BURNING STAR CORE Challenger (Hospital Productions) cd 13.98
The violin is probably the last instrument you think of when you think of underground cd-r noise drone music. Okay, maybe not the last, but it's pretty far down the list for sure. Yet Mr. C. Spencer Yeh has forged a career with his trusty violin, creating a sizable body of work, ranging from full on blown out noise assault, to breathless delicate beauty, to propulsive krautrock infused space rock, and various mixes of all three. We even Record Of The Week-ed his Operator Dead album a while back. But where that record was more of a group effort, this latest disc, Challenger, finds Yeh returning to his solo roots, getting a minimal amount of assistance on just a couple of tracks, but handling the bulk of the soundmaking himself. And while there is no list of instrumentation, we have to assume that violin is not the only instrument present. NOBODY is that good. But even so, Yeh is really really good, and with a violin and whatever else he has in his soundmaking arsenal, he has once again conceived something of great beauty and import, a collection of sounds, of SONGS, an album that is cohesive yet varied, personal and introspective, yet somehow epic and expansive. If anything, this new disc finds Yeh moving his BSC into the rarefied world of spaced out Krautrock. Neu!, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, A.R. & The Machines, Brian Eno. Much in the same way aQ faves Expo '70, channel seventies space kraut, so does Yeh, but where Expo '70 create thick heavy spaced out dronescapes, the sounds on Challenger are much more melodic, and drifty, dreamy and mesmerizing. There is plenty of noise to be found, but it's doled out sparingly, melodies are sometimes halo-ed in buzz, or delicate rhythms wreathed in feedback, but it's always muted and minimal, allowing the melody and arrangement to shine, and shine they do, each track, a gorgeously repetitive stretch of space-y abstract groove, looped, but slowly shifting and changing shape, propulsive but subtly so.
The opening two track salvo is some of the most blissfully beautiful soft noise we've heard. In fact, even calling it noise might be doing it a disservice. The opener is a slow burning slab of minimal murmur, laced with soft tinkling chimes, an abstract ghostly melody over a softly pulsing drone, eventually augmented by some shimmery hiss and random sampled ambience, but instead of distracting, these sonic events, cars driving past, wind, tape hiss, they only add texture to the glimmering drift beneath.
The second track begins with a riff (played on a violin?) that is quickly wrapped up in corrosive swaths of warbly effected buzz, the two elements twisting around one another, creating a strange churning soundscape of stretched out space rock riffage and crumbling distorted drone, that manages to be absolutely riveting.
The next few tracks offer up some more experimental fare, brief chunks of ambient weirdness, one of plastic cup percussion, heavily reverbed, in a wide open stretch of distant whir and tangled electronics, another a symphony of processed vocals, looped and chopped into a hiccupping stuttering soundscape, eventually joined by soft shimmery chords and warm chordal buzz, yet another a collection of crinkles and crackles, like someone stepping on bubble wrap, balling up wrapping paper and a campfire, all draped over the sounds of children laughing and playing.
All before returning to the blissed out dronedrift of the opening few tracks. Reverbed jaw harp floats in a field of static hum and twinkling fragmented melody, deep tones are woven into gentle lilting melodies, symphonic snippets are looped and assembled into a slow building drone, underpinned by fuzzy droney melodies, totally stirring and epic, haunting and mysterious, a bit of Jeck mixed in with BSC's usual glorious buzz, maybe one of the most moving (and possibly one of the best) tracks we've ever heard from Yeh and his 'Core. The final track is an Avarus like coda, sheets of hiss like rainfall (might very well be), bits of percussive chime and clank, plenty of hiss and whir, over the top, a shimmering high end electric melody, that drifts and stutters dreamily, like some alien lullaby.
Absolutely stunning. And thus, entirely and unequivocally recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Challenger"
MPEG Stream: "Beauty Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Hopelessly Devoted"

FRICARA PACCHU Midnight Pyre (Lal Lal Lal) cd 16.98
Yes! The cd debut of this fantastic Finnish four-track project... We actually meant to list this, like, a month ago, but unfortunately the original review we wrote of it was lost in one of our several recent arggh-inducing komputoor crashes, but actually that's a good thing, 'cause it gave everybody here at AQ more time to listen to this, over and over, at home and in the store, and have us all decide that this HAD to be a Record Of The Week. So we ordered more copies from Finland, and re-wrote the review (which, in our memory, was actually probably better written the first time, so trust us on this) and here we go!
Ah, Finland. We've said it before, we'll say it again. So many of our favorite bands hail from Finland, from the hypnotic NWOFHM space rock of Circle to the the funereral doom of Skepticism, with all the freaky forest folk of Kemialliset Ystavat, et. al. in between. And now Fricara Pacchu, solo project from a member of such underground Finnish acts as Avarus, Anaksimandros, Maniacs Dream, and yes Kemialliset Ystavat.
Hopefully you remember our review of the Fricara Pacchu 7" and accompanying art/collage booklet that the Fonal label put out not too long ago (we may still have a few of those babies in stock, if you act fast). Both Allan and Andee accidentally wrote separate gushing reviews of it, that's how much we all liked it! That 7" left us eager to hear a full-length, and now here it is, courtesy of Lal Lal Lal. 12 wigged out instrumental tracks of Fricara Pacchu's undefinable, eccentric, psychedelic weirdness. We had compared the 7" to everything from the Boredoms to Oliva Tremor Control, and that goes too for the all-instrumental music on this cd, to which we can add such other disparate references as Neu! and When and Fuck Buttons. Fricara Pacchu's music is part techno, part noise, part pop... all awesome.
Recording at home on a four-track, Pacchu creates a woozy, rhythmic soundworld filled with distortion and delight. A world of magical gnomes with chugging machines spewing colorful clouds... clouds of mysterious, maybe illegal substances that coalesce in pretty patterns you can hear, as well as kaleidoscopically see. There's dense, druggy layers of guitar feedback with electro beats; lo-fi fuzzy loops, gurgly computer bleeps and sci-fi sound FX swooshes; throbbing pound and gentle ambience. Fricara Pacchu produces fragile music box melodies that exist amidst exploding minefields of noise, like the detonations of distortion that rhythmically obliterate parts of "Four Seasons Of Violins". Noise that is taken to an extreme with the utter, surging distorto-destruction of "Sky Helicopter"...
Whew! Wow. Maybe if the glorious synthscapes of fellow Finns Shogun Kunitoki were way grittier and guitar-ier, done more D.I.Y., and wrapped in steel wool and played backwards on a cheap cassette, that would sound something like the quirky and compelling music of Fricara Pacchu. By which we mean, this is great!
MPEG Stream: "Four Seasons Of Violins"
MPEG Stream: "Freaky Labyrinth"
MPEG Stream: "Return Of The Rats"
MPEG Stream: "Possessed By Possibilities"

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LIKE A KIND OF MATADOR Halfway To Dangerous (tUMULt) cd 13.98
First and final release from this now defunct UK trio who meld crushing slow motion doomdronesludge with haunting prog and drifting abstract ambience.
A swirling, slow moving prog-doom juggernaut. Massive downtuned riffage churns around fluttery flutes, while wheezing accordions whirl beneath angelic female vox and warm whirring organs, all wound into subtly complex expanses of slow motion heaviness and epic cinematic dronemetal...almost like a magnificent, hypothetical Boris/Bardo Pond collaboration.
Three looooooong songs, the shortest just shy of ten minutes, the longest clocking in at twenty, each a slow burning slow build, layers of drones and hushed shimmer, often taking upwards of half the song before the various elements coalesce into actual riffs, the drums kicking in and the band lurching into a massive ultradoom start / stop groove, explosions of blown out buzz giving way to long stretches of hushed whisper, only to be swallowed up again by another roiling onslaught, a heaving wall of downtuned guitars, a pounding barrage of thunderous percussion.
All the while, a simple, repeating motif, hovers above, or lurks just below the caustic grinding heaviness, floating like some sonic specter, the vocals dreamy and drifty, a subtle seventies pagan folk vibe infusing the otherwise crushing doom. The flute unfurling dreamy melancholic melodies over vast expanses of crumbling distortion, laced with glistening harmonics, and warm blurred soft focus shimmer. The drums slipping from abstract minimal crush to monstrous lumbering groove. Hypnotic, repetitive, mesmerizing, trancelike.
At once familiar, and essential listening for fans of SUNNO))), Harvey Milk, Earth, Monarch and all thing slow, low and heavy. But at the same time, strangely alien, with a subtle muted beauty lurking at the heart of LAKOM's gloriously epic crumbling black mass of sound, within each song a breathless subtlety, a deep haunting otherworldliness, transforming dense low end explorations into something much more expansive and divine. Even at its very heaviest, it still manages to sound woozy and dreamlike, haunting and pretty, and utterly breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Mother Of Pearl (Women Are My World)"
MPEG Stream: "Mambo Jambo"

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AER Project (Touch) 7" 7.98
The newest entry in Touch's ongoing series of limited 7"s singles, with past installments from Oren Ambarchi, Fennesz, Philip Jeck and Chris Watson, this is the first one by an artist new to us, but it manages to fit well with the other releases in the series, and has us dying to hear more from the mysterious AER (actually the musical moniker of Touch design director Jon Wozencroft). Utilizing nothing but "four atmosphere recordings, radio and an organ stop" AER concocts a darkly minimal soundscape of field recordings and hushed melody. The sounds from the street outside, footstep, voices talking, singing, sirens, thunder (or automobile backfires, or perhaps firecrackers), interwoven with strange clicking, machine like chatter, like a spinning bicycle wheel, random clanks and clatters, room noise and other sonic detritus, while beneath it all, warm whirring melodies drift up from below, adding nuance and mood to what might otherwise be a straight field recording, a rhythm way off in the distance or buried way down in the mix, is sometimes discernible, but only barely, and in fact, could be a trick of the ears, random sounds falling into place, creating not-really-there rhythms. But it hardly matters, we hear them, and they offer a sort of ghostly structure to the proceedings. Quite nice, and we can't wait to hear more.

BAADER BRAINS The Complete Unfinished Works Of The Young Tigers (Waking Records / Clean Plate / Empyre) 12" 11.98
Baader Brains. This is one of those wonderful instances where the name kind of says it all: frenzied, powerful, pummeling hardcore punk mixed with the aesthetics and politics of extreme Marxist urban guerilla movements. It's by no means a novel combination, but it's incredibly rare for a band of this ilk to be so well done and for every one of its elements to have been given so much obvious consideration. Musically, The Complete Unfinished Works Of The Young Tigers takes the majority of its queues from Damaged-era Black Flag and the Gravity Records catalog, but manages to still sound vibrant, and totally current. It's muscular, angular, fractured and anthemic all at once and recalls everything that makes us excited about this particular brand of punk rock (post-hardcore, or whatever you want to call it). This should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the pedigree of Baader Brain's membership: Mike Kirsch and Jose Palafox (guitar and drums, respectively) have done time in some of the heaviest hitters of the West Coast US hardcore scene since the late '80s. Kirsch, in particular, is a revered figure in the Bay Area, having lent his talents on guitar, vocals and electronics to a long list of bands including Fuel, Torches To Rome, and Please Inform The Captain This Is A Hijack; while Palafox's drumming has been an integral part of Struggle, The Swing Kids, and Yaphet Kotto. Both also did time in the mighty Bread and Circuits, who sole LP is an underrated classic.  Suffice to say, if you have even a passing interest in the catalogs of Ebullition, The Mountain Collective, Level Plane, or Gravity Records, this is going to freak your beak.
Where Baader Brains becomes (as the youth say) some seriously next level shit, is with everything that surounds the music itself and their uncanny ability to balance the two without either one outshining the other. The group's devotion to the aesthetic of leftist paramilitary revolution is beyond impressive, while their command and use of its related tropes and references is encyclopedic. The packaging, album art, liner notes and samples that bridge most of the songs together manage to string together a bewildering series of shout outs (both blatant and subversive) to everything from the RAF to the Khmer Rouge to the PFLP to the Black Panthers and more (there's even some John Zerzan-style future primitivism thrown in there for good measure)! It's a flood of images, sounds and references that manages to capture the frenetic audio-visual overload of the band's live show, something that we here in the Bay Area are lucky enough to get to see on a semi-regular basis (picture ever-evolving uniforms of the Young Tigers, imposters posing as the actual band being run off the stage at gunpoint, tiger striped balloons falling from the ceiling, split screen video projections, and a seamless integration of live music and samples all crammed together in about 20 minutes of whip-tight performance). Baader Brains' commitment to its rigorous aesthetic is so complete and so all-encompassing in its mix of different media, that it almost makes more sense to think of this LP as a small part of a much larger piece of ongoing performance art.  That said, this is a seriously ass-kicking record and those of you with no interest in the band's political leanings or no knowledge of the references will find nothing lacking in the record's musical content.
Unsurprisingly, The Complete Unfinished Works Of The Young Tigers comes lavishly packaged to the point that it took three separate labels to come up with enough resources to make it happen.  You get a full-colour jacket printed inside and out), an LP-sized obi, two separate insert booklets, and a fully printed inner sleeve. It's seriously over-the-top, it's limited to 1000 copies worldwide (300 of those are on swirled yellow and black vinyl and yes we have a handful of those, but will be doled out RANDOMLY!!!), and is selling out all over the place. Don't sleep on this one - this is one of the most exciting hardcore records we've heard in a long time, and we can't recommend it highly enough!

