there definitely seems to be a return to a more classic country vibe, the opener sounds like it could have been plucked straight off a Court And Spark record, the only difference some whirring organ, some horns, but Taylor's voice sounds as great as ever, and the song is crazy catchy, rife with swoonsome strings, it's definitely a stunner. "Call Him Daylight" is another winner, a swaggery twang flecked groove, laced with slithery melodies, and even some handclaps, but goddamn if we can't stop listening to it. The rest of the record unfurls similarly, the sound slipping from slide guitar laced country rock, to brooding country folk ballads, campfire bluegrass back porch hoedowns, super warm, melodic country tinged classic rock groovers, all of the tracks here fantastic, not a bum note in the bunch, the sound too, lush and expansive and so gorgeous, mandolin, clavinet, electric piano, violin, viola, fiddle, saxophone, banjo, Rhodes piano, all woven into probably the coolest country rock record we've heard in forever.
Housed in a swank oversized old school tip on mini lp style gatefold sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Blue Country Mystic"
MPEG Stream: "Call Him Daylight"
MPEG Stream: "Drummer Down"
MPEG Stream: "Jesus Shot Me In The Head"

IGNATZ Selected Songs From Cassettes 2005 - 2009 (KRAAK) lp 15.98
We've long been fans of this outsider alien Appalachia folk troubadour, we've made at least one of his records an aQ Record Of The Week, and raved about most of the others, so when we recently were offered some new releases from the Kraak label, one of the titles we were most excited about was this vinyl collection, which gathers up a handful of tracks from various out of print cassettes, most of which were so limited we were never able to get them.
And like the records proper, the sounds here while rooted in a sort of psychedelic folk, definitely veer in all sorts of directions, sonically quite disparate at times, but somehow strangely cohesive. The random samplings here seem to have been assembled in a way that at least simulates a record proper, but even then, the sounds are still tripped out and fantastically erratic.
Angular electric guitars wrap themselves around a reverbed croon, moody funereal dirges laced with muted percussion give way to dark buzzing drones, which in turn give way to a chiming dronefolk shimmer, weirdly twisted and detuned, wreathed in buzz. Elsewhere lush forest folk transforms into a swampy sort of abstract blues, with crooned vox and a woozy warped production. Jangle meets strum, falsetto vox drift over tinkling vibes-like melodies, shuffling jazzy rhythms blossom into something more rocking and psychedelic. A brief bit of moaning buzzy dronemusic, a la Angus Maclise or Tony Conrad introduces a barrage of wild squiggly melodies draped over a woozy strum, wrapped in swirls of feedback and blurred into a raga like trip out and finally, the record finishes off with an ultra minimal, barely there Jandekian creep, some serious outsider folk, with haunting falsetto vocals drifting over hushed tendrils of melodies and lots of mysterious near silence.
Cool stuff, essential for fans, maybe not the best place to start for newbies, but if you have any/all of the other records and dig them as much as we do, this stuff too will hit the spot.

IRR. APP. (EXT.) Neognath In Machina (Petit Mal Music) 3" cd-r 5.98
20 minutes of drowned sound and convulsive twitches from the audio madman M.S. Waldron, known here as irr. app. (ext.). Much of his work deals in particularly odd mutations of deranged thought and philosophical ramblings, transforming those ideas into tumbling collages of mangled field recordings, discomforting drone, and broken song. On past records, there had been invocations of psychic surgery gone wrong, there had been ruminations on the intellect of dust, there are the impossible covers of Organum material, and there was a trilogy expanding on the circular logic of Wilhelm Reich. Not surprising that soundcycle has somehow expanded even further with the addition of a fourth member. Here, Waldron delves into what he describes as 'avian technology'; and we don't think he's arranging symphonies for Bower Birds and their artisanal collections of bottlecaps and beetle shells; nor does this even seem to feature much in the way of recognizable bird song (although Waldron has been known to recite the onomatopoeic descriptions of bird songs in field guides in Kurt Schwitters Ursonate style). No, this seems far more chimerical in nature, with the monstrous results something akin to the baby in Eraserhead, making disturbing utterances amidst clattering wheezes from antique machines, ur-drones of a darkened psychedelic fashion, and a despondent atmosphere. Given his ongoing contributions to Nurse With Wound, Neognath In Machina isn't too far from Stapleton's wild universe of post-Surrealist sound; but Waldron's genetic re-engineering of sound, flesh, and feather is sublimely its own. Limited to 75 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Neognath In Machina"

ITHI Within (Land Of Decay) cassette 7.98
We raved about the first Ithi record, which came out on Utech a while back, a duo featuring Luke from sci-fi spacemetal dronelords Servile Sect, and Joshua Convey, whose Utech release was also a huge favorite around here. The two have returned with another fantastically tripped out slab of mesmerizing murk, thick corrosive synths, pulsing barebones programmed rhythms, guitars blurred into thick heaving swells, the vocals a buried croon, the result sounding like some sort of SUPER heavy lost cold wave classic. There's definitely a Suicide vibe for sure, a sort of grim swagger, but wedded to an almost Nadja/Jesu worthy wall of sound dronedoomdirge. We could listen to the opening track forever, a twisted cold wave krautrock spacedrone dirge that is as blackened and ominous as it is hypnotic and head nodding, with the rest of the record following suit, in many cases getting even more abstract and blown out, long stretches of blurred guitar drones, sprawled out over ribcage rattling bass pulses, the whole thing heaving and creeping and pulsing ominously. And in other cases, approaching the sort of crumbling slo-mo noise pop of Dead C offshoot Gate, but replacing the noise rock guitar and stumbling drum damage with sci-fi synths and alien drum programming. SO great!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

KADET Matter Of Mind (Tektonic Shift) cd 11.98
Kadet Kuhne is a San Francisco based media-artist, who often pulls the worlds of experimental video and avant-garde electronics closer together through her seamless audio-visual explorations of digitized fragments and mulched sonic detritus. Matter Of Mind is her first full album in nearly 8 years, although she certainly had plenty of performances, screenings, installations, and collaborations during that time. That said, this album does follow neatly with the previous record Thin Air in its ghostly abstraction of softened glitches, polished surfaces, and rounded tones not to far from the orbits of Jan Jelinek or Oval, with melodic fragments emerging sporadically through the time-stretched filigree and pixelated gaseousness. On "Ruminant," Kadet brings to the foreground the unprocessed sounds of a clarinet (courtesy of Giselle Eastman) amidst the digital smoke and mirror sound design of refracted noir, sounding like an updated version of the Vangelis soundtrack for Blade Runner. Her track "Encoded" responds to a process that Lucky Dragons used on John Coltrane's A Love Supreme to turn it into a visual score; here, she transformed the Coltrane classic into binary data and reassembled the audio signal output into a thoroughly abstracted corollary. Obviously, some of the original has been reintroduced with a subtle groove from a deconstructed bassline and a skittering rhythmic sample emerges amidst the digitally scrubbed and mulched-to-graynoise data. Her most refined work to date!
MPEG Stream: "Ruminant"
MPEG Stream: "The Clearing"
MPEG Stream: "Encoded"

KISS THE ANUS OF A BLACK CAT Weltuntergangsstimmung (Zeal) cd 13.98
Hey, we like surprises, especially pleasant ones like this. The return of longtime aQ faves Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, the project of Belgian musician Stef Heeren, is indeed a bit of a darkwave departure from his previous work, but still totally welcome, once we got our heads around it. Perhaps the purple-and-black cover graphics should have been a clue to something new, 'cause all earlier Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat covers were black-and-white.
KTAOABC's previous four albums, while each varied to some degree (the introduction of drums, and heavier drones, on 2008's The Nebulous Dreams being a bold move back then), all hewed to the same basic sound/concept: foreboding experimental apocalyptic doom folk, that caused us to draw strong comparisons to the likes of Current 93 (especially Current 93!), Comus, Richard Youngs, Swans, and even Woven Hand. KTAOBAC's witchy rituals were dark and ghostly, a mix of sparse pagan folk and deathly industrial drone, with vocals intoned like David Tibet.
But, with Weltuntergangsstimmung, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat has really taken a new tack. If we thought drums were a change, how about drum machines? The sinister old KTAOABC sound is present, but transformed. It sounds like Heeren has been listening to a lot of early '80s minimal new wave music (perhaps there's influence here from Belgium's own Snowy Red and The Neon Judgement?), and has now made a very song-based album with electronic instruments that, if it were an authentic release from the era, would fit in nicely on a reissue label like Dark Entries. Or indeed, we wouldn't have been surprised had this come out on Wierd, alongside the likes of Xeno & Oaklander.
His vocals here are reminding us less of C93's Tibet, and more of another favorite folk shaman, Daniel Higgs. But imagine Daniel Higgs making a gothic coldwave record!! Clicking-ticking drum machine beats and electronic handclaps underpin reverb heavy electric guitar lines and washes of analog synth, over which Heeren croons his lyrics of sadness and surrender, baring his soul in a catchy new gloom-pop context. (There's also a bass player, and some female backing vox.)
We're loving it, even though now KTAOBAC sounds more like Bauhaus or The Cure, than Comus. But, while quite different, this is rapidly becoming one of our favorite KTAOABC albums yet, we can't stop playing it. And, we all can be happy that Heeren at least didn't see any need to change the delightful name of his band.
FYI, there's a vinyl version of this too, on OnderStroom Records, that we hope to get in sometime soon as well.
MPEG Stream: "My Word As Gospel"
MPEG Stream: "The Shadows Are You"
MPEG Stream: "Ruins"

KOHN Random Patterns (KRAAK) 12" 15.98
We first discovered Kohn, aka Jurgen DeBlonde, via his contribution to the Western Vinyl 'Portrait' series, in which each artist was to pick an individual, write songs about said individual, and provide a drawing for the cover. Kohn picked Bruce Willis, so we could hardly resist when we saw this weird record in the racks with this scrawled portrait of BW on the cover. We were then pleasantly surprised to discover that there was more to the record that the concept/cover, and in fact, it was a gorgeous disc of glitched out folkiness and droney melodic abstractions, trippy loops and blurred collaged soundscapes, it was so good that we went searching for every release we could find.
And not soon after, this showed up, the latest from Kohn, an lp on Kraak and one that finds him exploring the concept, as the title suggests, of random patterns, recorded with just an organ, and with minimal edits, improvised variations on simple random patterns, designed to be listened to, again according to the liner notes, while doing something else, reading, meditating, driving, and it does sound perfect for that. Obviously influenced by Reich, Riley, Glass and the like, this is moody hypnotic, almost new age sounding kosmische mesmer, four long tracks, that over the course of each, gradually shift and transform, from murky looped churn, to glistening melodic shimmer, and from lush chordal thrum, to percolating sci-fi arpeggiations, that sound very cosmic and soundtracky, the sort of stuff that should definitely appeal to everyone into the current crop of retro futurism, Zombi, Umberto, Majeure, Blizaro, etc, although this is definitely more minimal, and in places definitely has a Zomes vibe, a similar sort of spaced out zoner vibe, perfect drift off, zone out, late night soundtrack for sure.
Housed in a super swank four color silkscreened fold over jacket, with a printed insert with liner notes detailing the motives behind the music, and Kohn's ideas and intentions in creating these random patterns.