BAKER, AIDAN Book of Nods (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 17.98
Another new Aidan Baker release, another sublime gem. And again, we find ourselves wanting to just review it with a single sentence. "New Aidan Baker. If you are a fan, you will love this. So buy it." But look at the rest of this list. If we had that sort of self control, and if we weren't so inclined to gush, this list would be a whole different beast.
But before we get into it, you might as well take our aborted abbreviated review to heart. If you are a fan, you WILL love this and should probably buy it. So fans can push the buy button and move on. Except for those fans who aren't so sure they need another Baker disc to add to the already-threatening-to-collapse Baker/Nadja cd shelf at home. You all can stick around, along with the folks who might somehow be asking "who the heck is this Aidan Baker guy and what's he all about?" The simple answer just requires a visit to the aQ website, and a quick search on either Aidan Baker or Nadja. There you can read all about it, and listen to almost everything we've carried by him/them. But as with all Baker releases, this one is a bit different, and bears a bit more of a description.
Book Of Nods begins with a 8 minute drift that sounds remarkable like a more subdued Necks jam. Simple piano figure repeated over and over, slowly shifting and changing, but looped and hypnotic and dreamily repetitive. Almost like a much more mellow and muted Lubomyr Melnyk, soft flurries of piano blurred into indistinct streaks, quite lovely. The 18 minute follow up is another sort-of-jazz sprawl, slow smoldering drones, super spare abstract percussion, warm and languid and laid waaaaay back, before the original slow motion drift is subsumed by some Pop Ambient washed out whir, giving the track a strange alien ethereal sheen. Track 3, "Obsession", is like a dubbed out hybrid of Low and Bohren, jazzy slowcore, allowed to slither and crawl, the drums a bit more skittery, some of the melodies effected, and flipped backwards, allowed to swoop and thhhhwp, there are even some fluttering flutes, again, bringing to mind a Necks style jazz jam, but give a bit of an electronic tweaking. The 15 minute closer, is yet another slow burning jazzy slowcore crawl, but here the drums are a bit harder, the mood is much more ominous and foreboding, everything wreathed in deep shimmering drones and distant rumbles, peppered with still more swooping backward beats, steaks of feedback, building to an intense, skittery, skipping coda, sounding a bit like Oval remixing the Necks. Nice.
And thus somehow, yet another Baker disc well worth owning! And not a bad place to start for the newbie, although the sounds here are unlike most of Baker's output.
Beautifully packaged in an oversized fold over textured paper digisleeve, with a dearth of information, just various Asian calligraphic characters. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Love"

BASHO, ROBBIE Bonn Ist Supreme (Bo Weavil) cd 17.98
Bonn Ist Supreme is a rare glimpse into the live performative side of guitar soli legend Robbie Basho. Recorded in Bonn, Germany six years before his death, Basho was by then in his less interesting Windham Hill phase of his career, but you wouldn't know it by this recording. Containing many pieces from his Takoma-era heyday, Basho's fusion of Celtic, Middle Eastern and medieval influences on his guitar work made him the least blues-based of the Takoma triad of himself, John Fahey, and Leo Kotte. Melding an esoteric spirituality to his playing style, it's easy to get lost in Basho's raga like compositions. Some of the pieces do contain his unique singing which is often a dealbreaker for some (though we dig his vocal stylings), but it doesn't get in the way too much here, and shouldn't keep folks from enjoying his mesmerizingly sublime guitarwork. Nice!
MPEG Stream: "Cathedrals et Fleur De Lis"
MPEG Stream: "The Girl and The Lotus"
MPEG Stream: "Pavan India"
MPEG Stream: "California Raga"

BETTER BEATLES, THE Mercy Beat (Hook or Crook) cd 11.98
A couple lists ago we had the Easy Beatles compilation... now we've got some not-so-easy Beatles! This reissue will drive some folks crazy, but we're lovin' it. Hooray for East Bay label Hook Or Crook for getting their hands on this great outsider classic out of Omaha, Nebraska circa 1981. The Better Beatles played Beatles songs with a naive and fucked up post-punk charm. While there are no shortages of Beatles covers and tribute records, none have been made that suit our bizarre tastes better than this one! With primitive electronics that sounded like they could break at any moment and a detached delivery that gives these songs a feeling somewhere between cold wave, new wave and no wave. Not far off from what The Flying Lizards were doing around this same time but much more out of the loop and less self-conscious.
It's super interesting to see how while being one of the most famous and mainstream appreciated bands of all time, the Beatles have spawned so many outsider fanatics from Daniel Johnston to Bobb Trimble. What makes The Better Beatles so damn cool is that they truly made these songs something else, it's not just novelty (though that is a factor), there is a lot of intensity in their delivery. They might have been joking about being "better" but maybe they meant it, they certainly sound like they mean it when they sing John and Paul's lyrics, which are often the only recognizable parts of the songs. We can't count the times we've had a customer in the store get reeled in by this record without even knowing that it's Beatles covers and when they find out they say something like 'I don't even like The Beatles but this is fucking cool!' and even for those of us who love the Beatles as well we can agree, this IS fucking cool!
MPEG Stream: "Penny Lane"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Down"

BETTER BEATLES, THE Mercy Beat (Hook or Crook) lp 14.98
A couple lists ago we had the Easy Beatles compilation... now we've got some not-so-easy Beatles! This reissue will drive some folks crazy, but we're lovin' it. Hooray for East Bay label Hook Or Crook for getting their hands on this great outsider classic out of Omaha, Nebraska circa 1981. The Better Beatles played Beatles songs with a naive and fucked up post-punk charm. While there are no shortages of Beatles covers and tribute records, none have been made that suit our bizarre tastes better than this one! With primitive electronics that sounded like they could break at any moment and a detached delivery that gives these songs a feeling somewhere between cold wave, new wave and no wave. Not far off from what The Flying Lizards were doing around this same time but much more out of the loop and less self-conscious.
It's super interesting to see how while being one of the most famous and mainstream appreciated bands of all time, the Beatles have spawned so many outsider fanatics from Daniel Johnston to Bobb Trimble. What makes The Better Beatles so damn cool is that they truly made these songs something else, it's not just novelty (though that is a factor), there is a lot of intensity in their delivery. They might have been joking about being "better" but maybe they meant it, they certainly sound like they mean it when they sing John and Paul's lyrics, which are often the only recognizable parts of the songs. We can't count the times we've had a customer in the store get reeled in by this record without even knowing that it's Beatles covers and when they find out they say something like 'I don't even like The Beatles but this is fucking cool!' and even for those of us who love the Beatles as well we can agree, this IS fucking cool!
MPEG Stream: "Penny Lane"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Down"

BLARKE BAYER / BLACK WIDOW Presents "I.B." (Numerical Thief) cd 13.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Australia's Grey Daturas or any of the various related combos. It's only really because for a year or two, it was almost like they lived here. Constantly on tour, using SF as home base. We'd see them at shows, in the shop. And we haven't had much new besides the Neurot full length, but we do have a big order of Daturas and other goodies waiting to ship, so that'll take care of that.
But for those who just can't wait, we have collab number two from Blarke Bayer and Black Widow (we might have one or two copies of the first one, see elsewhere on the site), BB being Ben Andrews of down under grind commando unit Agents of Abhorrence, and Black Widow being Rob MacManus from the Grey Daturas, and it's another set of three songs, clocking in at just less than a half hour, and is just as sonically varied (but slightly jazzier, more on that in a minute) as their first tete a tete.
The opener is a skittery free jazz drift, little fragments of piano drifting in a black expanse, the drums chaotic and powerful, very free, shuffling subtly one second, exploding into frenzied fills the next, all the while a sax moans and bleats and skronks, its long tones laid over the proceedings like high end streaks, giving the track a weird free jazz drone vibe. The second track is more of a thick guitary drone, the drums relegated to mute throb and pulse, demarcating a slowly smoldering smear of shimmering strings, swirling feedback, abstract melodic fragments, some post rock lope, some Morricone-ish twang, some crackle and hiss, the drums lazy and laid back, some sort of doomed minimal slowcore drift. Quite lovely. Wouldn't mind a whole disc of this stuff. The duo finish off with a super minimal low end exploration, so minimal we hesitate to describe it as a drone, it's more like a collection of ambient sounds, the distant whir of a building's machinery, the sound of air circulating, the distant murmur of conversation, but take all that and blur it and mute it into a barely there ghost of sound, over which a series of electrical impulses are transmitted, glitch, crackle, super subtle electronic textures drifting above a music so subtle and minimal it could almost be the sound of your speakers humming. Intense and quite beautiful, but may require some high powered headphones to truly appreciate.
MPEG Stream: "Fanny And Alexander"

BORIS Smile (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
It's that time yet again. Where Boris freeks and fans become simultaneously excited and frustrated. That's right it's time for the DOMESTIC vinyl version of Boris' latest full length Smile. Not to be confused with the Japanese version, which was ONLY available from one specific store in Japan, or from the band on tour, and is now available on eBay. No this is the domestic version, released on Southern Lord, with some amazing eye popping artwork, a super thick gatefold sleeve, rendered in metallic mirror style printing, silver and black and orange, pretty boss. Pressed on nice thick clear vinyl. So far so good. BUT, as is so often the case, the music is indeed different on the domestic vinyl, than on the domestic cd, or the Japanese cd or the Japanese lp. Sigh. So, once again, if you care not for cds, and have been waiting for the vinyl, you're set, there's some extra tracks and some extended tracks, if you bought the cd already, you have to figure out if it's worth it to rebuy. That's a decision only you can make. But here are the details as best as we can suss them out. There are two bonus tracks, not available on the other versions of Smile (well, maybe on the Japanese lp, but since we don't know any one who actually got one we can't be totally sure, the SL website claims a bit obliquely that the extra and extended tracks are indeed different than all the versions, domestic and import, but it's unclear if that applies to all or some of the bonus stuff). The first bonus cut is "Vein" (could that be from the long out of print Vein 12"? If so which one? As there were two, each with completely different music, probably doesn't matter though since almost no one was able to get either), and a song called "After Me" which seems to be completely unreleased. In addition to those tracks, One of the tracks offers up a different version that the Southern Lord cd (could be the Japanese version?), while two others offer up longer uncut versions of tracks on the Southern Lord cd (again, those two could be the Japanese versions). Confused? Don't worry, we are too. There is a Wikipedia entry, and while that helps, it doesn't help that much. It's easy with all this non-musical stuff going on though, to forget that Smile is in fact a pretty kick ass record, so if you've been waiting for the vinyl, or have the cd but want it all, then go for it! Some of us here did. And just to remind everybody what all the fuss is about anyway, here's our (somewhat convoluted) review from when we first reviewed the domestic Smile cd a while back:
The import version of Smile on cd we reviewed a while back, while a bit pricey, was well worth it, the packaging super deluxe, a big puffy fuzzy yellow bathtub toy like digipak. All silver ink and see through yellow vellum and again all fuzzy and puffy! By comparison, the domestic version looks downright plain, but closer inspection reveals it's pretty nifty too (designed by SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley of course). The sleeve is silver and orange metallic, housing an inner booklet packed with photos and lyrics, the jewel case is adorned with half a smiley face sticker and each one is machine numbered, LIMITED TO 3000 COPIES! Plus it's half the price of the import version. BUT, the track listing is pretty different. The track "Statement" here, is called "Message" on the Japanese Version, and is four minutes longer and a different mix. The untitled final track is 15 minutes long here, but on the Japanese version is 19. However, other songs are longer on the domestic. It is pretty dang confusing for sure. The sound is similar, but there are distinct differences within songs, so much so that it definitely sounds like it must be a different mix all the way through. Arghhhh.
But beyond all that, there is one very good reason to pick up this domestic version, even if you already bought the import. We managed to get copies of the Southern Lord "mailorder-only" version of Smile, which comes with a bonus DVD, featuring three Boris videos. It's this version that's limited to 3000 copies, and once these are gone, it will be a regular old single disc. But while we got 'em, the dvd is pretty kick ass. The band, always stylish and stylized, have upped the ante even more on these three clips, the first, "Statement", is all staggered split screen, guitarist Wata looking sexy and bored in front of her massive stack, Takeshi wielding the double necked bass, and Atsuo flailing wildly behind the kit, everything yellowish orange and tripped out, the various split screen elements constantly shifting and shuffling. The whole band looking pretty dolled up, teased hair and clad in all black. The video for "My Neighbor Satan" is awesome. The trio standing almost completely still, Atsuo playing some old electronic drum kit, Wata playing a huge clunky guitar synth, the band all washed out and distorted and indistinct, the screen white and blurry, as if the band were playing inside a cloud. Finally, the video for "Pink" which looks like the pink on red design of the Pink album come to life, the band rendered in high contrast shades of red, very abstract, almost looking more like a Boris screensaver.
So that's about all we can tell you about this new version. If you haven't bought Smile yet, no reason not to pick up this version, if you bought the import, it might be worth it to you for the dvd and maybe the alternate mix. The bummer is that beyond all this multiple versioned craziness, Smile is just an awesome record:
Every once in a while, we sort of wish we could just move on musically, forget whatever it was we were super into, no matter how magical. Find a new band to fall in love with. To obsess over. To slavishly track down every single shred of recorded music by. Buying multiple versions of the same record just to get one extra song, or a just a few more minutes of glorious drone and buzz. But then along comes a record like this, and wipes that wish away. Boris are indeed the rarest of bands. Few groups engender such utter devotion. If it wasn't Boris, sure it would probably be someone else, but it wouldn't be the same.
Not sure if it's the fact that they're Japanese, or that their early records were so shrouded in mystery, or guitarist Wata's utter bad ass coolness, the increasingly elaborate and insane packaging, the outrageously limited releases, it's probably a combination of all of those things, but the overriding factor is ultimately, that they're an amazing band, who are not afraid to change their sound at the drop of a hat, going from shoe gazing dronelords, to crushing sludge doom destroyers, to wild thrashing rock and rollers, with all sorts of unexpected stops in between. Some folks prefer the droning beauty of Flood, others the Stooges-y stomp of Pink, still others the glacial guitar crush of Absolutego, most folks love them all, and who can blame them?
Smile, the latest from this mighty power trio, takes elements of Pink (arguably, most new fans' favorite Boris record, and most old fans' least favorite) and stretches them way out, turning a record that most of us were expecting to be Pink part two, into easily the group's weirdest and most chaotic. Which is in fact a VERY good thing. Add in some guest action from SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley and Japanese guitarist and Rainbow collaborator Michio Kurihara and away we go...
The track listing is all mixed up from the Japanese version, here, they open with what is probably our favorite song on the record, a cover of legendary Japanese group PYG's "Flower Sun Rain", a gorgeously languorous drift, all reverby clean guitars, soulful vocals, simple subtle percussion, a brief squall of gorgeous sun blasted psychguitar, slipping smoothly back into that slow dreamy drift. We'd have been just as happy to hear Boris do a whole record of PYG covers after that one.
The second track, most folks should recognize from seeing the band live. A killer riff, some wailing lead vox, wild thrashy drumming, the various parts spiced up with swoops of backwards guitars, and a crumbling super distorted tripped out FX drenched outro. The next track is THE killer of the disc. With guitars so blown out, they threaten to FRY your headphones, a killer stop start groove, weird blown speaker bass, all wrapped around a pretty sweet pop hook, but the band do their best to bury it in crumbling distortion, and acid fried psych freakouts. Until the last half of the track, where things devolve into some super minimal dronescape with soft strummed whispery guitars, a damaged percussive thud, and lots of barely there shimmer.
A bit later comes the track "Statement", from the 7" of the same name (a different version entitled "Message" is on the Japanese version of Smile in its place) which we described like this: fans of Boris' Pink will feel right at home. A serious KISS like riff, some cowbell, and then some ridiculously blown out in the red acid psych lead guitar. It's weirdly lo-fi sounding, but still fierce, and if the band sounds a bit fuzzy and muddy, the leads sound like Wata is IN your headphones, ramming her guitar straight into your ears. It's pretty amazing actually. The music is a wild wooly garage metal stomp, tons of FX, wah wah, the vocals though are a bit of surprise. Weirdly poppy. Double tracked. Super melodic, almost sing-along-able. But it's all about the riffy groove and those impossibly acidic guitar freakouts. But then comes "My Neighbor Satan" another weirdly blissed out pop song, muted tones drifting over muted programmed drums and a thick sheet of distorted guitar, and the vocals, which in the past have often detracted from Boris' power, have definitely become an intricate part of their new sound and have improved vastly, now able to carry a song, and in some ways this whole record, and here they soar and croon, a wicked hook and a lilting moody melody. But it wouldn't be Boris if they didn't smash it to bits part way through, and they do, unleashing huge sheets of heavily delayed guitar and dubbed out drums, throbbing bass, all tangled up into glorious psychedelic meltdowns.
Even the heaviest songs on Smile are infused with hooks and offer up brief glimpses of the poppiness underlying the crunch and rrroooar, no truer than on "Ka Re Ha Te Ta Sa Ki ­ No Ones Grieve", a thick droned out, bliss blast of thick corrosive guitars, wild sinewy, buzz drenched leads, drums literally buried beneath layer after layer of whir and hiss and a dense wall of guitar. Eventually simple finger picked guitar and more dreamy sad vocals surface from within the roiling psychscape, offering a haunting counterpoint to the fierce fury all around. Even here, at it's thickest and most intense, the song is imbued with a certain melancholy, deftly woven into the freaked out guitars and stuttering mostly buried rhythms.
The second to last track, for its first half at least, is a gorgeous slowcore crawl, just plaintive vocals, delicate guitar, soft cymbal shimmer, a gauzy dreamy drift, that eventually fades to silence, before streaks of feedback fall from the sky, an avalanche of drums follow, until an incredibly emotive main riff, heavy and blown out, takes over, dragging the rest of the track with it, slowly churning, a sort of metallicized krautrock jam, the main guitar thick and distorted, but all around it glimmering harmonics and whirling melodies, those soaring vocals, and of course an appropriately majestic, dramatic in-the-red coda.
The record finishes with a massive 15 minute track (19 on the Japanese version), untitled, that almost sounds like a single song synopsis of Boris' new sound. Beginning with tripped out backwards guitar, and skeletal melodies, briefly interrupted by a fierce squall of intense psychedelia, only to bliss back out, giving way to a dreamy dirgey shoegazey dirge, all cascading distorted guitars and hazy lazy vocals, eventually overtaken by huge crumbling slabs of slow motion distortion and blinding streaks of high end skree and moaning feedback, finally drifting off into a slow shimmery feedback infused fadeout.
As always, just like the Japanese version, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Flower Sun Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Statement"
MPEG Stream: "KA RE HA TE TA SA KI - No Ones Grieve"

COOL KIDS, THE The Bake Sale (Chocolate Industries) cd 13.98
With all the great records of '80s pop revival we've been diggin' on so much lately (M83, Cut Copy, Hot Chip) it's about time someone did the same with that special time in hip-hop's golden age. Luckily The Cool Kids have stepped up to the plate and made a super fun record that recalls so much of what made us fall in love with hip-hop in the first place. The production and playful spirit captures the old school flavor of folks like EPMD, Eric B & Rakim, RUN-DMC and the first two LL Cool J records. It makes us remember when we would set our VCR's to record those amazing early episodes of Yo! MTV Raps.
We first were exposed to The Cool Kids when they opened for M.I.A last year and while a lot of hip-hop has a hard time translating live, they were so great and full of irresistible energy and youthful charm. We love how stripped down and immediate The Bake Sale sounds. It's clever and dorky but unlike the trend of nerd-on-sleeves 'indie hip-hop' that spawned labels like Anticon and Mush this doesn't have that same kind of smarmy self-consciousness. Instead this is a record that evokes images of spraypaint, video games, colorful hoodies and youthful energy at its best!
MPEG Stream: "What Up Man"
MPEG Stream: "One Two"

DIABATE, TOUMANI The Mande Variations (Nonesuch) cd 17.98
Simply stunning sparse and majestic sounds from one of the most talented kora players of all time! Known for his collaborations with everyone from Ali Farka Toure, to Taj Mahal and Bjork. This is Toumani by himself and his kora which he employs to make such magical and enchanting music. Toumani has that same kind of elegance and sheer transcendence that folks like John Fahey and Ravi Shankar had/have with the instruments they mastered. The Mande Variations demonstrates how Diabate has been influenced by Indian classical music, flamenco and blues as well as the Griot music of his native home of Mali. This is the kind of record that allows you to just let go of everything as the hypnotic trance of Diabate's playing takes you away to a higher dimension. The Mande Variations is reminding us of some of our favorite beautiful sound of the last few years from the likes of James Blackshaw, Debashish Bhattacharya and Lanaya. Undeniably stunning and filled with trance inducing soul!
MPEG Stream: "Si naani"
MPEG Stream: "El Nabiyouna"
MPEG Stream: "Ismael Drame"

DJ SCOTCH EGG Drumized (Load) cd 15.98
Another manic blast of freaked out 8-bit jams from this curiously monickered purveyor of blown out video game gabber. The sound of Scotch Egg is a bit hard to describe, the closest we can get is, maybe imagine being in an arcade, playing your favorite eighties video game, when inexplicably, lightning strikes the arcade, and the electricity surges through the wiring and right into the video game you're playing, suddenly, the machine freaks out, shooting sparks, the characters on the screen transform into weird shapes and start doing unspeakable things, and the sounds, oh the sounds, that music you grew up with, the soothing lullaby of primitive computer melodies, gone totally haywire, exploding into squalls of utter 8-bit chaos, the rhythms fast and furious tangled and chaotic, flurries of tones, melodies become gnarled and dizzying.
You know that part in Galaga where the mother ship comes down and captures one of your men so you can shoot id down later and have a dual shooter? The sound it makes when it sends out its green and blue tractor beam? Now imagine that sound stretched into a whole song, with the dude from Hella going apeshit on the drums in the background. That perfectly describes one of the songs here. Some of the other tracks sound like the Boredoms if they were transported back to the eighties and tapped to do music for Dig Dug and Mr. Do. Or maybe imagine Venetian Snares, zapped Tron style and beamed into a video game, and these are his desperate musical cries for help. Sound wacked? Well, it is, WAY wacked.
The sounds are all over the map, many you'll recognize as being purloined from some of your favorite video games, but here, they're just tiny parts of a ear pummeling barrage of sound, from Melt Banana style video game grind, to weirdly intense 8-bit drones, all the 'death' music from video games stretched out into actual songs, There are some real drums here and there, some guitar, some fucked up vocals, some tracks even sound like damaged video game free jazz, while others sound like creepy computer math rock, but for the most part it's just frenzied electronic gabber video game lo-fi 8-bit freak out dancefloor destroying mayhem and we LOVE it. Be sure and stick around for the final track, a weird looped groove assembled from what sounds like a tape recorded video game, all lo fi and muddy, but here looped and assembled into some druggy repetitive almost krautrocky drone jam.
MPEG Stream: "Wwwww"
MPEG Stream: "Drumized"
MPEG Stream: "Scotch Stoner"

EAT SKULL Sick To Death (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98
While we're not always fans of made-up genres, which we know is ironic since we make up LOTS of genres, some rankle more than others. The most obvious being 'metal-gaze'. And what's even worse is when one catches on to the point that you sort of HAVE to use it. We've used metal-gaze once or twice, but we much prefer genres like doomdeathdrone or wooden metal.
Gaze is probably the most abused descriptor suffix in made up genres, anything slightly blissy or blown out gets tagged with the -gaze suffix. Rockabilly-gaze, adult contemporary-gaze. Sound silly yeah? Well, metal-gaze is not all that different. But recently a handful of our favorite bands all gathered under a new genre, one we're sort of tickled by, and might be forced to appropriate. SHITGAZE. How great is that, blissy and druggy, but lo-fi and crappy sounding. Times New Viking. Psychedelic Horseshit. Total shitgaze. Got a nice ring to it, pretty evocative, and not all that far off the mark. So the latest band we feel belongs among the ranks of the shitgaze elite is the awesomely named Eat Skull from Portland, who offer up the same sort of fractured damaged noise drenched pop as TNV and PH, but with their own twist. They definitely sound a bit like the bastard sons of vintage Guided By Voices, there is some solid hook filled pop in these here tracks, but it's nearly obscured by super jagged crumbling distorted guitars, howled vocals recorded into a dictaphone, trash can drums, all recorded so in-the-red, your speakers might melt. The thing about Eat Skull is they seem less arty and more punky, more rambunctious and random. Offering up spurts of furious noisepunk one minute, weird twangy jangle the next, then some awesome perfect pop the next, but always buried under layers of grit and buzz and tape hiss, fuzz all over the place, tons of high end, as if the bass knob was broken off so they just replaced it with ANOTHER treble knob, thick swaths of surfy organ, blown out until it's a wall of warbly sound, lots of random tape loops everywhere, overdubbed vocals way up in the mix, totally unhinged and off kilter and ultra chaotic, but catchy and wild and sweaty and over the top and fun as fuck!
For fans of the above mentioned bands as well as stuff like Sic Alps, Oh Sees, Coachwhips, Strapping Fieldhands.
ALL HAIL THE NEW WAVE OF SHITGAZE!
MPEG Stream: "Beach Brains"
MPEG Stream: "Alarms"
MPEG Stream: "Puker Corpse"

EAT SKULL Sick To Death (Siltbreeze) lp 14.98
While we're not always fans of made-up genres, which we know is ironic since we make up LOTS of genres, some rankle more than others. The most obvious being 'metal-gaze'. And what's even worse is when one catches on to the point that you sort of HAVE to use it. We've used metal-gaze once or twice, but we much prefer genres like doomdeathdrone or wooden metal.
Gaze is probably the most abused descriptor suffix in made up genres, anything slightly blissy or blown out gets tagged with the -gaze suffix. Rockabilly-gaze, adult contemporary-gaze. Sound silly yeah? Well, metal-gaze is not all that different. But recently a handful of our favorite bands all gathered under a new genre, one we're sort of tickled by, and might be forced to appropriate. SHITGAZE. How great is that, blissy and druggy, but lo-fi and crappy sounding. Times New Viking. Psychedelic Horseshit. Total shitgaze. Got a nice ring to it, pretty evocative, and not all that far off the mark. So the latest band we feel belongs among the ranks of the shitgaze elite is the awesomely named Eat Skull from Portland, who offer up the same sort of fractured damaged noise drenched pop as TNV and PH, but with their own twist. They definitely sound a bit like the bastard sons of vintage Guided By Voices, there is some solid hook filled pop in these here tracks, but it's nearly obscured by super jagged crumbling distorted guitars, howled vocals recorded into a dictaphone, trash can drums, all recorded so in-the-red, your speakers might melt. The thing about Eat Skull is they seem less arty and more punky, more rambunctious and random. Offering up spurts of furious noisepunk one minute, weird twangy jangle the next, then some awesome perfect pop the next, but always buried under layers of grit and buzz and tape hiss, fuzz all over the place, tons of high end, as if the bass knob was broken off so they just replaced it with ANOTHER treble knob, thick swaths of surfy organ, blown out until it's a wall of warbly sound, lots of random tape loops everywhere, overdubbed vocals way up in the mix, totally unhinged and off kilter and ultra chaotic, but catchy and wild and sweaty and over the top and fun as fuck!
For fans of the above mentioned bands as well as stuff like Sic Alps, Oh Sees, Coachwhips, Strapping Fieldhands.
ALL HAIL THE NEW WAVE OF SHITGAZE!
MPEG Stream: "Beach Brains"
MPEG Stream: "Alarms"
MPEG Stream: "Puker Corpse"

EDEN EXPRESS Que Amour Que (Holy Mountain) cd 14.98
While just about everything Holy Mountain puts out is awesome they also tend to focus on the heavier side of the underground musical landscape. With this debut by Eden Express they're showing their softer side, while managing to keep the awesomeness on full throttle! There would be no other time for this record to get released then smack dab in the midst of summer as this is some sun-soaked-tripped-out-bake-at-the-beach-psych-pop that we can't get enough of. Featuring one member of Cloudland Canyon, this is a group who understand how to evoke colorful and vivid sensations. Mixing Eastern tinged psychedelia with delicious hints of washed out samba with such an effortless and breezy delivery. This is a timeless sounding record that could just as easily be some lost early '70s South American psychedelic gem (which the cover design suggests) as much as a much more drugged out Antena or Brightblack Morning Light jamming on the beach with some Finnish folks like Lau Nau and Islaja at their side. Such delicious delay and reverb, just the right touches of flute and otherworldliness, and it's about time psych gets out of the forest and onto the sand. A record made to soak in sun and melt with.
MPEG Stream: "Skin De Sol"
MPEG Stream: "Swelling Moon"
MPEG Stream: "On The Beach"