KORPSES KATATONIK Oeuvres Completes (Klanggalerie) cd 21.00
The Austrian post-industrial provocateur Michael DeWitt attained notoriety in the mid-'80s for his project Zero Kama whose sole album was sourced entirely from human bones and skulls, with plenty of smoke and mirror production techniques to arrive at a Crowleyian sound parallel to the likes of early Current 93, Coil, and Psychic TV. Beyond the one album as Zero Kama, DeWitt released another obscure recording in 1982 under the moniker Korpses Katatonik. This cassette - sometimes referred to as Sensitive Liberated Autistiks, sometimes as Subklinikal Leukotomy Aphrenia Spasmophilik Lyssophobo Asphyxia Sinister Lethal Anorex - delved into parallel concerns of societal pathologies and death-obsessed transgressions through very dark electronics. It's very much in step with the classic industrial productions of SPK (when is anybody going to reissue those records again?) and the pre-Brighter Death Now project Lille Roger, with blackened squalls of grim noise belched through slow-grinding rhythms and an ominous proclamation that "we're all fucked." Such doomspeak from Industrial Culture was commonplace, but DeWitt's Korpses Katatonik said it with just as much brutalist force and conviction as SPK, TG, and Cabaret Voltaire at their most zombified. All of the tracks from that cassette and a compilation track make up the entire body of work for Korpses Katatonik, which have been remastered and repackaged for this anthology. The template for much of what Wolf Eyes did later is found here. Terrifyingly great.
MPEG Stream: "Nekom"
MPEG Stream: "Kcock Transplant"
MPEG Stream: "Chronozon"

KOWLOON WALLED CITY / THOU July (Hell Comes Home) 7" 9.98
What more do you need to know, than this is two of our favorite heavy bands, doing killer (and WAY unlikely) covers, on by Low, and one by Soundgarden? OK, how about the fact that this was a super limited installment of a subscription only series, really the only way to get your hands on one of these was to subscribe, unless, the guys in KWC offered us a little handful of their copies, the LAST copies in fact, so you should know what that means by now, grab one before they disappear.
KWC tackles Low's "July", and besides cranking up the guitars, and adding some downtuned crunch, stay pretty true to the original, and wisely got a guest vocalist, Lisa Papineau, who we had never heard of before, but who has sung for Air, M83, Farflung and others, but who is the perfect fit, here vocals emotional and powerful, darkly tinged, one of those rare, practically perfect covers, where the cover manages to be as good as the original, different enough to be interesting, but faithful enough to make not singing along impossible.
Thou take on Soundgarden's "4th Of July", and like KWC, stay sort of faithful to the original, and like with the KWC track, via the vocals. In place of Thou's usual throat shredding shrieks, the band unveil some seriously powerful crooning, a kick ass voice that definitely has us wondering what these guys would be capable of if they chose to go in that direction. But fear not, not only is the main riff an oozing, downtuned creep, but after that first verse, the more recognizable Thou vocals come in, but instead of replacing the clean vox, they team up, for a really bizarre duet, and some twisted not-quite harmonies, the song itself, unfurling as a lumbering, surprisingly still super melodic, dirge doom monster.
Rare that we dig both sides of a split this much, but both these tracks totally KILL. And again, super limited, we have about 15 copies, these are the last ones we'll be able to get. Not sure you can even still sign up for the subscription series, so probably better to get one now, before you're kicking yourself later. Insanely gorgeous cover art / design as well!
MPEG Stream: KOWLOON WALLED CITY "July"
MPEG Stream: THOU "4th Of July"

KTL V (Editions Mego) cd 16.98
As the title no doubt led you to believe, this is in fact the fifth release in the ongoing collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita), and like IV before it, V was realized as a stand alone record, unlike the first three releases, which were all conceived and composed to accompany art installations. And again, like IV, the sound does not seem to be dramatically effected by this shift, although there does in fact seem to be a bit of a shift from IV to V, with V seeming, to our ears at least, to be a bit more academic, with an ear toward twentieth century classic and modern minimalism, further evidence which may be found in the two tracks here "Phill 1" and "Phill 2", which we presume are an homage to the master dronelord Phill Niblock, but of course done in their own inimitable style, with "Phill 1" opening up a thick gaseous dronescape, that is pocked with glitch and skitter, woven into the fabric of the tracks woozy undulations, and softly moaning choral shimmer. Where on past records much of the sound was barely there, and required close listening, "Phill 1" is much more immediately rewarding, lush and lustrous, thick and warm, and layered, the sort of minimalism that would probably still appeal to fans of O'Malley's SUNNO))) project. The track is definitely active, with plenty going on beneath the surface, and in the spaces surrounding the drone, be they thick slabs of blurred buzz, shards of computer glitch, and all manner of sonic detritus.
"Phill 2" finds O'Malley and Rehberg teaming up with the Prague Philharmonic, where they are joined by Johann Johannsson, who helps with the orchestration, the track transformed into something haunting and symphonic, yet still dark and droney, the sound even more rich, and somewhat cacophonous, a glorious noisy ur-drone, that definitely casts the orchestra as something much more chaotic and abstract that they are perhaps used to, the results are stunning.
In between these tracks, O'Malley and Rehberg do explore more minimal soundscapes, "Study A" features long tones, deep buzzes and sine wave like high end shimmers, stretched out into near static layered mesmer, allowing the two tones two subtly interact, and create all manner of overtones, gradually building in intensity, and at times sounding down right cinematic and psychedelic. "Tony" is another thick minimal dronescape, this one focused around a distorted stretch of slow shifting buzz, surrounded by warm melodic tones, and strange echo drenched percussion, the main drone ever shifting, creating a gorgeous slow motion melody, the background sounds lush and lustrous, maybe the prettiest thing we've heard from KTL yet. And finally, the record finishes off with the 20+ minute "Last Spring: A Prequel", which introduces text, a haunting spoken word, draped over a hissy shimmer, the breath urgent in the microphone, the vibe dark and claustrophobic, the music itself more like old KTL, ultra minimal, high end hiss, minimal static hum, bits of glitch laced throughout, the track all about the dramatically delivered vocals, which grow more and more agitated, more heavily effected, the music subtly following suit, like some strange abstract play, with some of the creepiest sound design ever, courtesy of KTL.
Housed in a super striking 6 panel digipak, with original artwork by Mark Fell. Meanwhile the vinyl comes in an equally colorful gatefold sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Phill 1"
MPEG Stream: "Study A"

LED ER EST The Diver (Sacred Bones) cd 15.98
We were pretty into Dust On Common, the last record from these Brooklyn cold wave retro revivalists, but we're digging this new one even more. While much of the sound remains the same, some things have definitely changed, For some reason, we were utterly mesmerized by the opening track, "Animal Smear", which found the group sounding more post punk than cold wave, adding a sort of frenetic energy and dark propulsion to the icy detachment that defined much of the last record. The skittery skeletal drums and dubbed out production only adding even more of a dark psych vibe to the proceedings. One of those tracks, that we must admit, we probably listened to ten times before we made it any deeper into the record. But once we did, the rest of the record stacked up pretty well, sounding like it could have just as easily come out on Wierd as on Sacred Bones, finding common ground in the sonic vocabulary of Xeno & Oaklander and Cold Cave, but with a certain ineffable something that made this stuff resonate. The opening track is a killer of course, but so is the follow up "Housefire At Zumi's", a strange swoonsome synthy instrumental, all minor key, but slightly off kilter, lush swells beneath strange angular melodies, the beat stuttery and weirdly motorik. "Kaiyo Maru" too, weds dark synth drones, and chordal swirls to some dense programmed drumming, and some reverby vocals, and weaves all that into a gorgeous slab of dark electro pop, that manages to sound simultaneously modern, and like it was plucked right out of the eighties, and we hadn't even gotten to the weirdly angular chorus. The title track might be our second favorite jam here, sounding like a retro cold wave version of the Editors, deep crooned vocals, minor key, a little bit ballady, with some strange clattery percussion, and a main melody that is doleful and dour and totally mesmerizing. The rest of the record flits from pounding IDM, to playful electro-pop, from murky cold wave balladry to haunting skitter laced industrial, finishing off with some dreamy synth shoegaze that almost sounds like M83. Fantastic stuff, and another new favorite for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Animal Smear"
MPEG Stream: "Housefire At Zumi's"
MPEG Stream: "Kaiyo Maru"
MPEG Stream: "The Diver"

LES RALLIZES DENUDES Mars Studio 1980 (Phoenix Records) 4cd 62.00
The avalanche of reissues from this legendary Japanese psych outfit continues unabated, with yet another multiple disc box, this one of note, as it's perhaps the most sought after studio recordings from this group, recorded during a brief period in the early eighties when the band included guitarist Fujio Yamaguchi, whose playing meshed perfectly with Les Rallizes mastermind Takeshi Mizutani, resulting in some of the group's dreamiest, and most high fidelity recordings. By now, all but the most stalwart and utterly obsessed Japanese psych nerds are probably burnt out and broke from trying to keep up with all these jams, so with these boxsets, we often find ourselves prefacing our reviews with the warning that they're probably for collectors only, but with Mars Studio, this might be a good place to start, it's definitely the least lo-fi, which for some of us is not necessarily a good thing, it does mean, that the songs are definitely the focus here. The liner notes point out that these are all live takes, as the songs were never properly finished or mixed, and that many of these were captured on a single microphone in the mixing booth, which is why on some tracks you can hear conversations between the musicians and the engineers. But it's all part of the magical mystery of Les Rallizes, and while there are a handful of feedback drenched jams, and a few heavy numbers, the bulk of the tracks from the 3 months the group spent in the Mars Studio tend toward the darkly psychedelic, and in many cases display a distinctly Velvets-y vibe, all low slung and groovy, the guitar solos much more measured and melodic, and ultimately quite gorgeous. And like on other Les Rallizes collections, their are multiple takes of the same songs, often with the different versions virtually unrecognizable, again, another part of the group's mystery. Fans of the noisier fucked up side of Les Rallizes might be a bit thrown off, although there is some of that here to dig, like the 24 minute "Guitar Jam" on disc 3, but folks into a more laid back psychedelia, will definitely be in Japanese psych heaven. The fourth disc is a legendary 1980 live show originally released as Double Heads September, and is a pretty good document of the band at the time, although really, since the studio tracks are also essentially live, it fits pretty perfectly with the first three discs.
Even after all these reissues though, we love this stuff, and can't seem to get enough.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one hand numbered, each disc housed in a full color sleeve, all the sleeves housed in a full color box.
MPEG Stream: "Enter The Mirror"
MPEG Stream: "Distant Memories"
MPEG Stream: "A Tale Of Love"

MAD SCENE Blip (Siltbreeze) lp 15.98
With the recent reactivation of legendary NZ label Flying Nun, and the spate of recent reissues, it makes a weird sort of sense that legendary NZ indie pop outfit the Mad Scene would return with their first new record in nearly twenty years. It makes a bit less sense (at least at first), that the band has been expanded to a sort of indie rock supergroup, which now features, among others, Georgia from Yo La Tengo, and aQ pal and WFMU music director Brian Turner. But to our ears, that was a great move, cuz the the Mad Scene sound as great as ever, and really relatively unchanged from the MS records of old. If someone had told us that this was in fact a lost record simply being reissued, we would have bought it in a second. Still fronted by the inimitable Hamish Kilgour (he of the legendary Kiwi crew The Clean), Blip is warm and woozy, dreamily minor key, washed out and a little bit druggy, makes perfect sense that the group got Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 to produce and mix, his fingerprints are definitely all over it, giving the record even more of a gorgeously murky haze. Beyond the sound though, the songs too are pretty magical, subtly catchy, a little bit dream poppy, a little bit twee pop, the hooks all tangled up in blurred guitar crunch, and simple propulsive drumming, the vocals buried way down in the mix, and all the songs rife with layered guitars, strap on some headphones, and hear buzzing rumbles beneath shimmery jangles, sinewy melodies atop chiming thrum, the backdrop to each track a constantly shifting guitarscape, with various elements deftly moving to the fore and then slipping right back into the mix, without ever sacrificing the group's pure poppiness. The Mad Scene somehow sound so timeless, at once right at home with the current crop of lo-fi, reverbed garage poppers, but also so reminiscent of classic twee pop, and ramshackle psychedelia, sounding in places like some lost Scottish or British pop group as much as a classic NZ Flying Nun band. So great!
Includes a download coupon as well.
MPEG Stream: "Cupid 2"
MPEG Stream: "Lorelei"
MPEG Stream: "Quiet Day"

MIST AND MAST Follow A Bad Map (OPZ) cd-r 9.98
Latest record from this local indie rock combo (number three by our count), fronted by aQ pal Jason Lakis, who back in the day was also the frontman for a couple other aQ fave outfits, the Red Thread and Half Film, and while those bands tended toward the more brooding melancholy slowcore side of the spectrum, Mist And Mast traffic in more of a classic indie rock, a sound that to our ears is totally timeless, although perhaps it's more that the sounds are of a different time, specifically the nineties, an era that old folks like us look back upon wistfully, lamenting the passing of the days when bands like Mist And Mast got the sort of attention they deserved. Cuz holy cow, this record is great, and this band just keep getting better with every release, the songs here more fully realized than ever, deftly crafted and meticulously recorded, the sound lush and layered, rife with subtle impossibly memorable hooks, crazy catchy melodies, all wed to a gorgeous dark and dreamlike jangle, not to mention some awesome guitar harmonies, and Lakis's vocals sound better than ever, this is the sort of classic pop that fans of groups like Built To Spill, the Comas, the Shins, Modest Mouse and all the rest, should be flipping out over. If there's any justice, this will be the record that finally perks up the ears of all the folks who should already be listening to these guys. WAY recommended for anyone into classic pop, indie rock and warm wistful jangle. Stick around for record closer, "Red, Right, Returning", which finds Lakis taking Mist And Mast into some haunting, darkly brooding Earth / Barn Owl / Morricone territory, and it definitely suits them!
Beautifully packaged in handmade digipaks, each one adorned with a different map, and each one hand stamped and silkscreened. Also includes liner notes / lyrics also printed on an old map. Nice!
MPEG Stream: "Free Tons"
MPEG Stream: "Getting Out Soon"
MPEG Stream: "Fuyr"

MONOS Above The Sky (ICR) cd 15.98
BACK IN STOCK!!!
Over the past few years, Darren Tate has been wandering into some wildly weird electronics, broadening the scope of his aesthetic beyond the seminal recordings he made with Andrew Chalk (amongst others) as Ora, and more recently through Monos. For the most part, Monos has been a collaborative project between Tate and Nurse With Wound engineer extraordinaire Colin Potter, but at other times, we're pretty sure that Tate is the only one behind the wheel. For Above The Sky, the Monos line-up includes Tate, Potter, and fellow British dronescraper Paul Bradley; and this record is a top notch, vintage sounding Monos disc for sure.
The extended pieces found on this album were culled from the one and only live Monos gig in 2006, the handful of recordings from that gig were processed, recreated, forgotten about, rediscovered, and processed again throughout various starts and stops over the next four years. The resulting album is surprisingly coherent, presenting itself as a sinewy mass of undulating drones dappled with various textures, shadowy events, field recordings, subtle instrumentation, and then some. The ghostly ambience that introduces this album is sublimely beautiful, like the druggy drones of Nurse With Wound (e.g. Soliloquy For Lilith) or the permafrost laden expanses of Thomas Koner or even a darker version of Leyland Kirby's much-lauded hauntological ambience. Distant sound elements of scraped metal echo to the foreground, as the latent sounds from some occluded ritual in some forgotten place. Shimmering acoustic clouds of resonance peel away into field recordings of numerous birds flitting about. Later on, semi-melodic phrases hover near the event horizon dominated by ominous electrical vibrations and dilated drone fields. Seriously, this is fantastic stuff!
MPEG Stream: "A Place Of Voices"
MPEG Stream: "Cloudless Day"

MOTION SICKNESS OF TIME TRAVEL s/t (Spectrum Spools) 2lp 30.00
Rachel Evans brings her humid, oozing synth explorations to Spectrum Spools, which has become quite the launching pad for a wide array of outsider electronics as curated through the judicious ear of Emeralds' John Elliott. The name of Evans' project is lifted from William S. Burroughs' novel The Soft Machine; and with her decentering, liminal drift of half-formed / half-dissolved constructions, she finds herself peering between the kudzu-encrusted fields of her native Lagrange, Georgia and the imagined soundscapes of a primordial Gondwanaland (time-travel for her seems to go backwards in time, not forwards). After close to a couple dozen releases (mostly in the micro-edition format), she's either gotten the doseage right on the Dramamine, or she's acclimated to the queasy side effects of jumping between time and space, as this eponymous record isn't nearly as woozy and narcotized as her previous work. "The Dream" starts out quite dark, with backward-masked slashes that parallel the thickets of razored noise from Current 93's early collage work; but she quickly escapes from these bad vibes into a lengthy daydream of shimmering ambience laced with bright, effervescent sequences and some rather Vangelis-like triumphant synth stabs. "The Center" spins around a latticework of crystalline sequences that blur into massive, oceanic pools of rippling sound, with her voice looped and smeared into an ethereal bliss. "Summer Of The Cat's Eye" is a mellow impressionist piece of synth jamminess akin to Tangerine Dream's wanderings across the keyboard. "One Perfect Moment" is very reverential of John Elliott's work in Emeralds and all of his solo projects, with a sequenced glissando streaming beneath the slow unfurling of bittersweet tonal chords and Evans' pleading vocal delivery. Easily, the most arresting track she's recorded to date, rounding out another fantastic album from Evans' Motion Sickness Of Time Travel.

MRS. MAGICIAN Strange Heaven (Swami) lp 13.98
This recent aQ Record Of The Week, now available as a RECORD!
Before we relay the weird way in which we fell in love with this record, let us just say right up front, this is our new favorite garage pop record, hands down!
So as you probably know, the increasing habit of listening to music on our computers has changed the way we listen to music so much. Lots of folks listen to everything on shuffle, others just play their favorite tracks, the idea of full, programmed albums is almost a thing of the past for some folks. And while in some ways those changes enhance the listening experience, in others, it definitely feels like something has been lost. But for whatever reason, at least in this one case, the quirkiness of said computer listening was the key to our obsession with Mrs. Magician.
We had been listening to this new record from the weirdly named Mrs. Magician, a garage rock combo who we had only really heard of cuz they were on tour with the Hot Snakes. And we definitely liked what we heard but were not yet totally blown away. Then for some weird reason, we accidentally sorted our music library by 'date added' and ended up listening to Strange Heaven IN REVERSE ORDER, from back to front, and holy shit, suddenly it all clicked, our socks were knocked totally off, and ever since, we can't stop listening to this (and yeah, we dig it in the proper order now too!).
Not sure if the record is just weirdly back loaded, or we just needed this little twist to unlock the magic of Mrs. Magician, but we're just grateful it happened. To help simulate our listening experience, the first two sound samples we've provided are of course the double shot (in reverse order) that sealed the deal, the sort of one-two punch you find yourself listening to over and over and over (just ask the other aQ-ers how many times Andee has played these two tracks over and over the last few weeks), and then once you can convince yourself to move on, the third and fourth sound samples, are the album's proper opening two tracks.
But c'mon, "Dead 80's" has to be the jam of the year, crunchy, jangly, fuzzy, with a chorus that KILLS, all dreamy oooooh's, some falsetto crooning, warbly organs, ramshackle riffing, and the sort of gleefully profane chorus you'll find yourself singing along too even after just one time through ("Oooooooh, Fuck the world, Oooooooh, Fuck the law, Ooooooooh, Fuck the kids!"). And if "Dead 80's" wasn't already THEE jam here, then "Hours Of The Night" sure as shit would be, a dead ringer for late great post grunge Nova Scotian pop group the Hardship Post, all post Nirvana strum, but with hooks galore, a shuffling rhythm, and snarky heart broken lyrics, not to mention plenty of reverby dreaminess, and so it goes, those two songs are the key, that unlock a whole record of crazy catchy garage pop bliss, that to be honest, is really all we want to listen to. Can't remember being as excited about a pop record since Jaill's That's How We Burn, which trust us, is huge praise indeed. Definite contender for record of the year, pop or otherwise.
MPEG Stream: "Dead 80's"
MPEG Stream: "Hours Of The Night"
MPEG Stream: "Nightlife"
MPEG Stream: "There Is No God"

NADJA Thaumogenesis (Broken Spine) cd 17.98
Originally released in 2007 on the now defunct aRCHIVE label, this gorgeous slab of blown out metal gaze bliss from aQ beloved dronedoomdirge duo Nadja, is available again on cd, housed in a nice silkscreened, textured paper sleeve. Here's what we had to say about Thaumogenesis the first time around...
One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel, beginning with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 2)"