FLYING LOTUS Los Angeles (Warp) cd 14.98
There is no doubt that this record is going to find itself near the top of many of our year end favorite lists. This is one of those rare records that on first listen you are grabbed by its immediacy & intensity and with each repeated listen you melt deeper into its richness. While just in his early 20's Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus) has crafted a record wise beyond his years. There is a fluidity and transcendence on Los Angeles that defies categorization. Call it instrumental hip-hop if you want, but these are songs that would sound right at home next to spiritual Afro-jazz, psychedelic soul and even dubstep. Taking inspiration from the late great J Dilla, Flying Lotus understands how to extract such punch and soul from all the sounds he takes and creates. Flying Lotus has a wide world vision that's as informed by Eastern grooves and psychedelia as it is hip-hop, electronica, video games and cartoon culture (he used to make music for Adult Swim). This is stirring many of the same emotions and excitement as when Four Tet released the Rounds record and in many ways it brings to the next level what so much of Prefuse 73 tries to do.
It actually didn't surprise us that much to find out that Ellison is the great nephew of Alice Coltrane as you can hear the amazing legacy of her spiritual and universal consciousness in the sounds that Flying Lotus create. In fact there are a few upfront Coltrane moments on the record including "Aunti's Harp" which is an all too short but beautiful majestic minute of Alice on the harp. Flying Lotus has found a spot next to Madlib as a much needed ambassador of someone taking hip-hop as a launching pad orbiting to such pleasing outer dimensions. In fact , some of us couldn't help but daydream about a Flying Lotus/Erykah Badu collaboration as they both are so tapped into a magical and exciting landscape of hip-hop & soul that soars in spiritual and psychedelic horizons. Filled with undeniable passion and of course highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Camel"
MPEG Stream: "Riot"
MPEG Stream: "Golden Diva"

FLYING LOTUS Los Angeles (Warp) lp 21.00
There is no doubt that this record is going to find itself near the top of many of our year end favorite lists. This is one of those rare records that on first listen you are grabbed by its immediacy & intensity and with each repeated listen you melt deeper into its richness. While just in his early 20's Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus) has crafted a record wise beyond his years. There is a fluidity and transcendence on Los Angeles that defies categorization. Call it instrumental hip-hop if you want, but these are songs that would sound right at home next to spiritual Afro-jazz, psychedelic soul and even dubstep. Taking inspiration from the late great J Dilla, Flying Lotus understands how to extract such punch and soul from all the sounds he takes and creates. Flying Lotus has a wide world vision that's as informed by Eastern grooves and psychedelia as it is hip-hop, electronica, video games and cartoon culture (he used to make music for Adult Swim). This is stirring many of the same emotions and excitement as when Four Tet released the Rounds record and in many ways it brings to the next level what so much of Prefuse 73 tries to do.
It actually didn't surprise us that much to find out that Ellison is the great nephew of Alice Coltrane as you can hear the amazing legacy of her spiritual and universal consciousness in the sounds that Flying Lotus create. In fact there are a few upfront Coltrane moments on the record including "Aunti's Harp" which is an all too short but beautiful majestic minute of Alice on the harp. Flying Lotus has found a spot next to Madlib as a much needed ambassador of someone taking hip-hop as a launching pad orbiting to such pleasing outer dimensions. In fact , some of us couldn't help but daydream about a Flying Lotus/Erykah Badu collaboration as they both are so tapped into a magical and exciting landscape of hip-hop & soul that soars in spiritual and psychedelic horizons. Filled with undeniable passion and of course highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Camel"
MPEG Stream: "Riot"
MPEG Stream: "Golden Diva"

GIL, GILBERTO s/t (Cerebro Eletronico) (Water) cd 15.98
Finally available domestically, Cerebro Electronico (Also known as s/t (1969)), is Gilberto Gil's most wild and exciting Tropicalia outing. Mutantes fans hungering for more should not skip this gem. If Gal Costa's 1969 psych-fuzz groove album floated your boat, get ready for this. Another raucous and wild slab of political subversion that later caused his and Caetano Velosos house arrest and subsequent political exile for many years. Featuring some of the most psychedelic guitarwork the world has ever known, studio wiz Rogerio Duprat outdoes himself on the almost-Dockstadteresque 'Objeto Semi-Identificado'. There's even a Mutantes cover ('2001' or 'Dois Mil e Uno') which out-freaks the original! And some fucking awesome whistling on "Volks Volkswagon Blue." Those unsure of where to start on Gilberto Gil's long musical career should begin right here! Highly Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Aquele Abraco"
MPEG Stream: "Vitrines"
MPEG Stream: "2001"

GRAILS Interpretations Of Three Psychedelic Rock Songs From Around The World (Latitudes 0:00) (Southern) 12" 14.98
Finally available on vinyl. One of our favorite records by longtime aQ faves the Grails. Where as the title suggests, The Grails cover and reinterpret "Three Psychedelic Rock Songs From Around The World", including one of our favorites from the Flower Travellin' Band. And since this is part of Southern's Latitudes series, it is indeed limited, this time to 1000 copies worldwide, which means 500 made it to the US, 50 to AQ. Packaged in that now immediately recognizable black and white woodcut style Latitudes sleeve. Pressed on obscenely thick white vinyl (with bits of black swirl in some of them), one sided, the flipside featuring one of the most intricate and striking etchings we've seen so far. Also includes the same insert that came with the cd. Needless to say, these are gonna fly out of here. Probably won't be able to get more, so be quick, or be dead...
We already loved the Grails. Then they have to go and cover Flower Travellin' Band. What the hell are we supposed to do now? Love them more?? Okay, fine. We love them more. Any band that has the balls to take on "Satori" deserves all the respect you can give them. This is volume 4 in Southern Records' Latitudes series, the first three of which (William Whitmore, Shit & Shine, Ginnungagap) we were only able to get a handful of each, which of course sold out in no time. We managed to get 25 of these, but there is no guarantee we'll be able to get more, so be prepared to be disappointed. Sorry. We tried to order 50, but what can you do?
So anyway, "Satori"! What a completely amazing song, those of you who for some reason don't already own Satori by the Flower Travellin Band, please remedy that immediately, you will not be sorry. And the Grails do an amazing job of turning "Satori" into a Grails song, it's still heavy, and it's still got that Eastern vibe, In fact it sounds a little bit Sun City Girls with its fiddle parts, but it's a little more mellowed out, and post rocky, and they wisely forgo the vocals which would be pretty darn hard to emulate.
The second track they take on is the Byrds' "Space Odyssey", a brooding twangy dirge, with dubbed out drums and absolutely dreamy lapsteel and slow building washes of cymbal sizzle, gloriously dark and hypnotic.
Finally, it's on to the UK (remember, this record is titled Interpretations Of Three Psychedelic Rock Songs From Around The World) to tackle "Master Builder" by Gong. The first half is a creeping crawling fog of shimmering guitar overtones and rich chordal swells, eventually building to a full on wild and woolly prog attack with wild drumming, mad fiddle sawing and major guitar freakout. SO AWESOME!
MPEG Stream: "Satori"
MPEG Stream: "Space Odyssey"

HEALTH Disco (Lovepump United) cd 10.98
Health, the band, are an entirely unHEALTHY, and thus utterly appealing concoction of manic rhythms, jagged guitars, yowled vocals, all wound into exploding bursts of freaked out noise drenched new wave tribalism. Chaotic, spastic, freaked out, manic, mathy, grindy. It's like the musical version of a diet rich in Pixie Sticks, Lik-M-Aid, licorice whips and Mountain Dew, and it's that imaginary diet that seemingly fuels Health's sound. What else could explain the boundless energy, the intense spazziness, the fractured heaviness, the blown out total rock action?
But as we mentioned in our review of their self-titled debut, as much as we love pretty much everything they do, we like them best when they're drone-y and synthy and drifty and hypnotic, and that is the side that seems to shine through on Disco, a collection of remixes and reinterpretations from a bunch of artists, none of which we recognize except for Crystal Castles, who shared a split with Health a while back.
At first we thought the title Disco was ironic, a pisstake, especially considering the first track. The opener, remixed by Acid Girls, doesn't do much to the original, except loop certain parts, add some noise, some bursts of electronics, none of which would have been that out of place in the original. There is definitely much more of a dance-y groove, but it's almost more New Wave-y than dance-y, and again, if you told us this was a non-remixed Health track and we hadn't heard the original, we wouldn't even blink. The second track, had us maybe reconsidering, while not disco by any stretch, it begins with tribal drums and reverbed vocals, which soon gives way to a dance-y groove, some noodly synths, but again, not all that far removed from the original, at least in our admittedly fuzzy memory. But then the next track drops, another Acid Girls remix, and everything changes. The Disco title makes way more sense. Suddenly the record is in full on modern electro disco, fuzzy synth, groovy Ed Banger style jam mode. From gloomy new wave skittery disco pop, to full on ultra distorted synth heavy Justice style dancefloor destroying jams, to skittery After Dark new wave, to minimal housey style Kompakt-ed grooves, to eighties Japanese video game style 8-bit worship, to Fischerspooner-esque Theme From Beverly Hills Cop retro, and pretty much every awesomely cheesy groovy stop in between. Pretty schizophrenic and all over the place, but somehow, all the various versions remain sort of true to the original sound. Anyone who dug the Health debut, and are not afraid to explore the dancefloor, will dig this big time. And folks who have never heard Health, but love shit like Crystal Castles, MGMT, Justice, Daft Punk, Alter Ego, Digitalism, Cut Copy and the like, this might just be your gateway drug, to things more noisy and punk rock.
MPEG Stream: "Triceratops (Acid Girls RMX A)"
MPEG Stream: "Lost Time (Pictureplane RMX)"
MPEG Stream: "Heaven (Pink Skull RMX)"

HEAVY WINGED Alive In My Mouth (Three Lobed) lp + cd 24.00
Latest from this Brooklyn trio (at least they were Brooklyn based last time we checked, they may be spread out all over the country these days, but at least one of em is still in Brooklyn!) and while they still wield some serious psychedelic heaviness, they've also gotten seriously melodic. The first of two sidelong tracks on this new lp is wrapped around a main riff and looped rhythm, that is crazy catchy in addition to being blissfully blown out and weirdly hypnotic. The trio lock into this relentlessly staccato groove, a sort of machinelike groove, super repetitive and robotic, the group pounding away, while the guitar slowly builds momentum, the sheets of high end and the streaks of feedback and wall of buzz lifting ever higher, a slow burning ascendancy, it almost sounds like some scientist took a lost Fushitsusha jam and slowed it down, it the lab, to examine it more closely, like some Discovery documentary featuring a time lapse film of a 'psych jam' captured in the wild. Until finally the main chugging rhythm drops out, the whole track becoming more and more stripped down, the drums skittering away, while some tangled buzz continues to twist and contort, into various permutations, the drums remaining the only constant, the guitar offering up strange and gloriously gnarled melodies, and the bass just buzzes and rumbles heavily. Right at the end it gets super spacious and pretty, but still without losing any momentum or lysergic energy.
The flipside is another grinding buzzy psychjam, one set of strings oscillating intensely in the low end, chugging and churning, the other locking into a woozy looped riff, all draped over another blown out motorik groove, that sounds like a more loose extension of the main A side rhythm. The track has plenty of twists and turns, eventually getting all mathy and metal in the middle, the main riff becoming super spidery, the drums going spastic and free, but still all settled on a thick bed of grinding mesmerizing buzz, finishing off with a burst of resplendent epic majesty, gradually slowing down to a weird warped outro, of lurching, skittery downtuned riffs and haunting disembodied metallic buzz, weaving back and forth and finally leaving a washed out sun baked glow to fade out quietly.
The cool thing with Three Lobed releases, is that not only do you get the lp, gorgeously packaged and pressed as always, but you also get the same songs pressed on an actual cd. Including a 17 minute bonus track only on the cd. Another weirdly looped slow motion psychedelic workout, this one even more slow and bleary than the lp sides. The drums setting the skeletal framework, locked into another mesmerizing complex loop, around which thick effected buzz, scrapes and chugs and whirls fall into step, establishing another kick as motorik groove that could go on forever as far as we're concerned, and in terms of the track, actually does, while the guitar here soars weightless high above, sounding all angelic and sun dappled, almost like a wailing voice, spread out in glistening streaks over that awesomely relentless chnnkŠ chnnk chnnk chnnk, below, so kick ass, weirdly minimal but still so heavy and psychedelically resplendent, eventually slowing down to a lysergic, buzz drenched crawl, before finishing off in a blinding chaotic crush of blinding high end, squiggly freaked out FX and chaotic drum crush.
Gorgeous black and white packaging, with a super tripped out, crazy intricate pen and ink cover image, thick sleeve, pressed on thick vinyl, with a real cd not a cd-r, and crazy limited as always, only 647 copies, each one hand numbered, we got a bunch from the band when they were here on tour last week, so not sure we'll be able to get more once these are gone...
MPEG Stream: "Gruesome Pillow Talk"

HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR s/t (DFA) cd 14.98
We've been so excited for this one for a while! While disco has received a much deserved renaissance in the last couple years there has been a big void of anyone new really making true great disco that captures the best moments of the golden vintage days of the genre. Luckily the guy behind Hercules And Love Affair, Andy Butler, has had quite an education in the history of the last three decades of charged and soulful dance music , due to his experiences dj'ing at a leather bar in Denver, and his last several years immersed in New York's club culture. With a super talented cast around him, Butler has made one of the year's best records, for sure one of the greatest and smartest vocal driven dance records in years!
While Antony (Antony & The Johnsons) has been lending his voice to many records over the last few years, Butler uses him in such exciting ways knowing that under the usually mournful and melancholic side to his voice there was an inner dancefloor diva just ready to let loose. Antony's vocal delivery evokes a sound and spirit that is reminiscent of Sylvester and you can tell that Sylvester, Arthur Russell, Patrick Cowley, Frankie Knuckles and the heyday of the Chicago house scene all served as major inspiration to the making of this record. Along with Antony there are also great vocal contributions from Nomi (who has toured a lot with CocoRosie) and Kim Ann Foxman as well as Butler himself on a few tracks. The album is a full band affair with great horns, strings, keys and Tim Goldsworthy (DFA) production and drum programming all merging together for such a full and rich sound. Above and beyond anything, these are such well crafted songs that aren't just winks to the past but instead carry the torch for impassioned and joyful sounds well into the future, keeping your body moving and your spirit raised high. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Hercules Theme"
MPEG Stream: "Blind"
MPEG Stream: "Iris"

HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR s/t (DFA) 2lp 22.00
We've been so excited for this one for a while! While disco has received a much deserved renaissance in the last couple years there has been a big void of anyone new really making true great disco that captures the best moments of the golden vintage days of the genre. Luckily the guy behind Hercules And Love Affair, Andy Butler, has had quite an education in the history of the last three decades of charged and soulful dance music , due to his experiences dj'ing at a leather bar in Denver, and his last several years immersed in New York's club culture. With a super talented cast around him, Butler has made one of the year's best records, for sure one of the greatest and smartest vocal driven dance records in years!
While Antony (Antony & The Johnsons) has been lending his voice to many records over the last few years, Butler uses him in such exciting ways knowing that under the usually mournful and melancholic side to his voice there was an inner dancefloor diva just ready to let loose. Antony's vocal delivery evokes a sound and spirit that is reminiscent of Sylvester and you can tell that Sylvester, Arthur Russell, Patrick Cowley, Frankie Knuckles and the heyday of the Chicago house scene all served as major inspiration to the making of this record. Along with Antony there are also great vocal contributions from Nomi (who has toured a lot with CocoRosie) and Kim Ann Foxman as well as Butler himself on a few tracks. The album is a full band affair with great horns, strings, keys and Tim Goldsworthy (DFA) production and drum programming all merging together for such a full and rich sound. Above and beyond anything, these are such well crafted songs that aren't just winks to the past but instead carry the torch for impassioned and joyful sounds well into the future, keeping your body moving and your spirit raised high. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Hercules Theme"
MPEG Stream: "Blind"
MPEG Stream: "Iris"

HIGUCHI, HISATO Butterfly Horse Street (Family Vineyard) cd 14.98
Been meaning to get to this one for a while... and then we reviewed it and our supplier was out of stock... but now they've got 'em again and here you go: Japanese guitarist Hisato Higuchi's previous disc on the Family Vineyard label, Dialogue, was all about the almost motionless, mysterious spare strum, a lonely n' lovely abstract guitar meditation. This newer disc starts off that way, with the quietly beautiful "A Hundred Signs Of Light"... but then, when track two, "Grow", kicks in, Higuchi's guitar playing suddenly, surprisingly takes a thrilling turn into amped up electric skree territory. It still sounds lonely and lovely - just WAY more loud and distorted. "Blood And Leaves" follows in the same vein. But then "Melody In The Mud" takes us back to the hushed, minimal moodiness of the first track... though 'tis only a brief (1:39) interlude before the next track, "Electric Guitar Light", erupts in full speaker shredding glory. It's a bit like Loren Connors sharing an album with Keiji Haino (hmmm, actually, those two have done that, but it's been a while and we can't say for sure that's what this sounds like...).
This album continues like this, Higuchi's somnolent, near-ambient songs (with some breathy, barely-there vocals), abutting others that aren't nearly so mellow... one of those is album-ender "Cry Baby Flowers", which sounds something like Eddie Hazel's "Maggot Brain" with a Merzbow makeover. Actually these crinkly-cranked distorted guitar solos -are- still sorta mellow, or at least mesmeric, but only if you're used to enjoying noisier stuff. Certainly they share the same slo-mo suggestions of melody and melancholia with the quieter pieces on here...
Definitely for fans of Neil Youngish fuzz freakout feedback side of Nagisa Ni Te, or Hjiokaidan noise guitar maven Jojo Hiroshige's more "musical" solo efforts. We really, really like it.
MPEG Stream: "A Hundred Signs Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "Grow"
MPEG Stream: "Blood And Leaves"

HOWLIN' MAGIC The Dreaming (Lal Lal Lal) cd 16.98
Record number two from Howlin' Magic, and it's all about more howlin', more magic too if you're as enchanted by this brand of blown-out blooze as we are. Lo-fi and lovin' it. Is this the first non-Finnish release on the Lal Lal Lal label? Well Howlin' Magic fits right in with the usual Finnish weirdness even though they're just from just down Santa Cruz way, and by they we mean he, 'cause Howlin' Magic is a one man band. Imagine ol' Hasil Adkins playing stuff that sounds more like old Comets On Fire. Such insane all-instrumental shambolic stomp, with a mystic sci-fi hippieish vibe reflected in such song titles as "Voltron", "Quantum", and "The Universe Is Love". As with the first album from Howlin' Magic (not to be confused with Howlin' Rain, by the way!), this is for those who love psychedelic geetar excess, a la everything from Acid Mothers Temple to Michael Yonkers... freakin' recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Thanaton III"
MPEG Stream: "Mac And Bloo"
MPEG Stream: "Lord Jagannath"

HUM OF THE DRUID Raising The New Wing/Braided Industry (SNSE) lp 16.98
Record number two from the mysteriously monickered Hum Of The Druid, and as we mentioned in the review of the first lp, that's exactly what you'll hear, some serious druidic hum, which is just something we made up so you'll just have to take our word for it. The follow up takes the already intense and heavy caustic drones of the first lps and takes it even further. Darker, filthier, heavier. At times it almost sounds like field recordings of a construction site chopped up and assembled into something slightly more musical, at others it sounds like Earth, circa 2, overdosed and slumped against a wall of Sunn amps cranked to 10, and at still others, it sounds a bit like someone spinning Masonna records on a busted Victrola. Indeed.
Massive swells of sound, all low end, and we mean VERY low end, super blown out, crumbling, Merzbowian, vast expanses of speaker destroying rumble, giving way to stretches of sound much more tranquil, like Masami Akita mixing Wolf Eyes. Sheets of murky industrial drift wreathed in corrosive buzz and wallowing in downtuned tectonic filth. Some parts sound like wind blowing on a microphone, but cranked to danger levels, other parts sound like a million turntables with the needle stuck in the run off groove of some super scratched up old record, peppered with the clatter and clank of some alien machinery, it's almost like a stereo test record, but instead of tones, it's a series of long, sprawling slabs of super intense drone, and speaker shredding grind and buzz. It's all very deep and abrasive, caustic and corrosive, but actually strangely mesmerizing.
Gorgeous and super creepy cover art too! We only have 15 copies and then it's gone for good...

JASPER TX Black Sleep (Miasmah) cd 15.98
It's actually been a while since we've heard from Jasper TX, aka Dag Rosenqvist. For a brief spell, JTX was churning out releases like a Machinefabriek or Aidan Baker. And to be honest, we actually didn't mind, as we've loved pretty much everything Rosenqvist has released. In fact, the very first Jasper TX release, I'll Be Long Gone Before My Light Reaches You, still ranks as one of our favorite discs, and in some ways was sort of the first of this new breed of obfuscated blurred ambience we've come to love so much.
Anyway, finally a brand new full length, one epic 51 minute track, split into 6 movements, and right out of the gate, we're smitten, deep dark swells, washed out barely there melodies, distant hiss, and a strange buried pulse, that seems to surface and then disappear, like some mysterious beasts heartbeat, growing louder as it reaches the surface, only to fade away as it disappears back into the depths. Long drawn out tones, shimmery reflective, before it slips into something MUCH more minimal, the second movement, a super low-end drift, barely audible through speakers but in headphones it's a powerful seismic rumble, rippled with strands of whispery static, and more buried barely audible rhythms. It's only on track three that the record takes on anything songlike, a loping lilting guitar, unspooling a dreamy laid back melody, a keyboard picking out a simple harmony over the top, all underpinned by a soft dronelike murmur.
But the respite is brief, Black Sleep is indeed true to its title, narcotic and very dark, murky and mysterious, the record shifts into some abstract assemblage of thumps and bumps, before they fade out leaving a distant ominous whir, spread out like a slow moving black sonic sea, before shifting back again to song, the guitar returning, this time suspended amidst dense layers of static shimmer, low end rumbles, laced with bits of grit and glitch, of hiss and static, all very moody and intense, threatening to build to something climactic, but instead, shifting slowly forward, resolutely and mournfully.
The final part, clocking in at nearly 20 minutes, begins with a cacophony of buzzing and scraped strings, a manic exploration of a piano's inside, still surrounded by shards of electronic glitch, the static and buzz creating accidental rhythms over a distant machine-like hum, before a melody surfaces, minor key and melancholy, the notes appearing one at a time as deep swells, the distant drones building in density and intensity, never quite exploding, but building to a muted murky chordal climax, majestic, but still subdued, before as all things drone must, it fades to silence.
Definitely not the prettiest Jasper record (that honor still goes to I'll Be Long Gone) but certainly the darkest, and maybe the most mysterious sounding, a musical rendering of the Black Sleep, which to our ears can only be death, and as a soundtrack to slipping off our mortal coils, we'd be hard pressed to do much better than this.
MPEG Stream: "Black Sleep Part III"
MPEG Stream: "Black Sleep Part IV"

JULY s/t (Rev-Ola) cd 17.98
July is one of a myriad of UK psych bands to come out of the paisley maelstrom of the post-Sgt. Pepper's London psych scene in the late sixties. One who would still remain a minor footnote if they had never made this brilliant and amazing debut album. It's a highly collectible psych artifact for good reason. It's awesome!!!!!!!! We've been playing it nearly non-stop since we got it, and it's pretty much an across the board store favorite.
Starting out years earlier as the Tomcats (amongst many other line-up changes and band names that defined the hectic scene back in the day) and influenced by the same wave of American R&B that bands like the Stones and Spencer Davis Group were, they soon realized the London scene was too crowded for them and headed off to the France and Spain for a couple of years to tighten their chops. When they came back in 1968, the sound and scene had changed once again from R&B to full on flowery acid-psych. Armed with good songs and well-rehearsed from touring, they quickly snagged a record deal and used the studio to augment their songs with all manner of gimmickry such as phasing, delays and tape-loops and far-out instrumentation of sitars, tablas, and African percussion.
The band quickly cut one of the finest examples of acid-y psych pop to come out of the era, an engaging mix of lysergic dreaminess and lo-fi garage rock urgency. The only thing was, none of the members really liked the result. (Unlike us!) Certain choices like the "ugly" cover art and band name (changed to July to coincide with the album's release?!) were taken out of the band's control, and some members felt the studio gimmickry being used was far too gimmicky. At the time when so many bands like The Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, and Kaleidoscope were making stronger inroads with the psych sound and scene, July couldn't figure out what it should do with itself, and cutting only one more single (featured here among the bonus tracks), called it a day. Tragic! Listening to this today, you can hear its influence through bands like Olivia Tremor Control, early Guided By Voices, and Jennifer Gentle. If you have loved UK pop-psych albums such as Tangerine Dream by Kaleidoscope, S.F. Sorrow by The Pretty Things, and Pink Floyd's Pipers at The Gates of Dawn, July's self-titled debut will be one more jewel in that acid pop crown. So totally recommended.
NB. another July album called The Second of July of previous unissued recordings from 1967 exists as well, and hopefully also will be reissued by Rev-Ola.
MPEG Stream: "Jolly Mary"
MPEG Stream: "I See"
MPEG Stream: "Friendly Man"

KALMA, ARIEL Le Temps Des Moissons (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 17.98
We raved over the earlier reissue of minimalist composer Ariel Kalma's 1978 epic Osmose. So much so we made it a Record of the Week! Now Beta-Lactam Ring has reissued Kalma's 1975 debut Les Temps des Moissons (Time of The Harvest), a foray into electronic ragas using saxophone (lots of sax), ethnic instruments, effects and all manners of electronic filters. Less proto-new age sounding than Osmose, Les Temps takes cues from Terry Riley's Poppy NoGood explorations with saxophone and time delay and expands on them with krautier influences using kalimbas, flutes and wah-wah effects into a metaphysical tapestry of free music. Fans of Riley, early Kraftwerk and Joakim Skogsberg will find lots to love here! As long as you don't mind sax...
MPEG Stream: "Bakafrica"
MPEG Stream: "Fast Road To Nowhere"

KING KHAN AND THE SHRINES The Supreme Genius Of (Vice) cd 14.98
While it might not always seem like it, sometimes the thing we're craving for the most is some blazing, direct in your face on fire rock n' roll. The problem is that most groups who play that kind of stuff these days either come off as total burn outs or are way uninspired. So when we heard this for the first time we all smiled wide and started rocking out with wreckless abandon! It was exactly what we've been wanting to hear. King Khan has made some really good garage fueled rawk in the past with the BBQ Show, but this collection of songs with his soul soaked band The Shrines has caught our attention and interest BIG TIME. With a nine piece band including Rahn Streeter on percussion who has played for everyone from Curtis Mayfield to Stevie Wonder, the songs are filled with undeniable chops and King Khan's vocals have been giving us great flashbacks to primetime era Rocket From The Crypt and the Make-Up as well as folks like The Dirtbombs. These are songs that owe as much to the history of garage rock and Nuggets compilations as it does to the Stax sound and all sorts of scorching r&b. Feels so damn good to have some high octane tunes to blast throughout the summertime!
MPEG Stream: "I Wanna Be A Girl"
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Tooth"
MPEG Stream: "Burnin Inside"

KING KHAN AND THE SHRINES The Supreme Genius Of (Vice) 2lp 17.98
While it might not always seem like it, sometimes the thing we're craving for the most is some blazing, direct in your face on fire rock n' roll. The problem is that most groups who play that kind of stuff these days either come off as total burn outs or are way uninspired. So when we heard this for the first time we all smiled wide and started rocking out with wreckless abandon! It was exactly what we've been wanting to hear. King Khan has made some really good garage fueled rawk in the past with the BBQ Show, but this collection of songs with his soul soaked band The Shrines has caught our attention and interest BIG TIME. With a nine piece band including Rahn Streeter on percussion who has played for everyone from Curtis Mayfield to Stevie Wonder, the songs are filled with undeniable chops and King Khan's vocals have been giving us great flashbacks to primetime era Rocket From The Crypt and the Make-Up as well as folks like The Dirtbombs. These are songs that owe as much to the history of garage rock and Nuggets compilations as it does to the Stax sound and all sorts of scorching r&b. Feels so damn good to have some high octane tunes to blast throughout the summertime!
MPEG Stream: "I Wanna Be A Girl"
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Tooth"
MPEG Stream: "Burnin Inside"