NECRO DEATHMORT The Colonial Script (III) (Distraction) cd 14.98
When we first discovered Necro Deathmort, they were recommended to us as sounding like Squarepusher style electronica fused to SUNNO)))-like sludge, and that was actually not far off the mark, with most of the record sounding precisely like that, thick crumbling distorted guitar buzz laced with all manner of stuttery skittery beats, and then the second record, found the band seeming to focus that sound, relying less on the electronica-meets-metal thing, and instead creating songs that just happened to be both electronic AND heavy, and while it wasn't as quirky or fucked up as the debut, it was definitely a better records, with proper songs, and one that does get plenty of repeat play even still (although so does the first one, which we still love), but we were super excited to discover there was yet another NdM record, a brand new one called The Colonial Script, and we knew from the second we put it on, we were gonna dig it as much as the first two.
For folks new to NdM, just check out the first two sound samples below to get a feel for what these guys are all about, which on the Colonial Script, definitely hews closer to the second record but does feature some seriously metallic moments.
Opener "Imperial" starts of all skeletal and spaced out, and when the drums drop, it's like the heaviest, darkest dubstep you've ever heard, the beats pounding away over thick buzzing rumbles and whirring low end, all wreathed in swaths of hum and thrum, and super dynamic, with the track stopping to creep along like some industrial doom, before gradually building back up again, the second half of the track super melodic and melancholy, all minor key and midtempo, a sort of true doom electronica if that makes any sense, building and building to a final few minutes blow out of metallic industrial pummel, which leads directly into "Led To The Water", which is all blown out metallic dirgery, the guitars thick and corrosive, the beats all Godfleshy and mechanical, the vocals a howled feral wail, the vibe is somewhere between black metal, Neurosis and Godflesh or Neurosis, the churning heaviness underpinned by all sorts of subtle melodic shimmer, the metal sort of peeling away, leaving a stripped down skeletal lumber, that fades out, the sounds growing more and more brittle before disappearing in a dubbed out haze. Hard to resist, another one of those bands that we sort of always wished existed and now does. This is some dancefloor destroying heaviness, the sort of stuff that no proper DJ in their right mind would drop, but if they did, people would lose their shit.
Much of this record plays out more like some blackened industrial metalscape, not electronica so much as programmed beats driving big riffs and grim atmospheres, but that can change when you least expect it, like on "Endless Vertex", when another sprawl of downtuned lumber gradually shifts into a gorgeous glimmery bit of beat heavy skitter, or the sort of DJ Shadow-ish blackened hip hop of "Shadows of Reflections of Ghosts Past", or even the sort of droned out krautrock shuffle of "Starbeast", that track adding swirls of synth, and thick undulating low end, resulting in a fantastically broody slab of low end beat driven minimal mesmer.
But again in between those instances of overt electronica, NdM are a seriously heavy outfit, trafficking in the sort of effects drenched programmed drum driven doom, that will have Nadja obsessives losing their minds.
As always, WAY recommended! For folks into electronic music, heavy music, or obviously both, and like the other two records, a shoe in for end of year top ten lists, even though it's only May. Packaged in a cool super black 6 panel digipak.
MPEG Stream: "Imperial"
MPEG Stream: "Led To The Water"
MPEG Stream: "Endless Vertex"
MPEG Stream: "Wretched Hag"

NUMBER NONE Strategies Against Agriculture (Land Of Decay) cassette 7.98
We loved NN's Urmerica record, reviewed here a long while back, a strange concoction of thick layered drone music, noise flecked field recordings and blissed out ur-drone shimmer, a sound we likened to Jazzfinger, Birchville and other sonically likeminded longform noisescapers, and this latest offers up more of the same, which makes sense when you realize that this is not in fact a new recording, but instead is an archival release, that had sat on the shelf for years, originally intended for release way back in 2007-2008. Not sure if this band is still active, but the fact that these guys were making noise like this and somehow managed to remain mostly under the radar boggles the mind. This shit is massive, dense, heavy, brutal, blown out, the group deftly weaving guitarnoise and harmonium drones into heaving swells of crumbling crush, blowing speakers with a fearsome intensity, before shifting ever so subtly, and those same sounds are transformed into something much more blissed out and hypnotic. There's a definitely soundtrack element, but it's the sort of music you wish some director actually had the balls to use in a film, emotional and hauntingly bleak, dense and fearsomely atmospheric, evoking all manner of images, most sinister and otherworldly, but sometimes it's easy to let your mind drift, eyes closed, headphones strapped on, and get lost in some grim, grey city, devoid of life, or some lost highway, that seems to trail off into the horizon, disappearing into the blackness.
Way recommended for folks into grim black ambience, psychedelic noise, and post industrial soundscapery, which as we often say, is most likely a whole lot of you.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

NURSE WITH WOUND Creakiness And Other Misdemeanours (United Jnana) cd 14.98
The exasperating catalogue of Nurse With Wound is filled with limited edition titles that might have been sold at an art show or a concert or for no other reason than because Steven Stapleton wanted to do it. So, there's ample opportunity to anthologize the NWW back catalogue of rarities, following the cd reissues originally on World Serpent which would tack on a compilation track or three to flesh out the material from an older lp. Creakiness originally came out in 1991 on a split lp through United Dairies; it appeared shortly thereafter on the Sugar Fish Drink anthology with a bunch of other NWW oddities; and now Creakiness gets headline status with the 'other misdemeanours' dating from 2004-2005 including some limited editions from the Echo Poeme sessions and a track from the "Having Fun With The Prince Of Darkness" single sold at a Current 93 gig in 2004. Got it?
Creakiness is an aptly named piece, as Stapleton builds his own machined music from door creaks and metal klanks, sliding these in and out of a forest folk interlude crafted by Joolie Wood and Tony Wakeford. Perhaps something akin to Vashti Bunyan trying to find common ground with Luigi Russolo and Pierre Henry. The Echo Poeme sessions take their inspiration from the stylized, cerebral dreaminess of the film Last Year At Marienbad. In all of the Echo Poeme sessions, Stapleton works with female French narrators whose whispered dictation expands into a narcoleptic glossolalia of delicately overlapping vocal fragments and abstractions. The Echo Poeme recordings found on this disc tend to be darker and more unnerving than on the more wildly available Echo Poeme Sequence 2. The horror sound design of "A Perfectly Natural Expectation" from that aforementioned single is a classic Stapleton piece of radioactive squiggles and bending atonal chorals. Brilliant as always.
MPEG Stream: "Creakiness"
MPEG Stream: "Sand Tangled Women Part Two"
MPEG Stream: "Little Dipper Minus Two"

NURSE WITH WOUND & GRAHAM BOWERS Rupture (Dirter Promotions) 2lp 31.00
Now, on vinyl, for Record Store Day we were told, though they only just showed up...
Graham Bowers is a name that you may have heard floating around in the mid '90s, perhaps by way of some choice reviews in The Wire. While the nature of those recordings escapes us, he claims an eclectic heritage of avant-garde practices that might gravitate towards the Chris Cutler side of progressive composition. In the smattering of interviews we've read, he comes off like a perpetual outsider with no interest in participating in any particular 'scene' of experimental music. Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) met Bowers while both participated in a 2011 sound-art festival in Wales; the two then embarked on an ambitious collaborative project resulting in this unnerving, post-classical album attempting to articulate the inner workings of a human brain that had suffered a stroke and that has only a little over hour before death.
The dominant 'voice' within Rupture is a cacophonous collage built upon orchestral samples, fixated mostly on bombastic horns and kettledrum crashes. While the origins of the sampling is unclear, Bowers and Stapleton make little attempt to obfuscate the sampled technology, with the symphonic samples played through the keyboard, discordant and portentous. Amidst these orchestral blurts, quintessential slashes and enigmatic drones indicate Stapleton's signature sound design, with warbling ballroom vocals from Victrola recordings, amplified heartbeats, and unanswered telephones ringing. The album's entire mood is one of panic that steadily fades to black, and hardly qualifies as easy listening.
MPEG Stream: "A Life As It Now Is"
MPEG Stream: "And Never Will Be Again"

POTTER, COLIN Ancient History (Ultra-Mail Productions) 4cd 48.00
We discovered Colin Potter many years ago, through his heady production and sound design in Nurse With Wound, Ora, and Monos; yet like so many pioneering electronic musicians in the '80s, he released a slew of cassettes overflowing with various sonic experiments and audio excursions. Ancient History collects four of Potter's tapes charting his output from 1979 to 1989, including A Gain, Two Nights, and Recent History Volumes 1 & 2. Back in this time period, Potter was working in a post-kosmische aesthetic with a small arsenal of synths, step sequencers, drum machines, guitars, and effects. He had yet to incorporate the heavy-lidded drone and field recording component which he's been associated with as of late; but those tapes positioned his sound not too far from the Moebius / Schnitzler / Schulze axis of progressive electronics with a healthy dose of Chris Carter's DIY aesthetic tossed in for good measure.
A Gain was released in 1982 through his ICR imprint and is a culmination of work dating back to 1979. The opening number to this album is a bright hypnotic piece for glockenspiel and synthesizer, which builds upon elliptical phrases on those instruments with greater and greater density and kaleidoscopic fervor, snugly situated between Terry Riley's A Rainbow In Curved Air and Cluster's percolating motorik electron-pop. Elsewhere on A Gain, Potter pulls out the guitar to augment the synth blorp and drive with some fine Manuel Gottsching-esque explorations. Two Nights from 1981 is probably the cream of the crop here, not to belittle anything else on the set; but this is a great piece of futuristic electronics that is a must have for anyone keen on John Carpenter and Goblin soundtracks! The two original side long pieces both extend from the cosmic swoosh into dynamic kraut-disco jams with incremental sequences accelerating through drum machine, neon-lit synth cascades, and more heavily phased guitar solos. Potter adds a third lengthy bonus track of similar material to round out this fantastic disc.
The Recent History discs compile various Potter projects from 1986-1989, and find him in more of a darker, somber mood with ritualized ambience drifting about his more earthen sounding sequences and sodden acoustic guitar melodies. While there's much of the same instrumentation, Potter's production also becomes far more complex with more of the shadowy, occluded techniques that he would later master during his tenure in Nurse With Wound. As such, these tracks tend to parallel some of the work of Coil and O Yuki Conjugate, and even predates some of the melodic aspects of the ambient side of IDM that would emerge five or six years later.
This is quite different from the song-based minimal wave album of early Colin Potter material released on Vinyl On Demand; but certainly showcases just how great all of those early tapes of his were and how well they hold up today!
MPEG Stream: "You Tell Me"
MPEG Stream: "All Reel"
MPEG Stream: "8th June 1982"
MPEG Stream: "Ships That Pass In The Night"

PRIZEHOG A Talking To (Gravity) 12" 12.98
For the longest time, when people into heavy music asked us who the best band in SF was, we would generally say Burmese (of course), maybe Slough Feg, sometimes the Fucking Champs, if they said EVER, then it would be Weakling hands down (or, well, we could argue for hours). But over the last few years, more and more amazing heavy bands have been giving those other bands a run for best-heavy-band-in-the-city money, none moreso than boy-girl-boy doom-crush psych-sludge trio Prizehog, who over the course of the last couple years have become the sort of band that should be HUGE. Every Melvins Nerd and Harvey Milk obsessive out there, should WORSHIP these guys (and gal). It's definitely only a matter of time, their records kill, but live they DESTROY, their set at our South By Southwest showcase was a stunner, and they sort of stole the show, and it's not hard to see why, especially here, on Prizehog record number two (number three if you count their long out of print debut cd-r), which finds the band further honing their sound, still present are of course massive skull caving drum pound, churning downtuned guitar chug, percolating sci-fi synths, the Melvins / Harvey Milk still huge, but Prizehog seem to want to be both a psychedelic space sludge band, and some sort of sludge pop band, and it's that split personality, that makes this shit rule, every song a push and pull between all out freakout, and hook heavy crunch, and somehow, instead of opting for one or the other, they simply figure out a way to do both at once, weaving impossibly catchy melodies, hooks galore into blackened doom sludge dirges, and then stretching that shit out into droned out psychedelic heaviness. The vocals a deep dramatic croon, the keyboard unleashing all manner of textures and psychedelic sounds, everything tangled up with the group's progged out downtuned crush.
All three songs here are great, but the 11 minute closer might be THEE jam here, a brooding slow build, all super textured and psychedelic, with some haunting harmony vocals, and twisted FX over a churning chug, and some doomic pound, the group allowing for lots of space, letting notes ring out, and gradually decay before the next hit, stretching it way out, before exploding into some serious mathed out noise rock pummel, only to then blossom into some weirdly progged out epic majestic bombast, before devolving into a closing coda of dirgey drum creep and blown out guitar moan, before a final blast of mathy crunch.
Released on the legendary Gravity Records label, which makes Prizehog labelmates with groups like Mohinder, Heroin, Clikatat Ikatowi, Angel Hair, The Locust, Man Is The Bastard, Universal Order Of Armageddon, Unwound and more! Fuck Yeah!
MPEG Stream: "Luck, The Bailing Haymaker"
MPEG Stream: "Mountaintop Removal"

ROTOMAGUS The Sky Turns Red: Complete Anthology (Lion Productions) cd 14.98
Woah! Francais Metal de Proto!!! Dunno if y'all remember a cd-r mix that was floating around a few years ago, featuring such obscure & amazing early '70s French proto-metal, heavy psych acts as Docdail, Les Variations, Chico Magnetic Band, Quo Vadis, Zoo, and this band, Rotomagus. It caused a bit of sensation 'round these parts. Seriously, there was some incredible, ahead-of-its-time heaviness on there. So whenever we track something down by any of those bands we get pretty dang excited. And this is the best reissue related to that to come along yet, an anthology of the complete recorded works of this group, responsible for the raucous, more proto-punk than proto-metal really track "Fighting Cock" on that comp, which also featured Rotomagus' equally radical singles tracks "Eros" and "Madame Wanda". Those are all here, of course, as well as five more tracks from 45s, and entirety of the band's even more maniacal final unreleased 1971 demo session, which includes rawer versions of "Fighting Cock" and a few of the other singles cuts too... 17 tracks in all. Quite a treasure trove!
Now, as we've previously discussed, a LOT of awesome music came out in 1971. But very little if any of it was quite as freaked out and fucking punk as "Fighting Cock"! Elsewhere, among the tracks here, there ARE some poppier, melodic moments, which only make the aggro acid rock explosions of most of the rest of the disc seem even more insane. Certainly the two flowery tracks from the band's debut 1969 single, lush and la-la-la filled, don't provide any warning of how crazed Rotomagus would sound just a year or two later. Too bad the band never got to record a proper album, but presumably the record company heard the full-length demo found here and, shocked, pulled the plug on Rotomagus's career, robbing the world of an early entree into a realm of Raw Power that it would take Iggy & the Stooges another couple years to achieve... Seriously, this stuff is proof that Rotomagus belong in the annals of the "early heavy", high energy division, alongside the likes of the Stooges, MC5, Sir Lord Baltimore, Jerusalem, Night Sun, Crushed Butler, Colored Balls, Cerebrum, May Blitz, and Detroit's Death.
So, if you want a disc full of distorted stomp, wailing wah-wah'd out geetar, and wild vocals, look no further! There's fuzz and FX a-plenty, plus schizoid proggery and other weirdness (like the chipmunk vocals of the single version of "Laureline"). The Hendrix-y title cut is almost tame by comparison to some of the rest of this stuff, which comes off like the Pink Fairies at their most punk... It's funny, France turned out some bands in the late '70s who sounded like the Stooges (Angel Face, Soggy) but who knew they had one this early too?
As with all Lion reissues, nicely appointed, with a 32 page booklet full of liner notes, in both English and French, including the (practically frothing with amazement and disbelief) review of the "Fighting Cock" single that the Seth Man originally scribed for Julian Cope's Head Heritage website a few years ago...
FYI there is also a double lp vinyl version of this planned for release sometime this fall.
MPEG Stream: "Fighting Cock (demo)"
MPEG Stream: "Eros"
MPEG Stream: "Laureline (single)"
MPEG Stream: "Hello The Binaries"

SALT Issue Ten magazine 5.00
There's always a long wait between issues, but as longtime readers of the aQ list know, it's always worth the wait. And we know lots of longtime aQ-ers, are also longtime fans of Salt, which is the way it should be. A very occasionally published zine, produced by our pal Kevin, a contributor to Rock-A-Rolla magazine, but with Salt, he gets to focus on his true passions, whether that means some obscure band, or some obscure wrestler, all part of the charm. And as we mention in pretty much every review, we keep hoping Salt will either become a proper mag, or in some way become a more regular thing, cuz every issue is a huge treat, and before we know it, we've burned through it and are already hankering for a new one.
This time around, things start off with a feature on another obscure zine, this one called German Bite, a fanzine focused on German art, film and theater, and a mag that we've never read, but from reading ABOUT it here, definitely has us curious to track down some copies. There's also an introduction to aQ faves Maher Shalal Hash Baz, originally intended for Salt #3 (and written in 2001!), as well as a lengthy piece enumerating the various ways that the author loves the late great Royal Trux. Then there's a great piece on the long lost late great seventies post punk / new wave combo Neu Electrikk (which featured one member who would go on to record/perform as Hwyl Nofio, a name familiar to most longtime readers of the aQ list), and an interview with the guy behind LTM Recordings, and finally an interview with Elephant Six psych poppers The Minders.
There are some comics, some editorial content, a tribute to the late great British abstract painter John Hoyland and more, and all for $5. Salt always comes highly recommended, especially in an age of blogs and webzines, we should treasure the folks out there who still make proper zines, especially when they're as good as Salt!

SHOP ASSISTANTS s/t (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
NOW ON VINYL!!
Only a few of us had even heard of this Scottish '80s indie sensation when this amazing reissue first hit our shelves but as soon as we listened we all instantly became huge fans and couldn't believe how they had managed to slip under our radar.
Coming out of the same scene that spawned The Pastels, this is really the precursor to the amazing twee and indie rock that would so dominate the underground music scene in the decade to come. Kind of like an impossibly amazing mix of Heavenly, The Vaselines and the driving spirit of early R.E.M. The songs of the Shop Assistants practically sound like the blueprints for K records. We have to believe folks like Beat Happening and The Softies had copies of this record when the whole International Pop Underground movement started up. We hear so much of our favorite indie pop sounds in this record: Magnetic Fields, Yo La Tengo, Belle & Sebastian, Electrelane, Vivian Girls, The Aislers Set, we could go on and on. It also makes perfect sense that Stephen Street engineered the record as it also fits so nicely sonically next to the records he worked on with The Smiths. The Shop Assistants can sound so dreamy and also so peppy and rocking, fully charming and irresistible without every being cutsey. This is a must have for anyone with a love for any of the bands mentioned above, indie rock, twee, dream pop, etc. Totally endearing and so damn good! If we have anything to do with it, Shop Assistants will no longer be the best kept secret in indie pop history. This is amazing!
MPEG Stream: "I Don't Want To Be Friends With You"
MPEG Stream: "All That Ever Mattered"
MPEG Stream: "All Of The Time"

SIGH In Somniphobia (Candlelight) cd 12.98
Japan's Sigh are back again with more of their batshit bonkers symphonic black metal as only they can do it. If you liked their previous dizzying disc Scenes From Hell, or most of the ones before that, then In Somniphobia is a no brainer. More of their over the top orchestrated million mile an hour eccentricity, that can stop on a dime to veer from prog-power metal bombast to classical soundtrack atmospherics to frenzied oompah action to, uh, "Baker Street" style sax soloing. With buzzing synths and sound FX, widdly guitars and filthy vokills, jagged industrial beats and loungey jazz interludes, there's a LOT crammed into each of these eleven tracks. Unusual (for metal) instruments used include sitar, jaw harp, shortwave, sarangi, accordion, glockenspiel, etc. etc. And one thing they don't neglect (along with the kitchen sink) is a large dose of MELODY. Some of it's kinda cheesy, to be sure, but in chaotic juxtaposition with everything else, that melodiousness comes off as crazed and creepy as well. And makes their avant-garde metal surprisingly listenable. Sigh fans already know more or less what to expect... for everyone else, it's kinda like Cradle Of Filth as if conducted by John Zorn, or Mike Patton!
Guests include Metatron from likeminded loons Meads Of Asphodel and Kam Lee of Death/Massacre fame. And the cover art is again by Eliran Kantor, who has come up with an amazing painting here.
By the way, we just figured out that Sigh's studio albums have a special naming convention to 'em, kinda like how Morbid Angel's are arranged alphabetically (Altars of Madness, Blessed Are The Sick, Covenant, Domination, etc.). The first letter of the title of each Sigh album is either an S, I, G, or H, and chronologically in order, they've spelled out S-I-G-H-S-I-G-H-S-I so far...
MPEG Stream: "The Transfiguration Fear"
MPEG Stream: "Somniphobia"
MPEG Stream: "Equale"

SLOUGH FEG, THE LORD WEIRD s/t (Cruz Del Sur / Beef Rock) lp 13.98
At looooong last, back in print, on vinyl, the debut album from this cult SF metal band, originally a self-released cd that came out in 1996. It's been reissued a couple times before, on cd and lp, but those versions are out of print too. And unlike those earlier reissues, which tacked on bonus demo tracks (and questionable new artwork), this version sticks to the original, short but sweet track list. The cover art is again different, but better, featuring a shadowy old promo photo of the band in full Celtic warpaint. It's a gatefold jacket, and it's mastered at 45rpm! Limited to 500 copies.
We wrote thusly, in part, about this record, long long ago:
When people talk about the 'happening' San Francisco music scene, they're not usually talking about The Lord Weird Slough Feg - unless it's a denim-clad German metalhead who's doing the talking! Then, perhaps you'll hear them rave about these guys. Utterly trend-free true heavy metal rock n' roll, equal parts Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Queen, Judas Priest, Manowar, Manilla Road...and some Black Flag too, but you'd have to really pay attention to hear that. Slough Feg's music is epic, rockin', riff-laden stuff with heroic vocals and tons of lead guitar. Their lyrics deal with fantasy, insanity, and Celtic myth. They originally released their first cd, a self-titled half-hour-long mini-album, on their own Beef Rock label back in 1996, and it has long since gone out of print. Since then, they've managed to develop a bit of a cult following in Europe, as well as among a select group of enlightened American metal fans [more now than ever, in fact, they just signed to Metal Blade], including quite a few Aquarius customers.
It's nice to have this be available again, as it features several of the Feg's best songs: the Sabbathy "Shadows of the Unborn", the Irish jig "The Red Branch" (always a live favorite), parts III and IV of their prog-rock epic "High Season", the ripping yet melodic "20th Century Wretch", and others.
They're definitely one of those love 'em or hate 'em bands, and lots of folks just aren't gonna "get" 'em. They're often seen to be too weird for a lot of metal fans, but also way too metal for everyone else. And the "extreme" metal crowd might find them too melodic as well. But for some, they're one of the best bands around. People who like The Fucking Champs for not-entirely-ironic reasons (or, actually, for those too, why not?) should check Slough Feg out. Slough Feg are *not* ironic, and *are* somewhat ridiculous, but they know it and have the nerve to do what they do anyway 'cause they love it. Besides, all that serious, dark, black, death metal can be pretty darn ridiculous too when you think about it or read the lyrics.
MPEG Stream: " Shadows Of The Unborn"
MPEG Stream: "The Red Branch"
MPEG Stream: "High Season IV"