KOSS Four Worlds Converge As One (Mule Electronic) cd 16.98
From Japan, the artist/producer known as Koss (real name: Kuniyuki Takahashi) has apparently been around for a while, involved in the electronic scene since back in the '80s, dabbling in everything from electro body music to dub to hardcore noise to chillout techno to deep house. This, however, is the first album of his we've heard. Well better late than never. Four Worlds Converge As One is lovely, lovely, calm, and lovely. It starts with the soothing, beatless ambient drift of "Water", the first of four tracks on the disc and at 29+ minutes the longest. Hissing, humming, with field recordings of obvious watery origin worked in, this track is like the sound of a white mist rising from the shore of a gently lapping lake, with a wind softly blowing. A relaxed, melodic drone piece. That could have been the whole disc right there and we'd be sold. But there's three more parts, each over a quarter of an hour in length, representing the other elements of fire, air, and earth...
Track two, "Fire / M Point (40N42-34N33 Mix)" is immediately more active than "Water", with pleasantly creaking noises, eventually joined by shuffling electronic beats, and glitchy clicks worked into the washes of more feedbacky drone. Following that, "Air / MW Point (137E35 Mix)" is back to the blissful shimmer of the first track, but with the addition of minimalist Reichian (Steve, not Wilhelm) pulsations. Looping, layered sounds from some classical stringed instrument. Utterly hypnotic of course. And then, Koss brings us down to "Earth / S Point", wrapping this disc up with a surprising mix of forest-at-night nature sounds and percolating, processed tribal percussion, with echo and effects. It gets denser and denser, but remains quite soothing, the sort of "exotica" you might expect from, say, one of Eye Yamataka's remixes... though perhaps a little "rainstick-y" for some. But the more "Pop Ambient", droney-synthy explorations that mostly fill this album are enough for us, so good, reminding us of Eno and Budd (Harold, not the Aussie grunge band) and Tangerine Dream and even composer John Luther Adams.
And by the way, the "converge into one" idea of the title has a special meaning - apparently Koss intends that if all four tracks/elements on this disc were to be played simultaneously (you could buy three extra copies of the cd... or make them yourself), a whole new song will emerge. Hmm...haven't tried it, we're happy with the four just by themselves so far. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Water"
MPEG Stream: "Fire / M Point (40N42-34N33 Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Air / MW Point (137E35 Mix)"

LANCASTER, BYARD Personal Testimony (Porter) cd 14.98
Byard Lancaster was a revelation. An aQ customer turned us on to him, as a flute player, it might have even been Porter Records head honcho Luke Mosling, which would make perfect sense, regardless, the music of Byard Lancaster blew our minds. We're (not so) mildly obsessed with flute music, especially jazz, so hearing Lancaster completely own the flute, pulling off Roland Kirk style sing/shouting through the instrument and then smoothly slipping into so soft fluttering groove, we were immediately obsessed. And even more blown away to discover it wasn't just the flute Lancaster had mastered. Piccolo, clarinet, sax, piano. We knew we had to hear more. The bad news being that most of Lancaster's recording were impossible to find. Which is why we were so excited when Mosling started up Porter, specifically with an eye to re-release all the lost Lancaster titles. So here's the first one, Personal Testimony, a collection of solo recordings originally released in 1979, and so amazing. From the soulful piano groove of the opener, with softly crooned vocals and dark swirling melodies, to the ethereal drifting fluttering flute of "In Lovingkindness", the melodies moody and mystic, multiple fluted interwoven and gloriously and complexly entangled, to the wild funky soulful flute jam that is "Dogtown", you can almost imagine the bad kicking in behind him, as he whips up impossible clusters and flurries of notes, occasionally offering up James Brown style grunts between breaths, to the deeeeeep droney low end moan of the big horns in "Brotherman", the tones reverberating and rumbling gloriously. There are a handful of sax tracks too, some skronky and FREE, others smooth and jazzy, some all tangled up with other overdubbed horns, all of them amazing. Some of the most intense and beautiful solo recordings we've heard for sure.
This reissue has six new tracks tacked on as bonus material, recorded last year, a sort of 'now' to the first half's 'then'. Not so into the a capella opener, maybe a little too soulful scat, but soon we're back into some serious flute territory, laced with hand drums and shakers, various vocalizations, and some wild playing. Three tracks worth of kick ass, wild and free, fluttery and free flute action, that sounds almost as good as the first half. The second to last track is solo piano, dark and moody, some gorgeous flurries of notes, dense clouds of thick chords, wild free explosions of sound, eventually building to a super chaotic wild piano freak out, pounding, with all the pedals down, before drifting back into more tranquil territory. The final track is hymn like, soft fluttery flute, delicate piano, and crooned vocals, lilting and melancholy, and quite lovely.
An awesome and essential reissue, well worth it for just the '79 release alone, but the bonus tracks make it just that much sweeter. Lots of liner notes, past and present, as well as a bad ass photo of Lancaster shirtless, in tight white pants, wailing on the sax!
MPEG Stream: "In Lovingkindness"
MPEG Stream: "Dogtown"

LEVIATHAN A Silhouette In Splinters (Moribund) cd 14.98
Probably very little needs to be said about this. Previously available as a super limited lp, we sold out in a heartbeat, now long out of print, and finally available on cd, for the multitudes who missed out first time around, and all you turntableless holdout heathens.
A Silhouette In Splinters was the long in the works "ambient" record from Leviathan, originally released on Canadian label Profound Lore, which offered a glimpse into a side of Leviathan, that while an integral part of his sound, was often relegated to intros or outros or interludes, but here Wrest got to prove that he was as deft with long swaths of black ambience and haunting drones as he was with buzzing riffs and blasting beats. Which is probably obvious to anyone who considers themselves a fan, as a huge part of what makes Leviathan records so powerful and mesmerizing is Wrest's mastery of mood and ambience, and Silhouette is an entire album of bleak and depressive atmospheres. All as haunting and mysterious as anything we've heard from Wrest. But this is not pure ambient music, its ambience is only obvious when compared to the dense complex sound world of other Leviathan releases. This is not static ambience, not in the least, these are actual songs, not just creepy swooshings and simple drones. Silhouette is like an entire record made up of the best black metal intros ever, but here, each one is fleshed out into actual musical narratives. Skeletal guitar figures, drift and shimmer darkly over ominous swells of mournful minor key lament. What little percussion there is, hovers ghostlike beneath a wash of blackened swirl. The entire record is wrapped in a foggy cloak of starlit skies and murky underground passages. A haunting soundtrack to misery and horror, death and dying. Fucking genius.
MPEG Stream: "It Comes In Whispers Part: 2"
MPEG Stream: "A Silhouette In Splinters"

LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH The Golden Plague (BlackMetal.Com) cd 13.98
What's in a name? Pretty much everything when the name is LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH. Really, fuck all these bands called Sword something or other, how can they not be completely and utterly slain by a horde with a name like LSOD!? They can't, and they shall!
We reviewed the new record by Endless Blizzard last time around, a black hole heavy platter packed with furious frenzied wintry blackened old school black metal, well, EB guitarist, Roskva, was wielding his axe in LSOD before the Endless Blizzard even began. As you might imagine, the sounds are similar, a definite nod to classic old school metal, a bit of death, a bit of thrash, raw and filthy, but still plenty mathy and complex, the drums manic, with impossible flurries of lightning fast blasts, the guitars thick and downtuned, snarling and buzzing, the vokills a guttural caterwaul, the songs veering from black thrash into pounding blackened doom to almost crusty grindy thrash. Plenty of nods to Celtic Frost and Hellhammer, as well as the Nordic BM aristocracy, with a SUPER heavy production, that manages to make the whole thing crushing and brutal, without losing any of its raw grimness. Way recommended. Especially if you dug the Endless Blizzard. Yet another horde to perhaps be considered for inclusion in the rarified ranks of the West Coast USBM elite.
MPEG Stream: "The Golden Plague"
MPEG Stream: "Plunder & Lightning"

MASSIERA, JEAN-PIERRE Psychoses: Discoid (1976 - 1981) (Mucho Gusto) lp 17.98
It's not everyday you hear samples of Hitler speeches and Nazi Marches over a pulsating glammy space groove next to an even wackier freaked out French version of Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming To Take Me Away". Throw in some warped 60's beat pop, zany space prog and the weirdest but most sublimely cosmic disco tracks you have never heard, and you are somewhat closer to wrapping your head around the skewed production genius of Jean-Pierre Massiera. Starting his career in the south of France and relocating to Montreal in the seventies, Massiera, best known for Les Maledictus Sound, a holy-grail record for collectors of sixties psyche-exotica freakiness has continued to explore for the past 40 years all manner of spacey and unhinged pop and dance grooves through a myriad of single-based projects, the best of collected on these two volumes. Like a surrealist Serge Gainsbourg mixed with Gong, Cerrone and Zolar X, Massiera never concerned himself with record industry pressures or making fame or fortune off his production efforts but instead used the studio to explore his love of surrealism, off-beat humor and some coke-addled (we presume) cosmic fantasy. Each record comes with a code to download mp3's and a bonus track.
The Discoid volume begins with Sex Conventions' "Toi Qui Reve de Baisers", a funky groover that owes much of its success to Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio" as they share similar riffs and breaks. Native American, and Brazilian rhythms come through on tracks by Herman's Rocket (who were also on the first volume) and Brasa Brasil & Helena. While Human Egg gives us "Onomatopaiea", a hypnotic vocal-only rhythm chant and the cosmic disco epic "Love Like This" that any DJ with a penchant for Italo or electro-funk should get this volume for that track alone! Of course The Starlights "Mao Mao" along with tracks by Mickey and Joyce and Venus Gang also make this essential for crate diggers and beatheads and freaky music collectors of all types. Psychoses Indeed!
MPEG Stream: THE HUMAN EGG "Love Like This"
MPEG Stream: THE STARLIGHTS "Mao Mao"
MPEG Stream: SEX CONVENTION "Toi Qui Reve De Baisers"

MASSIERA, JEAN-PIERRE Psychoses: Freakoid (1963 - 1978) (Mucho Gusto) lp 17.98
It's not everyday you hear samples of Hitler speeches and Nazi Marches over a pulsating glammy space groove next to an even wackier freaked out French version of Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming To Take Me Away". Throw in some warped 60's beat pop, zany space prog and the weirdest but most sublimely cosmic disco tracks you have never heard, and you are somewhat closer to wrapping your head around the skewed production genius of Jean-Pierre Massiera. Starting his career in the south of France and relocating to Montreal in the seventies, Massiera, best known for Les Maledictus Sound, a holy-grail record for collectors of sixties psyche-exotica freakiness has continued to explore for the past 40 years all manner of spacey and unhinged pop and dance grooves through a myriad of single-based projects, the best of collected on these two volumes. Like a surrealist Serge Gainsbourg mixed with Gong, Cerrone and Zolar X, Massiera never concerned himself with record industry pressures or making fame or fortune off his production efforts but instead used the studio to explore his love of surrealism, off-beat humor and some coke-addled (we presume) cosmic fantasy. Each record comes with a code to download mp3's and a bonus track.
The Freakoid volume begins with Basile, a novelty singer who was popular in the South of France for playing a rural imbecile who has two tracks, one being the skewed Napoleon XIV cover mentioned above. That there is no mention that this song is a cover ( both were released the same year) and instead claims to be inspired by an early thirties French recording just adds to Massiera's strange self-made mythos masking some pretty blatant appropriations. Other tracks by groups Les Monegasques and Piranhas venture into psyche beat and garage rock while tracks by Le Chats and J.P.M & Co. explore proggified Salvador Dali, with wigs and body paint, hermaphrodites, and tape collages over pulsing synths and rhythms. More cosmic space funk rounds out side two with alien fantasias from Visitors and more glitter wigs and body paint from Herman's Rocket and Venus Gang providing some late-era Mutantes / Nina Hagen zaniness. Add the traditional African and Indonesian folk groove of The Starlights and you're in for a druggy Euro-mind-trip that you might not be able to return from. Psychoses indeed!
MPEG Stream: BASILE "Engins Bizarres et Gens Estranges"
MPEG Stream: J.P.M & CO. "Plus Jamais Ca"
MPEG Stream: VISITORS "Flatwoods Story"
MPEG Stream: VENUS GANG "Space Inferno"

MELVINS Nude With Boots (Ipecac) cd 15.98
Y'know, the Melvins have been one of our favorite bands for so long we practically take 'em for granted. But when a new album comes out, it's still pretty exciting. Almost like it must have been in the '60s when, like, a new Beatles LP would be released, that's what it's like for us and the Melvins... except heck the Melvins have been around now for, like, 100x as long as the Beatles' whole career lasted.
So, yes, yah, yay, it's a new Melvins! Again on Ipecac, which means it's yet another Melvins cd with the front cover on the back and the tracklist on the front. You think they'd be over that by now, but the Melvins are all about being quirky now aren't they? Well, being quirky and HEAVY. And we're pleased to report that Nude With Boots is plenty heavy! As expected, though with the Melvins you also have to expect the unexpected too. But from the get go, Nude With Boots hammers it down, maybe a bit more uptempo rockin' than typical, lead-off track "The Kicking Machine" being just that, ass kicking that is, a hooky slab of classic rockin' riffola. Replete with chunky guitars, catchy vocal choruses, and splattering percussion to spare. The next track up, "Billy Fish" is another big, bangin' number. And then when track three, "Dog Island" hits, though, it's CRUSHING. And you realize that the album's only getting started. That song's 7 and a half minutes of herky-jerky slo-mo heaviness, creeped out and melodically fist-waving too. Yep, this is shaping up to be a quite satisfying Melvins experience, one that so far stacks up with the likes of Houdini. No kidding.
How do they do it? The Melvins have such an *authoritative* sound. Heavier than thou for sure. Distinctively untouchable. It's like they have access to better stuff than anyone. Stuff? Dunno, gear, drugs, organic vegetables, whatever it is that makes them sound like they do, the Melvins are in a league unto themselves.
One not so secret weapon: Buzz's always amazing, melodic yet gritty vocals, which we realize sound like Gene Simmons crossed with Ozzy Osbourne. And, as well, his usual cryptic, imagistic lyrics.
Furthermore, there's simply so much geetar badassitude on this album, Buzz blasting riffs and sweet licks all over the place, and of course Dale's drum fills are sweet (and punishing) too. We defy you to try to listen to this album and not a) air-guitar b) air-drum or c) at the very least, headbang. Maybe even sing along! If you can figure out the words that is.
Of course, along with the rippin' rock, this also has its copious share of abstractly wacked weirdness, ambient interludes like the 1:05 "Flush" ferinstance. Or the atmospheric moody SUNNO))) styled murk of the cleverly titled "Dies Iraea". Or the bizarre bludgeon n' scrape of "The Savage Hippy" and the even more out there "It Tastes Better Than the Truth", a twofer in the extreme tradition of Melvins album-enders, the latter practically sounding like a chaotic Khanate on a ketamine bender. Or Wildildlife...
So, sometimes it almost sounds like this is a uber-produced Ozzy or Alice Cooper album from the '80s or '90s that's been taken over by the real inmates of one of the padded cell insane asylums that those two cartoon characters always were checking into/outof (on the album covers anyway, rehabs in real life), hard rock pop that's been utterly warped and weirded out...
Maybe it's just as well that Melvins never got as huge as pals Nirvana during the Grunge years. They had a major label dalliance, yes, but survived it, and are still with us to crank out what's simply the classic rock of our generation (with a heavy dose of weirdness). Nude With Boots makes you remember, oh yeah, ROCK MUSIC. We love rock music. Damn, it's good. We've been really into the rejuvenated Harvey Milk lately, a Melvinsy band for sure, but you've gotta give it up to the originals, the one and only Melvins. All hail.
MPEG Stream: "The Kicking Machine"
MPEG Stream: "Dog Island"
MPEG Stream: "The Savage Hippy"