SPLIT CRANIUM s/t (Hydra Head) lp 28.00
Finally, we have enough of these in their swank vinyl elpee incarnation to list!! Here's what we said about the cd version when we first reviewed it...
A few weeks ago we listed the debut, limited edition 7" single from Finnish/American hardcore hypno-punk supergroup Split Cranium. That was the teaser for this here Hydra Head full length, which includes that single's A side (the B side was a Daniel Menche remix) "Scepters To Rust", along with seven other (mostly) short sharp shocks of this band's noisy, gnarly, D-beat driven loud/fast attack. Featuring our pals Aaron Turner (Mamiffer, Isis, House Of Low Culture, etc.) and Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Steel Mammoth, etc. etc.) along with another of the guys who plays with Jussi in Steel Mammoth. Here's what we said about that track on the single: "Cranium splitting heaviness for sure. Pounding drums, kick ass riffs, massive HEAVY production, some seriously crusty punk blowouts woven into more metallic chug and crunch, peppered with wild squiggly metal shred freakouts, and bizarre echo drenched vocals, that make this sound very Circle-like indeed." Well, a Circle-like version of aggro crusty HC punk anyway (if you've got Circle's Panic cd from a while back, you've had a taste of this). And that pretty much goes for this whole album, starting from the 1:47 blast of "Little Brother", Split Cranium cranking out the raw distorted punkrock in race-to-the-finish, fist-in-your-face fashion. None of the first three tracks break the 2 minute mark, in fact, they get shorter and shorter. But then, with "Blossoms From Boils", the band starts to groove a little more, that's where the Turbonegro-doing-NWOFHM comparison we made in our 7" review comes in. They stretch that one out to almost 5 minutes, and as cranium-splitting headaches go, it's a darn catchy one. A couple tracks further along, we come to "Black Blinding Plague", a track that's about 50 percent just feedback, before the crush and churn and sore throat vokills come in and the party really starts. No wonder they got noisician/droneologist Daniel Menche to do that remix! (Though we wonder, was Merzbow not available?). And then a song called "Yellow Mountain" gets to gallopin', upping the "New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal" quotient while also bringing in some soaring, clean, chant-like vocals (mixed under/above the gruff shouty ones). Beginning to hear some early Circle here, circa Meronia, but more punked out for sure. That awesome headbanger is followed by the album's grand finale, the 8+ minute "Retrace The Circle". It takes the sound of "Yellow Mountain" and gets more epic and Isis-y with it, building into grand spaced out drone heaviness and ending with a totally distorted noise flourish. Wow. We're sold.
For a project such as this, with key members living many time zones apart, who probably spend more time emailing each other than they ever get to spend jamming together in the same practice space, it's damn convincing. But then, we'd expect nothing less from Jussi and Aaron, et. al. And while Circle and Isis fans should of course be interested in this, we feel Split Cranium is good enough to garner fans on their own merits. If we'd never heard of Circle or Isis or Steel Mammoth, we'd still be digging Split Cranium's freaked out HC.
Vinyl edition includes digital download code.
MPEG Stream: "Blossoms From Boils"
MPEG Stream: "Scepters To Rust"
MPEG Stream: "Yellow Mountain"

SUPERBUGGER AKU (Heart & Crossbone) cd 11.98
Superbugger is a new duo made up of Antony Milton (Mrtyu, the Stumps, Nether Dawn, Sunken, ) and James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate), both of whom have a long history in the NZ underground, and who in Superbugger, pay homage to the NZ bands that came before, most specifically the Dead C, Superbugger's sound a similarly blown out, in-the-red, crumbling pop flecked noise rock, as well as some sonic worship for the Japanese bands that pretty much invented psych-noise heaviness, Les Rallizes Denudes, Mainliner, White Heaven and the like. Sans headphones, listening to Superbugger, might be akin to the vacuum or the dishwasher, a constant barrage of grey noise, of staticky buzz and blurred thrum, but strap on some headphones, or crank those speakers, and let this corrosive psych-noise blowout wash over you. Wild squalls of psychedelic shred, caustic sheets of feedback, listen heard and you'll hear drumming, and vocals, melodies, there are definitely pop songs at the heart of some of these jams, while others take that pop element and tear it apart, spreading it out beneath a sky full of black noise and amp melting buzz. We hear plenty of Skullflower too, this definitely sounds like it could be some lost Broken Flag cassette reissued, which is high praise indeed, and while both of these guys have dabbled in psychedelic heaviness, Superbugger seems to be the culmination of these guys' quest for pure psych-noise nirvana, which is almost achievable just by listening.
Fans of any of the above mentioned bands, or anyone who loves cramming their ears full of blown out psych and noise rock crush, preferably both, will definitely find much to love about Supperbugger..
MPEG Stream: "Strobe"
MPEG Stream: "Lips"

TATE, DARREN Close Timid Night (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
Close Timid Night is another hand-fabricated, super-limited production from the British eccentric sound artist Darren Tate. His field recording and drone-based work was part of the seminal collective Ora, which found Darren working closely with Andrew Chalk, Colin Potter, Michael Northam, and Jonathan Coleclough. Since then, he's loosened his grip on the drone and has encouraged atypical interactions between long passages of field recordings and an outsider approach to guitar and / or synth. He populates this piece with nocturnal domestic events of creaks from the attic, the ticking of a wind-up clock, the murmur of passing cars, the meowing of cats, and the occasional rattling water pipe all tied together with recordings of distant bursts of fireworks with none of the celebratory cheer and reveling that always echo the flashes of light and thunderous cracks. There's plenty of space for these starkly described environmental sounds, and Tate overlays a monotone hum and his meandering clusters of notes on his synthesized harpsichord. It gives the feel that Tate is allowing his mind to wander whilst peering through the window at the fireworks streaming over a nearby village. Not too sure how limited this one is, but probably somewhere around 50 copies would be our guess.
MPEG Stream: "Close Timid Night"

TELESCOPES, THE Black Eyed Dog (Trensmat) 7" 7.98
One of two new 7"s on the Trensmat label this week, the other, the most recent from NYC bliss poppers Cheval Sombre, is reviewed elsewhere on the list, and then there's this, a record from psychedelic space rock legends The Telescopes. And as we no doubt have mentioned before, folks into the current crop of psych/space rock, who dig folks like White Hills, Carlton Melton, Wooden Shjips, etc., who somehow haven't heard the Telescopes, well, shit, it's never too late, and odds are you're have another new favorite band, and loads of records to track down. And this 7" is as good a place to start as any, although it definitely offers up a less rocking side of the band, the A side, a brooding cover of the Nick Drake track "Black Eyed Dog", here rendered in shades of black and grey, thick blurred swells of smoldering guitar, laced with delicate skeletal spidery melodies, and soft shimmery clouds of barely there FX, the vocals a hushed croon, the original was dark, but this is seriously haunting and ominous, a gorgeous bit of moody minimal mesmer. The B side starts with a strange sort of intro, a minimal bit of banjo laid over a churning swirl of buzzing FX, with spoken word by John Sinclair (founder of the White Panther Party, and one time manager of the MC5), while the second song on the B side, continues on in a similarly abstract direction, a strange soundscape of lazer effects and buzzing guitar drone, of blurred feedback, and jagged shard of truncated melody, bits of percussion and recordings of random conversations drift along this tripped out stream of smeared psychedelic minimalism.
The record includes a download code, which not only gets you the 7"s tracks proper, but also includes a killer live track, that finds the band sounding more like Birchville Cat Motel or Sunroof!, with another sprawl of abstract guitardrone and ambient experimentalism, as well as an instrumental version of "Black Eyed Dog", featuring Bridget Hayden, and which cranks up the 7" version, adding more noise, more guitars, and turns it into something much more blown out and heady!
Super limited, with Trensmat releases we generally only get one shot, and once the batch we get runs out, that's it, which means, of course, you should grab one of these before they're all gone for good.
MPEG Stream: "Black Eyed Dog"
MPEG Stream: "Mind Hold"

TORCHE Harmonicraft (Volcom) cd 11.98
By now, probably everyone knows who Torche is, and has an inkling of what they sound like, but if not, you're in for a pretty kick ass surprise. Cuz these guys are like the pop band you always wished existed, in that they fuse big hooks and crazy melodies to massive downtuned guitar crush and pounding drum damage, and with every record, they seem to move further and further away from their sludgey beginnings and toward a sound that manages to be more and more accessible, without getting any less heavy. Seems impossible but it's true. Torche are like what we wished Queens Of The Stoneage sounded like, catchy as shit, and crazy heavy, just check out a track like "Kicking", with it's almost bubblegum chorus, and it's furious churning metallic main riff, the combination is pretty much a dream come true for folks like us who like our pop crazy catchy, and our heavy HEAVY. There were hints on past records of what these guys were capable of, but holy shit, Harmonicraft pretty much realizes all of that potential, it's so catchy and fun, and hooky and heavy, that it's almost like sonic candy, total heavy pop bliss, we've listened to this record probably 50 times in the last two weeks, and we're not even close to getting tired of it. For more in depth raving about Torche and their particular peculiar brand of sludge pop songcraft, you can check out the other Torche reviews on the aQ site, but for now, just know that this is probably THEE best heavy pop / sludge pop record this year, and heck, really any year, and based on how many plays this gets, it might just be a contender for RECORD of the year, pop, sludge or otherwise!!
MPEG Stream: "Letting Go"
MPEG Stream: "Kicking"
MPEG Stream: "Walk It Off"
MPEG Stream: "Reverse Inverted"

TREPANERINSGRITUALEN Roi Perdu (Black Horizons) cassette 8.98
Latest from local label comes this reissue from the before now unknown to us Trepaneringsritualen, who hail from Sweden, and who most definitely sound Swedish, unfurling a sort of bleak black ambience, a drifting Cold Meat Industry style grim malevolence, underpinned by woozy snake charmer melodies, muted skeletal rhythmic pulses, croaked, FX heavy vokills, all over a washed out shimmery haze, this is the sort of ritualistic soundscapery that relies more on texture that sheer power, but in that respect, it manages to conjure up something more more harrowing, a haunting, hypnotic chunk of blackened tribal psychedelia, sounding a bit like No Neck or Sunburned Hand if they were on Cold Meat, but for every bit of tripped out, pulsing, abstract krautrock flecked black mesmer, there's a churning sprawl of low end thrum, or a dense layered stretch of blurred soft focus ambience. Those sounds more often than not mixed and matched, fused in strange, and fantastically disturbing combinations.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!! Packaged in beautifully silkscreened gold inked three panel J-cards.

U.S. GIRLS U.S. Girls On Kraak (KRAAK) lp 15.98
The last time we heard from U.S. Girls, it was on a split single from the as-of-then-unknown project Dirty Beaches, a one-man band which pretty much exploded onto the scene with a drug'n'drone approach to rockabilly minimalism later perfected on his universally acclaimed album Badlands. On that single, Dirty Beaches was a perfect match for the equally deconstructed, if far more fucked-up anti-pop from U.S. Girls - the one-woman project of Meghan Remy. There and on her two lps for Siltbreeze, she purposefully imploded crooning electro-pop ditties, smearing the fragments with crusty noise and hallucinatory echo. It turns out that Remy's aggressively lo-fi aesthetic was built out of necessity; and she claimed in an interview once that she'd love to make an overly produced, glossy pop album. Those claims should be taken with a pretty hefty grain of salt, as her album U.S. Girls On Kraak is thoroughly damaged, even as it enjoys a much cleaner production. The cover of the disposable RnB hit "The Boy Is Mine" from Monica & Brandi takes a nasty, stalker-like turn towards the gritty minimal-wave of early Cold Cave even as Remy croons the lyrics with considerable aplomb. Elsewhere, her synths are decidedly sharp and jagged, and her voice is cat-scratched and wild-eyed, set above similarly imploded songs from her earlier albums with a few more flares like a Patsy Cline ballad soaked in equal parts cheap liquor and reverb or a Nina Hagen-esque demonic cabaret number. Yeah, it's pretty fucked-up; and that's the way we like it!

UFOMAMMUT Oro: Opus Primum (Neurot) cd 14.98
Calling all psychedelic warlords, your spaceship is about to blast off! Space is the place, the place for dooooom! Yes, those mystical wizards of doom-riffed space rock, Italian power trio UFOmammut, have returned from the stars to crush all Earthlings with a new album, this time released domestically by the Neurot label, run by the Neurosis folks. Which makes a LOT of sense. Their mutual love of Hawkwind being but one thing that would make these two bands likely BFFs.
Track one, "Empireum", is a typical UFOmammut slow-build of sci-fi synth drone that only kicks into maximum density at about the 10 minute mark, with crashing drums, howling guitar, and spaced out screams. Actually, everything is spaced out, druggy, and heavily effected, of course, with heaviness and FX being two of UFOmammut's hallmarks after all. And it's no wonder that almost everyone involved is credited with both "synths" and "screams".
Next up, the equally epic, fuzz pounding "Aureum" could simply be a continuation of "Empireum", and really, the entirely of Oro: Opus Primum, while divided into 5 individual "songs", could almost be regarded as one lengthy, continuous piece, each track synth-ily segueing into the next... In fact that's the plan, UFOmammut envisioning Oro as a ten-part, alchemical composition; the second half of which, Opus Alter, being due for release in September. So we have that to look forward to, after allowing several months for the five part Opus Primum to blast away at our brains by itself.
We could go on, and on, describing the heavy FX-laden chuggery - and occasional interlude of cosmic calm - of this first of the two Oro opi. But heck we've made a couple previous UFOmammut slabs Records Of The Week, so you know we love 'em, and you probably do too, and this one is no disappointment, following on perfectly from the trippy "dooooom in SPAAAAAAACE" sound of their prior album Eve, and others. Doubtful we could outdo those earlier reviews of ours in describing UFOmammut's sound(z), so please refer to those write-ups if you are new to the band. Otherwise, as we said, all aboard, blasting off!
MPEG Stream: "Empireum"
MPEG Stream: "Infearnatural"
MPEG Stream: "Magickon"

V/A Bed of Pain (Mississippi Records) lp 15.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
One of two amazing new compilations from Mississippi, along with the Sticks Over My Shoulder blues com found elsewhere on this week's list, there's Bed Of Pain, an amazing collection of Rembetika and Greek folk music, all culled from 78's (and never reissued on lp before) and representing a broad swath of Greek music, including tunes from before and after the 'golden age' of music making in Greece, as well as a handful of tracks from the Greek diaspora in the U.S., all linked by common themes, of hardship, escape and the quest for a better life.
It's hard to know how exactly to describe this stuff, other than to say we love it. Gorgeous male and female vocals, acoustic guitars and buzzing bouzouki melodies, bluesy ballads and wild gypsy folk jams, dances and marches, some mournful and moving, others dramatic and moody, and still others wild and celebratory. Even for folks not that well versed in Greek music, this is a treat, and will no doubt have you hunting for more.
Housed in a thick old school style tip on sleeve, with a printed set of liner notes inside, written by Ian Nagoski, who has curated some of our favorite comps: Black Mirror, Brass Pins & Match Heads, String Of Pearls, among others.

V/A God Damn, I Hate The Blues (KRAAK) 2x7" 14.98
This double 7" is not brand new, but it came with a batch of new stuff we finally got from Kraak, one of our favorite labels. Not sure what this double 7" is exactly, a label sampler maybe, we have a vague recollection of it commemorating a tour with all these bands, regardless, it's a pretty jam packed comp, with lots of aQ faves, the A side is outsider psych folk one man band Amen Dunes, with a track from his recently released Ethio Songs single, which finds him covering obscure Ethiopian pop songs, and it's the perfect combination, the original melodies and lyrics (sounds like he's actually singing the lyrics) still in tact, but the overall sound a bit more ramshackle and reverby, another one of those instances, where we sort of wish it wasn't a cover, and there was just a band that sounded like this all the time. Still, super awesome. The flipside starts out with Warm Climate, who we had never heard before, and whose sound is a sort of feedback drenched post punk, all low slung basslines, tribal drumming, and childlike vox, very rhythmic and propulsive, definitely into hearing more. The second track comes from long time aQ fave Ignatz, a glorious slab of lo-fi bedrooom folk, all detuned guitars and Dylan like vocal drawl, and spidery melodies over muted strum.
The second single starts out with another aQ fave Marisa Anderson, who played an instore here not too long back, and whose track here is a stunner, a fantastic slab of distorted electric guitar blues, lots of slippery slide and Appalachian fingerpicking, so good. Up next is Nathan Bowles, who offers up a short blast of old timey bluegrass stomp, and finally, the whole D side is given over to Bridget Hayden, who weaves a gorgeously minimal sprawl of gauzy Grouper-ish drift, hazy effected vocals over brittle lo-fi guitar strum, all druggy and washed out, softly psychedelic and dreamy.
Fairly limited we'd presume, housed in a swank heavy full color gatefold sleeve!

V/A Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974 - 1984 (Chocolate Industries) cd 19.98
What a great comp! Rare but amazing examples of "Black music" (that's the European term) from the '70s, done with a heavy helping of at-the-time cutting edge electronics. Spaced out soul, in other words. Well, obviously it wasn't just cosmic krautrockers and spacey prog bands in the '70s messing around with the latest in synthesizers and other electronic music-making devices. Why wouldn't soul, funk, gospel, and RnB artists also make use of all that newfangled machinery? Of course they would, with folks like Herbie Hancock and Sun Ra leading the way. And they did. Especially those making music at home, without access to big studio budgets. That's the "Personal" part of the title, the songs here pretty much all being solo DIY home-brewed recordings, enabled by the technology... Which, along with the futuristic/sci-fi vibes that go along with the tech, give a lot of this a bit of an additional eccentric "outsider" feel, just check out the artist known as Starship Commander Woo Woo, for instance!
So, the compilers of this collection have dug deep, to find all these fantastic selections of what you could call "electronic soul", that in the mainstream we'd really only previously heard from Shuggie Otis... so if you can imagine Shuggie Otis really way out in spaaaace, you've got an idea of what's happening here.
Fat, buzzing synths. The mechanical tick-tock of primitive drum machines. Spacey FX galore. Mega multitracked masterpieces. Yeah, it'd all be novelty, if these songs weren't good. But, they ARE good. Obscure but definitely grade-A stuff in our book. The sci-fi sounds (which make a lot of this seem simultaneously '70s retro but also very up-to-date electronica-ish) are put to use by artists who come across like mutant Stevie Wonders and Sly Stones. There's 17 tracks here, from names we doubt you've ever heard of before: Jeff Phelps, Guitar Red, Johnnie Walker, U.S. Aries, The Makers, Cotillion, Spontaneous Overthrow, Jerry Green, Johnson, Key & Cleary, The New Year, T. Dyson & Company, Steve Elliot, Deborah Washington, and the aforementioned Starship Commander Woo Woo. Kinda hard to pick faves, some are simply groovy, some super bizarre, many both at once...
The only omission we can think of, is that even though this gets into the '80s, there's nothing from Wicked Witch on here (see our review of EM's reissue of that if you aren't familiar). But what's here is plenty weird & wonderful, from the twangy zipzap of bluesman Guitar Red's "Disco From A Space Show" to the heavily echo-effected "My Bleeding Wound" by The New Year...
Nicely presented, the cd in deluxe hardbound booklike slipcased packaging, complete with liner notes including thumbnail images of each original release. And the vinyl version is a 180 gram double lp, also nicely packaged.
MPEG Stream: GUITAR RED "Disco From A Space Show"
MPEG Stream: JERRY GREEN "I Finally Found The Love I Need"
MPEG Stream: THE MAKERS "Don't Challenge Me"
MPEG Stream: STARSHIP COMMANDER WOO WOO "Master Ship (except)"

V/A Sticks Over My Shoulder (Mississippi / Change Records) lp 14.98
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Nobody does comps like Mississippi, whether it's blues, gospel, Rembeteka, whatever, every Mississippi comp is like some amazing mixtape made for you by that one guy with the most amazing record collection ever. An older brother, an uncle, somebody's cool mom or dad. Every single one offers up a whole new world of music to explore, and this one is no different. A collection of Georgia bluesman, recordings gathered up in the late seventies by George Mitchell, who was doing field research for the Georgia Grassroots Music Festival, in an attempt to track down actively performing bluesmen, which apparently was no easy feat, but the six artists here all pretty amazing finds.
There's John Lee Ziegler who strings his guitar with bass strings, has a gorgeous high clear voice, and who on one track is accompanied by a guy playing the spoons! There's also William Robertson, who has a cool, weird whiny nasal voice, but one that's perfectly suited to his slithery guitar style. Jim Bunkley has a super percussive strumming guitar style which is perfectly matched to his gruff belted vocals. There's also Jimmy Lee Williams who has a rich warm guitar sound, and another distinctive vocal style. And finally, there's James Davis, who plays fierce instrumental electric blues, always accompanied by a drummer, playing just a bass drum and a kettle drum, and folks around those parts still call Davis's music 'drum music'!
So cool. Housed in nice thick old school style tip on jackets, the extensive liner notes printed on the back.