MUDHONEY The Lucky Ones (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
You would think a band that's twenty years into their career would be a whole different beast, a pale imitation of the snarling punks they were when they were young and hungry and all drugged up. But then there's Mudhoney, who sound just as vital and vibrant, snotty and badass as they did nearly two decades ago. Recent records dabbled with horns and more drone-y song structures, but even then they always remained not that far removed from the band they once were and apparently always will be: a kick ass, stripped down grungey, druggy, snotty, garage rock punk rock catchy as fuck head butt to the bridge of the nose.
Not sure if it's the big 20th anniversary, or the recent release of Mudhoney's seminal Superfuzz Bigmuff, but damn if the Lucky Ones doesn't sound like it could just have easily come out back in the early nineties. The guitar thick and gnarled, the riffing thick and super distorted, the drums off kilter but SOLID, and Mark Arm's distinctive wail, in such fine form it's like he just got finished recording "Touch Me I'm Sick" five minutes ago instead of nearly 20 years.
But it's not just the parts, it's the songs, and the songs this time around, as always, kick some serious ass. But they're super charged, blown out, heavy and buzzy, garage-y and WAY punk rock, with bits of tripped out spacieness, even some Green River style almost glamminess, and while there are nods to the more recent records, this is Mudhoney rocking it like it's 1990, and putting most, if not all of their current rock contemporaries to shame. Big time!
MPEG Stream: "The Lucky Ones"
MPEG Stream: "Inside Out Over You"

MUDHONEY The Lucky Ones (Sub Pop) lp 14.98
You would think a band that's twenty years into their career would be a whole different beast, a pale imitation of the snarling punks they were when they were young and hungry and all drugged up. But then there's Mudhoney, who sound just as vital and vibrant, snotty and badass as they did nearly two decades ago. Recent records dabbled with horns and more drone-y song structures, but even then they always remained not that far removed from the band they once were and apparently always will be: a kick ass, stripped down grungey, druggy, snotty, garage rock punk rock catchy as fuck head butt to the bridge of the nose.
Not sure if it's the big 20th anniversary, or the recent release of Mudhoney's seminal Superfuzz Bigmuff, but damn if the Lucky Ones doesn't sound like it could just have easily come out back in the early nineties. The guitar thick and gnarled, the riffing thick and super distorted, the drums off kilter but SOLID, and Mark Arm's distinctive wail, in such fine form it's like he just got finished recording "Touch Me I'm Sick" five minutes ago instead of nearly 20 years.
But it's not just the parts, it's the songs, and the songs this time around, as always, kick some serious ass. But they're super charged, blown out, heavy and buzzy, garage-y and WAY punk rock, with bits of tripped out spacieness, even some Green River style almost glamminess, and while there are nods to the more recent records, this is Mudhoney rocking it like it's 1990, and putting most, if not all of their current rock contemporaries to shame. Big time!
MPEG Stream: "The Lucky Ones"
MPEG Stream: "Inside Out Over You"

MUELLER, JON Strung (Table Of The Elements) 12" 17.98
Don't know too much about Jon Mueller. Other than he plays in Collections Of Colonies Of Bees (who we know very little about, except that Jon Mueller is in the band), sometimes rocks his axe with Rhys Chatham, and more importantly has offered up a seriously kick ass slab of avant guitarism for his installment in Table Of The Elements' new guitar series of one sided etched 12"s.
Mueller lays down a looped stuttery riff, but more than stutter, it skips, a grinding chug, every three or four seconds, locked into a super hypnotic mesmerizing loop. The effect is spaced out and trippy, and not a little bit hypnotic. The spaces between are filled with a weird buzzing rattling sound, which if we're not mistaken, is the a snare drum vibrating sympathetically,
It takes a little while, but eventually that background buzz gets louder and louder until a second guitar joins in offering up a chiming melodic counterpoint to that static central riff. All of a sudden, everything drops out, leaving just a strange haunting little high end interlude, feedback and squawky squeaky abstract guitar noodling, before the main riff kicks back in all machine like and intense, locking immediately back into that buzz drenched anti-groove which plays out until the end.
It doesn't necessarily grab you all at once, but once your ears and your brain lock on, you are hooked, and want it to go on forever and ever and ever.
Pressed on thick clear vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass Savage Pencil etching, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!

NEKRASOV The Form Of Thought From Beast (Exotic Corpse) cd 14.98
Record number two from this grim one man nekronoise black metal horde from Australia. We raved about the first one, Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days, a few lists back, but we're led to believe that a handful of you may have not made it past the first paragraph, the intro, the hook. If that was you, well, you should be regretting it now, and when you finish reading this review, listening to the sound samples, and most likely buying one of these, go back to the No-Man's review, skip the beginning and jump right in and read the whole thing. And everything will be right.
The point of that intro, and that review, and to a certain extent this one too, was that adding noise is not always as simple as just, well, adding noise. Mixing to genres, even if they're related, just as often leads to something messy and pointless, as it does to some genius fusion. And there is definitely plenty of noisy black metal, but much of it is either thick noise over shitty metal, or just metal, with the noise an afterthought. One must have a serious handle on both THE NOISE and THE RIFF to make it work. And if you hadn't figured it out by now, Nekrosov is most definitely a master of both the noise and the riff, and manages to fuse the two into something blackly transcendent.
That said however, the opening one two punch here are a bit misleading, in that the noise and the riff are kept well separate, the first, an ominous glitched out landscape of bleak minimal buzz and drone, hiss and crackle, almost like a black metal Philip Jeck, and the second track, the furious buzzing blasting "Mountain Ash" sounds amazing, only noisy in as much as black metal is inherently noisy, super well produced, the riffs HUGE and heavy, the drums lightning fast, erupting in squalls of impossible blasts, the vocals grim and harsh, the melodies soaring, even some hooks buried beneath the buzz.
The next track however finds Nekrosov returning to more familiar blacknoise ground. Deep swirling waves of static buzz, the vocals stretched into sheets of abstract whir, churning and roiling, beneath melodies lurk and struggle to surface, held under by the buzzing blackness. It's almost like some black metal song was frozen, a single moment played over and over stretched into some sort of infinite loop, but it's not a loop as it slowly grows and sprawls and spreads out into something expansive. It's almost ambient, and strangely soothing in its droniness, without losing any of its grim buzz or black mystery.
The next few tracks veer back and forth between, blown out soundscapes of samples and percussion, blurred into a windswept buzz, what sounds like ghostlike vocals underneath processed sounds of whipping winds and the click clack of a railroad, to noise drenched old school raw black metal crush, to slow burning deep ambience, to full on classic eighties style riffing, the old masters rendered in new shades of black and buzz, finally culminating in the twenty minute closer, which begins as some bleak, post industrial Wolf Eyes-an dronescape, all haunting whirs, and strange clanks and clunks, distant moans, bits of percussion and mysterious samples, building to a wall of white hot blackened buzz, sheathed in streaks of feedback and pulled apart riffs, this is the sort of shit that would put most cd-r dronescapers to shame, but it's not over yet, the wall of noise slowly takes shape, riffs emerge from the murk, drums explode from beneath the veil of hiss, the track barreling along churning wildly, riffing and blasting, but gradually sinking ever deeper into a morass of gorgeous textured noise, crackle and buzz and hiss, blown out and super distorted, eventually swallowing the blackness whole, leaving just a brief glimpse of the black buzz, before blinking out.
Fucking AWESOME! Absolutely essential. As is the first disc, if you haven't gone back and re-checked that one out already.
Killer handmade packaging too. The cd housed in a printed fold over black and white cardstock sleeve, that sleeve, housed in an oversized sealed envelope, hand painted black and red and silver, very abstract, and super striking. And as you might have guessed. ULTRA LIMITED!!! But the special print handmade versions are limited to 100 copies and we have the very last copies. Once these are gone, you'll get the normal version. Same music, mostly the same packaging, just minus the painted outer sleeve...
MPEG Stream: "Mountain Ash"
MPEG Stream: "Today The Sun A Golden Illusion"

ONDO Mahavishnu (Paradigms) cd 12.98
The second of two new releases on the always kick ass Paradigms label from the UK. The first being the reviewed-elsewhere-on-this-list latest release from 4AD ethereal drifters The Victims Shudder, the other, being this, the latest slab of crushing black ambience and deep dark dronemusic from Sweden's Ondo. Weirdly enough, we were already fans having dug heavily the cd-r released on 200mg a short while back, and were already pining for more, and voila. Whereas that cd-r was a single looooong song, this disc is split into distinct movements, each a bleak and caustic chunk of truly ominous ambience. Actually, there is so much stuff going on, and this is so dark and heavy, it's almost disingenuous to call it ambient music. This is cinematic abstract free noise drone music. Heavy enough to worm its way inside the ears of drone inclined metalheads, but dark and blissed out enough to keep the drone obsessed in downtuned druggy nirvana.
The label mentions early Earth, Raison D'Etre and Fennesz, and damn if all three of those don't definitely apply. Pretty melodies are buried under slabs of grinding buzz, chords are woven into undulating sheets of fuzzy sound, everything is hissy and glitchy, with a gauzy sheen. Imagine Earth 2 as reimagined by Christian Fennesz and you might be getting close. Chords and notes, churn and throb, blackened sounds pulse ominously enveloping crystalline shimmers and music box like melodies, voices and samples are chopped up and distorted, riffs are pulled apart into washed out smears of sound. Some of the tracks definitely border on serious doom territory, while others are blurred distorted dreamscapes, all skittery and smeared, dark pianos, radio distortion and amp buzz, distant melodic whir, all tangled into something creepy and beautiful, strings draped over crumbling industrial crunch, all woven around heaving heaviness, rendered in slow moving swells. Way recommended for fans of things slow and low, dark and doomy, murky and mysterious.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a white dvd style case, with a full color cover and printed black and white insert.
MPEG Stream: "Mahavishnu"
MPEG Stream: "Forrest"

ORIENT EXPRESS s/t (Fallout) cd 17.98
Huzzah! Another middle-eastern pop-psych gem! Like the John Berberian lps we featured last list, The Orient Express released their sole record on the Mainstream label in 1969. Played on electric versions of sitar. oud, melodica, and minitar, this trio comprised of French and Iranian musicians with deft skills of traditional instruments create an engaging fusion of east-west grooves. A little more than a third of the songs have vocals either in Arabic or English. Not as heavy as The Devil's Anvil, but more psych than the Berberian lps, these spellbinding pieces weave sitar funk and eastern pop like a sublime melding of Mogollar and The Byrds. The English songs may sound a tad naive at first, but there's not that many of them and on repeated listens have really endeared themselves to us. So Awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Layla"
MPEG Stream: "Caravan of Silk"
MPEG Stream: "Azaar"
MPEG Stream: "For A Moment"

PELT Dauphin Elegies (VHF) cd 13.98
We've definitely mentioned it before, in other reviews, but with every release it does seem more and more that Pelt are perhaps the only group of minimal dronelords truly occupying the dark mysterious sonic space vacated by the long lost legends. Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young, John Cale, Taj Mahal Travellers, Pelt sonically fall somewhere in that list, often leaning more toward one position than another. Sometimes unfurling whispered shimmers and deep crystalline metallic whirs, other times spewing thick sheets of upper register skree, or spreading thick layers of reverberating buzz over Eastern style ragas. Whatever they're doing, and however the hell they do it, the result is truly diving. Especially for the drone obsessed among us.
And here, on their latest, within four long tracks they dabble in all of the above, the opener is all gongs bowls and bells, deep murky metallic sprawls, ringing out, tones drifting into the ether, but with a strange propulsion, not usually found in Pelt tracks, that makes it almost sound like the Necks, if all three of the Necks were playing cymbals and bowls. Dark and languorous and gorgeous. The second track is all scraping fiddles and moaning cellos, bowed and rubbed and sawed feverishly a la Henry Flynt, pizzicato melodies, distant melodies, LOTS of space, dense squalls of malfunctioning string quartet drones, bits of percussion and tinkling chimes, very abstract and obtuse but still quite hypnotic. Up next is the record's centerpiece, 31 minutes of deep multi-timbral drones, thick swirls of harmonium, and according to the liner notes, the only track that utilizes electricity, to power something called the New Jupiter Machine. No idea what that is, but we like it. Fiddles and cellos join the fray, until there are so many layers your ears a gloriously overwhelmed, all the various notes and tones vibrating, beating, interwoven, offering up all sorts of incidental melodies and mysterious sounds that only reveal themselves gradually. So transcendental. Worth it for this track alone. In fact we often say this, but we would have been just as happy if they stretched it out for another 30 minutes, or 60, or 90, well, you know.
The disc finishes off with a brief coda of glistening high end. Sounding a bit like an analog Ryoji Ikeda, all super high harmonics, bells and chimes, all glimmering in the impossibly high upper registers, like listening to ice crystals, or the sounds of stars sparkling, or a recording of sunlight reflecting of the water, or the sounds of dew on morning grass. Delicate, crystalline, and fantastic.
MPEG Stream: "Waning Crescent"
MPEG Stream: "Fire Signs Along The Field"