V/A Voices From Valhalla: A Tribute To Bathory (Godreah Records) 2cd 18.98
Few could argue with the influence of Bathory on all the black metal that would follow, and this double disc compilation bears testament to that, a pretty serious lineup of groups, many of them aQ faves, some more obscure, some of them only barely black metal, but all paying tribute. Just check out the list: Sigh, Meads Of Asphodel, Nokturnal Mortum, Gods Tower, Gnaw Their Tongues, Old Corpse Road, Wolves Of Avalon, Folkvang, Koldbrann, Darkest Era, Ravens Creed, Skyforger, and the list goes on. And while the songs are all Bathory, the sounds differ dramatically, from murky raspy, black buzz, to pounding punkish thrash, and from blown out black dirgery to epic, folk flecked power metal. Gnaw Their Tongues, who might be of the most interest to non black metallers, delivers his most black metal jam yet, which you'd be hard pressed to peg as a GTT track, a churning, buzzing black frenzy, that manages to sound as troo and grim as any of the other bands here. And of course Sigh choose to confound as usual, offering up their version of "Under The Runes", that sounds like some twisted electro-new wave groove, laced with Japanese melodies, cheesy slow jam sax, weird FX, and garbled vox. The rest of the comp is much more true to the originals, and at once speaks to the power and the timelessness of Bathory's songs, but also to how their influence inspired so many disparate variations of a sound that in some ways is one of the cornerstones of modern BM.
Also included is a 30 minute interview with Bathory's Quorthon (RIP), originally recorded in 1996 for the Godreah zine, which shares its name with the label that released this, both of which were the work of one of the Meads Of Asphodel!
MPEG Stream: SIGH "Under The Runes"
MPEG Stream: GNAW THEIR TONGUES "Call From The Grave"
MPEG Stream: GODS TOWER "Song To Hall Up High"

VENTID Remember Your Audience (self-released) lp 11.98
Scott from local heavies Kowloon Walled City turned us on to these guys, knowing full well of our love for classic math rock, and holy shit, how did we not know about these guys? Their sound is essentially a modern version of that classic nineties sound, think Rodan, Shellac, June Of 44, A Minor Forest, Rumah Sakit, the same sort of dense, intricate arrangements, melodic and carefully crafted, with a distinct emo vibe, and blasts of explosive heaviness, interspersed with spidery, skeletal passages of delicate melody and woozy loping rhythms, the best parts when those various elements come together. Probably the most distinctive element is the addition of violin, which gives the sound a darkly dramatic vibe, at times conjuring up a slow build tension a la Godspeed, and at others channeling something more like the Dirty Three or Rachel's, but when the drums are pounding and the guitars are crunchy, and the violin is singing, it's pretty goddamn great. The recording too is crisp and clean, letting all the instruments shine, even at its most dense and busy, and the vocals are pretty ace too, usually a weak spot in bands like this.
And while these guys tend toward the more melodic side of math rock (unlike some of the above mentioned bands who leaned toward the heavy), Ventid are certainly capable of some serious rocking, but the fact that the playing is so nimble is what makes this stuff so good, these guys can flit from spidery psychedelic tangle to mathed out churn, to near metallic pound and back again without breaking a sweat. Plenty of stop/starts, and some serious stretches of progged out majesty, and all the while, these guys are writing some seriously catchy songs, you'll find yourselves lulled and entranced by some mathy movement, when all of a sudden a guitar or vocal melody will pop out, and lodge itself in your head. Really great stuff, and kicking ourselves big time for only finding out about these guys now.
Packaged in super cool hand screened jackets, and probably pretty limited.
MPEG Stream: "Terrestrian"
MPEG Stream: "Charade Of Parade Waves"
MPEG Stream: "Gumshoe"

VVLTVRE Hang Me (Corleone) 2lp 22.00
Many of you probably remember a strange release from a group called Throne Of Blood, that we reviewed years ago. Beyond the music, the packaging was ridiculous and amazing, a rubberized dvd style case, with evil looking faces and vines and flowers and a unicorn, complete with a glass eye, all molded into the cover, Evil Dead Necronomicon style. At the time we thought no bad could live up to that crazy packaging, but somehow Throne Of Blood did. A furious grinding noise metal juggernaut with wild splattery drumming and shrieked vocals, short sharp bursts of fuzzy, fucked up lo-fi Melt-Banana like noiserock math metal which KILLED. And then to seal the the deal, the second half of the record was just the first half in reverse, which transformed the sound into a tripped out metallic psychedelia. We had often wondered what happened to ToB. And now we now what happened to at least one of them, they ended up in this warped, twisted outfit, a duo called Vvltvre, whose sound we had seen described as sludge/doom, and while much of this is, some of it is way more fucked up and far out, in fact, most of it is. Just check out the opening title track, which spends its first few minutes unfurling some sort of creepy ritual, all tinkling chimes, distant drum pound, weird breathing, seriously demonic vocalizing, the sound growing increasingly more agitated, louder and more caustic, the drums becoming more tribal, the vox weirdly processed, resulting in something that sounds like a way more damaged and demented and blackened version of No Neck / Sunburned Hand / Avarus, until about 7 minutes in, the song explodes into a churning blackbuzz dirge, the black buzz provided by what sounds like an insanely distorted bass, while the tribal drums pound away underneath, think The Body crossed with Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, a sort of blacknoise doom, or a noise rock sludge, when the band lock into these dense looped rhythms, it almost sounds like a Lightning Bolt 45 spinning at 16 rpm. The opening track gradually begins to revert to the opening, like some sort of doom sludge palindrome, the sound getting more abstract, the rhythms more spare, a death march pound, over rumbling crumbling low end, laced with some cool tripped out backwards effects.
The B side follows a similar pattern, beginning with some ritualistic ambience, chanted vox, soft focus chordal shimmer, barely there percussion, then the drums come in, and it remains hauntingly tribal, like some ancient sonic ritual, and then eventually, the track again splinters into some seriously harsh heaviness, reminding us a bit of Monarch for sure, but with a definite Whitehouse vibe, the sort of droned out buzz beneath near hysterically shrieked vox, which again eventually erupt into some pounding noise rock dirgedoom mathiness. The third side mixes things up by foregoing the heaviness completely, and instead offering up a sprawling rhythmscape, all abstract drum pound, gurgling low end, subtly employed effects, lots of dark drones and washed out thrum, a gorgeous bit of meditative abstract ambient doom minimalism, which gives way to the closer, the 15 minute D side, which is all bass drone for the first 6 minutes, super minimal and hushed, before the drums creep in, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer, the bass growing more distorted, the final few minutes, a strange lurching, stuttering feedback drenched, super dynamic slo-mo math doom that ends WAY too soon.
WAY recommended for fans of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Khanate, Moss, Bunkur, Gnaw Their Tongues, Monarch, Wicked King Wicker, Wolf Eyes, Otesanek, Habsyll, Human Quena Orchestra and other purveyors of slow, low sonic sickness.
Fantastically packaged in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with some super striking artwork, while inside lurks a gorgeous handmade 32 page booklet, hand painted and glitter-ed, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "Hang Me"
MPEG Stream: "Ill Omen"

WHITE FENCE Vol. 1 & 2 (Family Perfume) (Woodsist) cd 13.98
Latest release from Tim Presley, aka one man lo-fi garage rock / noise pop band White Fence, a sprawling two volume collection of jams, culled from supposedly over 80 tracks, and this collection is a doozy, like past WF records, a collection of super varied pop weirdness, from super catchy indie jangle, to super fuzzy Kinks worship, from damaged zoner psych, to in the red garage punk swagger, and pretty much every stop in between. We're tempted to compare this to the Sopors, whose 7" we reviewed last list, another rad blast of weird pop from a twisted loner genius, and while the Sopors record is seriously damaged and on the verge of collapse, the sounds here are significantly more polished, but only some of the time.
The first volume is the poppier of the two, just check out the opening one-two punch, "Swagger Vets And Double Moon", with its programmed drums, psychedelic leads, reverbed vocals, fuzzed out guitar, shuffly rhythm, and then "Long White Curtain", which is total British Invasion worship, with a seriously strange lo-fi mix, the leads practically bursting from the speaker, while the rest of the sounds are dialed way back. And so it goes, wherever Presley's twisted sensibilities take him, there's the lilting dreamy fuzzy twee pop of "Do You Know Ida Know", which sounds almost like Ween, with its weird processed vox, or the fuzzy organ driven shuffle pop of "It Will Never Be", that locks into a hazy krautpsych loop and warbled and warps, while spidery guitars coil themselves around that main groove, or "Hey! Roman Nose", which is total lo-fi bedroom pop, with a little bit of that Purling Hiss style seventies power pop mixed in, and the first volume finishes off with "Daily Pique" a fuzzy psychedelic groove with weird vocals, and an even weirder production.
The second volume seems decidedly weirder, although it starts off with a dreamy bit of synth driven balladry, that sounds weirdly like the Frogs, which is most definitely not a bad thing, "She Relief" wraps some garage pop in squiggly leads and all sorts of piano pound and psychedelic freakout, before "I'd Sing" brings things back down, unfurling as a little stretch of psych guitar laced bedroom pop murk.
Things do definitely become more and more unhinged, lots of weird synths, and strange experimental song structures, noise guitar freakouts, even the poppiest jams are all twisted up, doused in effects, tangled up into weird arrangements, but somehow it suits them, and we find ourselves digging the second volume as much as the first, if not more.
Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin and John Dwyer might be getting most of the love (rightfully so), but folks who like their garage rock and indie pop a bit more fucked up and fractured, twisted and confusional, White Fence might just be your cup of spiked tea.
FYI, along with this cd twofer version, each volume is available individually on vinyl, though we only have Vol.2 in stock at the moment.
MPEG Stream: "Swagger Vets And Double Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Long White Curtain"
MPEG Stream: "Balance Yr Heart"
MPEG Stream: "Do You Know Ida Know"
MPEG Stream: "Down PNX"
MPEG Stream: "Take Away Life's Endless Take"

WRAITHS Edinburgh / Glasgow (Land Of Decay) cassette 7.98
The latest sonic assault from UK black ambient drone/noisescapers Wraiths, the perfect continuation of their Dust In Out Mouths record, which we reviewed here recently, starting off with some haunting monk like chants, before immediately launching into a smeared soundscape of abject feedback, and groaning industrial crunch, the sound murky and muddy, as if recorded beneath the surface of the earth, the sounds a slow moving avalanche of rumble and whir, or screech and howl, all sort of blurred into black and grey swirls, the sound surprisingly dynamic, shifting from black noise crunch, to a more woozy washed out low end rumble and back again. Not nearly as washed out and Caretaker-ish as Dust, this is definitely a noisier companion, exploring much of the same territory, but delving way deeper, the earth rent asunder, as Wraiths descend into the hellish depths, the high end tones almost sounding like the wails of lost souls, the rumbling roiling grinding buzz, a sonic representation of the earth crumbling beneath our feet, the sound of everything disappearing into a black abyss, and yet amidst all this grim black malevolence, and harrowing musical misery, lurk buried melodies, accidental rhythms, the surface here and there, but for the most part, churn beneath the surface, adding more layers and extra texture to the already dense tectonic blackness of Wraiths' sinister soundworld. Fans of Wolf Eyes, MZ412 and other practitioners of the sonic dark arts will definitely dig.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!

YOUNG PRISMS In Between (Kanine) cd 13.98
Latest from these SF shoegazers, and like the last one, Friends For Now, In Between finds the band's sound falling somewhere between Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Blonde Redhead, this time maybe even some Mazzy Star. Right out of the gate, the band take the sound of the last records, and blur it even more, unleashing a lazy, sprawl of smeared chords, breathy female vox, simple skeletal rhythms, all wreathed in a cloud of gauzy shimmer, total mid-nineties style dreampop, and YP do it better than most, taking simple pop songs, and dousing them in effects, the production lush and layered, allowing for a heavy part to somehow get even heavier, usually with a sudden eruption of low end, or a strange thickening of the guitar sound, however they do it, it makes for some heady psych pop bliss out for sure.
The rest of the record follows suit, with dreamy boy/girl vox, chiming guitar jangle, swirling effects, hooks galore, soaring choruses, with much of In Between sounding like it could have come from the Slumberland back catalog, which is not a bad thing at all. The band equally adept at fuzzy girl group style reverb shimmer pop and crunchy fuzzy shoegaze, the record rife with MBV-isms, but the band employ them in a way that makes MBV seem like an influence, rather than In Between sounding like an inadvertent homage.
There are so many great bands in SF these days, but as far as blissed out jangle and shoegaze dream pop, nobody can touch Young Prisms. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Floating In Blue"
MPEG Stream: "Dead Flowers"
MPEG Stream: "To Touch You"