PHAIR, LIZ Exile In Guyville (ATO) cd+dvd 15.98
We had almost forgotten how divisive this record was when it came out way back in 1993. But we were quickly reminded when this reissue dropped just by observing the reactions from some folks, especially women, which is ironic as Exile In Guyville was meant to be this vitriolic girl power bash on one of Phair's exes (dude from Urge Overkill apparently), but lots of the women we know were really put off by this record. Not sure if it Was Phair herself, what she became, or just the whole concept, which could come across as a whinging bitterly about a breakup instead of a powerful kick ass fuck you to a shitty ex, but listening to this again just reminds us that Exile In Guyville is a pretty fucking awesome record. Dark jangly indie pop, with super intense, often harsh, sometimes hilarious lyrics, all wound up with dark melodies, powerful guitars, and KILLER hooks, and while Phair's voice is not necessarily super polished, it totally suits the material, raw, rough, but melodic and sweet, and with a definite edge, often straining for notes she can't reach, but instead of sounding wrong, it ends up sounding passionate and aggressive, sometimes dangerously sexy, other times wistful and sad. Supposedly a song by song reworking of the Rolling Stones Exile On Mainstreet, it's easy to get all hung up on the drama and the fallout, and the post Guyville shitty records Phair released, and the ALL the hype, but fuck all that, this record is awesome. As essential in terms of nineties college rock as the Lemonheads It's A Shame About Ray or a handful of other iconic releases.
Some standout tracks: the could-have-been-a-hit "Never Said with it's soaring chorus and big crunchy guitars, the swirling moody guitar/vocal workout of "Dance Of The Seven Veils" with it's swoonsome falsetto and the (apparently, at the time) shocking use of the word 'cunt' in the lyrics, and of course the most referenced Guyville track "Fuck And Run", and for good reason, a super stripped down jangle, with awesomely bitter lyrics and it's "fuck and run" refrain, the crunchy grinding guitar heavy "Johnny Sunshine", with its dueling vocals and almost choral second half, and maybe our favorite track "Stratford-On-Guy" a loping minor key groove with almost spoken vocals, but all woven around a killer minor key main melody.
What else can we say, we loved it back in the day, it sounds just as good now as it did then. The reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, not essential, but fans will certainly dig. Also included is a dvd featuring a documentary about the making of Guyville, as well as the reaction to the record featuring tons of (maybe not so) random folks including Dave Matthews, Ira Glass, Gerard Cosloy from Matador, Steve Albini and more, as well as Phair in conversation with the man who inspired the record! Interesting and fun, maybe a little self important, but ultimately, all the extra stuff is totally superfluous, as the record as it is, as it was, all on its own, is really all you need, and if you don't already have it, then you really do need it.
MPEG Stream: "Dance Of The Seven Veils"
MPEG Stream: "Never Said"
MPEG Stream: "Fuck And Run"
MPEG Stream: "Stratford-On-Guy"

PINCH Underwater Dancehall (Tectonic) 2cd 22.00
We go on and on complaining about the dearth of grime and dubstep releases in the US, but then we end up sitting on a handful of kick ass titles that have been getting serious playtime in the shop and on our headphones. Well, as we've said before, there are only so many of us, and so so so so many records to review, so some things take longer than others. Like this double disc from Pinch. Not brand new, but easily one of our favorite dubstep discs of that last little while, and easily the darkest and most stripped down.
Split into two discs, one with vocals, one without, we definitely prefer the instrumental disc, but the vocal disc is definitely growing on us. A few tracks we could maybe do without, but for the most part still pretty kick ass. But not nearly as intense and mysterious, murky and skittery as the instrumental disc, well worth the price of admission all on its own.
Each track is super cinematic, the drums skittering and shuffling, the basslines rubbery and dubbed out, synths buzzing and warbling, shards of haunting melody drift by, what vocals do remain, are just ghostly traces and are washed out and blurred into strange streaks of sound. The sound seems to swirl and drift and wash over you, so evocative and creepy and darkly beautiful. Take "Brighter Day", the bassline almost continuous, undulating, rumbling and whirring, the drums locked into a head nodding dubbed out groove, the song anchored by this disembodied melodic fragment, that is somehow a total hook, thick slabs of buzzing synths surface here and there, backward swoops, gristly digital crunch, but for the most part it's dark and smooth, groovy and slithery, a sexy dubbed out crawl, sort of like the Tricky of old dabbling in dubstep. And the rest of the instrumental disc follows suit. Sprawling dubscapes, of fragmented stuttery rhythms, deep rib cage rattling bass, drifting ethereal melodies, lots of buzz and fuzz and rumble and whir, bits of Eastern raga, some more classic dub sounds, a bit of modern dub a la Pole, all woven into blurred bleary eared landscapes of lurch and groove. Absolutely essential.
The vocal disc is not too shabby either really, our only complaint is that the tracks are already practically perfect in their ominous minimalism, so sometimes the vocals almost seem superfluous. But even so, the vocal disc is still pretty bad ass. The opener "Punisher" is a stone cold classic, a rubbery dizzying bassline, streaks and swoops over that classic dubstub groove, totally grime-y and dubby, but also alien and abstract, the vocals a looped toast practically buried under the murk and mire. "Brighter Day", the standout from the instrumental disc, gets a vocal makeover, a super catchy sing songy toasting, that definitely changes the vibe of the song, making it much less ominous and way more poppy, but even as much as we love the instrumental version, this one is definitely still pretty great. A few of the tracks verge on the diva-like, and manage to transform the originals into something a little too croony, but there are only a couple of those, and one of them slips easily into that classic Tricky / Martina sound which is actually pretty nice. The rest of the disc just sounds like more classic modern dub, the vocals going from smooth and melodic to rough and raspy, but still underneath, the music remains gloriously slithery and skittery.
Like we said before, you could just listen to the instrumental version over and over and over (we certainly have), and we'd give this big ups just on the basis of that disc, but give the vocal disc a try to. We've been spinning that one more and more everyday. And as if we even needed to say it, WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Brighter Day (Instrumental Version)"
MPEG Stream: "Gangstaz (Instrumental Version)"
MPEG Stream: "Brighter Day ft. Juakali"
MPEG Stream: "Gangstaz ft. Juakali"

QUIET VILLAGE Silent Movie (!K7) cd 15.98
So fresh, so lush, and so totally breezy that we've been glowing in summer's warmth with this as our soundtrack, on constant repeat. Quiet Village are a DJ Shadow style sampling duo who take full advantage of their crate digging expertise and a great ear for the softer sounds in life, to create a really rewarding record that effortlessly skips through all sorts of musical landscapes. With nods to everything from the grandiose orchestration of David Axelrod, the smooth and soulful vibrations of Stevie Wonder, the exotica charm of Martin Denny, the new-age lightness of Andreas Vollenweider, the dreaminess of Air, and the more wistful and melancholic side of Ennio Morricone. In lesser hands what Quiet Village do would and has ended up being likable yet pretty innocuous 'chill-out' music, but with Silent Movie QV have created an album that has soul and a core and the perfect musical ingredients for a blissed out afternoon.
MPEG Stream: "Circus Of Horror"
MPEG Stream: "Can't Be Beat"
MPEG Stream: "Singing Sand"

ROSETTA Wake / Lift (Translation Loss) cd 13.98
Metal. Post rock. Metallic post rock. Post metal. It matters not what you call it, there are so so so many bands who play it. We haven't seen a movement of similar sounding bands since Slint launched a million imitators. That said, there are plenty of bands who do it well. And it's a sound we love. Isis, Pelican, Tides, Conifer, Mouth Of The Architect, we could go on and on. They all play some sort of hybrid of post/math rock and metal, each giving it their own spin, some spinning it more than others. At some point it's really a matter of degrees, what separates one group from another can be some ineffable something, the way they arrange their songs, the instrumentation, even just the vibe. And as much as we love the above mentioned bands, we can help but feel like one of the bands who have most captured that sound and made it their own, is Rosetta.
They simultaneously embody all the things we love about THAT sound, while pushing the envelope, their songs sprawling and expansive, even their releases, often split up over two separately released discs, their songs are loooooong, their sound is heavier more furious, the pretty parts are more complex, again it's something that's hard to pin down. Their records are just so totally overwhelming, the perfect hybrid of epic majestic beauty and utterly crushing heaviness. Brutal and pounding, furious and frenzied, at their heaviest, they almost sound like Converge or Coalesce playing post rock, heaving massive chunks of sound, tangled guitar lines, insane hammer of Thor drumming, and vocals as guttural and animalistic as they get. All wrapped up into songs that manage to be dizzyingly complex, ridiculously epic, but still weirdly catchy and groovy.
Wake/Lift is no different, in fact, if anything, it's everything we already loved about Rosetta, but more. Heavier and prettier, more convoluted, more varied, and intense, more epic, more dense, it's definitely the best thing they've done, and maybe about as far as this sound can be pushed. The guitars jangle and ring out as often as they are downtuned and grinding, often whipped up into crazily hooky soaring harmonies, before collapsing back into a churning sonic black hole. Long stretches of loping maathy meander wrap around dense rhythmic tangles and sludgey doomic roars, riffs chug and crunch, sometimes give way to whispered tranquility, other times becoming more and more intense until the band threatens to collapse under the sheer heaviness of their ever expanding sonic sprawl.
Absolutely essential. Required listening for fans of all things post, rock, and metal, in whatever combination you prefer.
MPEG Stream: "Red In Tooth And Claw"
MPEG Stream: "Lift Pt. 1"

RUDIMENTARY PENI No More Pain (Southern) cd ep 12.98
Let's just start by saying WE LOVE RUDIMENTARY PENI. Easily one of our favorite punk rock groups EVER. Murky and muddy and furious and freaked out. If you somehow don't already own Death Church or Cacophony, you must go try to track them down immediately. Those two records are as near flawless as something fucked up and punk rock and gloomy and demented can actually get without ceasing to be all those things.
Much has been written about Peni frontman Nick Blinko, who has spent most of his adult life in and out of asylums, and who is responsible for the band's super striking album covers, super intricate pen and ink drawings, which must take forever, and could only have been drawn by someone either truly inspired, truly demented or both. And somehow, those drawings perfectly and impossibly reflect the music on the inside. Where the drawings are incredibly detailed and complex to the point of mania, the music is stripped down and repetitive, often with just one or two parts, the vocals often just a few lines repeated over and over.
Listening to No More Pain, the first RP record in almost 4 years, we were struck by how much all of the super raw and stripped down primitive black metal sounds like Rudimentary Peni. Akitsa, Bone Awl, Ancestors, Ildjarn, plenty of D-beat stuff, slow it down to a more garagey punk rock pound and it's uncanny. In fact, the mind boggles at a black metal Peni, imagining these tracks sped up and blackened, wow.
Anyway, this is classic Peni, 10 songs, less than 20 minutes, simple, stomping riff heavy crusty punk, the drums pounding away, the riffs repetitive and mesmerizing, the vocals growled and howled and crooned, the lyrics mantra-like, the songs weirdly catchy too, almost poppy, but just 'off' enough to remain dark and mysterious and intense.
The only true weirdness is a very unexpected cover of Pachelbel's Canon, which to be honest, sounds pretty good, the guitars all warped and twisted, but it almost sounds too happy, but everything is slightly off enough, and just a little bit cracked that is manages to sound just a bit demented, which we can only suppose is the point.
MPEG Stream: "No More Pain"
MPEG Stream: "Eyes Of The Dead"
MPEG Stream: "Prayer For The Unborn"

RUDIMENTARY PENI No More Pain (Southern) 12" 14.98
Let's just start by saying WE LOVE RUDIMENTARY PENI. Easily one of our favorite punk rock groups EVER. Murky and muddy and furious and freaked out. If you somehow don't already own Death Church or Cacophony, you must go try to track them down immediately. Those two records are as near flawless as something fucked up and punk rock and gloomy and demented can actually get without ceasing to be all those things.
Much has been written about Peni frontman Nick Blinko, who has spent most of his adult life in and out of asylums, and who is responsible for the band's super striking album covers, super intricate pen and ink drawings, which must take forever, and could only have been drawn by someone either truly inspired, truly demented or both. And somehow, those drawings perfectly and impossibly reflect the music on the inside. Where the drawings are incredibly detailed and complex to the point of mania, the music is stripped down and repetitive, often with just one or two parts, the vocals often just a few lines repeated over and over.
Listening to No More Pain, the first RP record in almost 4 years, we were struck by how much all of the super raw and stripped down primitive black metal sounds like Rudimentary Peni. Akitsa, Bone Awl, Ancestors, Ildjarn, plenty of D-beat stuff, slow it down to a more garagey punk rock pound and it's uncanny. In fact, the mind boggles at a black metal Peni, imagining these tracks sped up and blackened, wow.
Anyway, this is classic Peni, 10 songs, less than 20 minutes, simple, stomping riff heavy crusty punk, the drums pounding away, the riffs repetitive and mesmerizing, the vocals growled and howled and crooned, the lyrics mantra-like, the songs weirdly catchy too, almost poppy, but just 'off' enough to remain dark and mysterious and intense.
The only true weirdness is a very unexpected cover of Pachelbel's Canon, which to be honest, sounds pretty good, the guitars all warped and twisted, but it almost sounds too happy, but everything is slightly off enough, and just a little bit cracked that is manages to sound just a bit demented, which we can only suppose is the point.
MPEG Stream: "No More Pain"
MPEG Stream: "Eyes Of The Dead"
MPEG Stream: "Prayer For The Unborn"

SEBADOH Bubble & Scrape (Domino) cd 14.98
Sebadoh's fourth "studio" album, Bubble and Scrape, is oddly overlooked, perhaps because of its explicitly transitional status. Fans of the band's earlier output tend to gravitate toward the endearingly scattershot scrappiness and excess of III or the lo-fi confessionals of the first two records, while fans of the Bob Fay-era can turn to Bakesale to hear the band at their most polished, streamlined and direct with Lou Barlow's pop songwriting at its most masterful.  Bubble and Scrape falls somewhere in between the two, and what makes it so remarkable is that when you listen to it you can hear all the disparate strains of the band perfectly complementing and foiling each other at every turn. On this record, moreso than perhaps any other in the band's catalog, Sebadoh really sounds like an actual band on every song rather than a strange vehicle for three songwriters whose styles are so different that it's hard to imagine what interest they actually had in playing with each other.  Honestly, can you think of another band that would follow up "Two Years Two Days" with "Telecosmic Alchemy?" Can you even think of another band who would make a record with both those songs on it?  We can't either, and that's part of what makes Sebadoh so special to us and Bubble and Scrape such an important part of their catalog.
Barlow's contributions to this record are some of his best work - tuneful, heart-wrenching, sappy, confessional and catchy as all get-go - but the ragged feel that Jason Lowenstein and Eric Gaffney bring to the performances keep them from becoming too saccharine or mechanical (arguably, the downfall of Sebadoh's later output).  Similarly, Gaffney's acid-damaged freak-outs perpetually throw a wrench in the works - just as you're being lulled into thinking that this band is all about sensitive indie croon, out comes "Elixir is Zog." Bubble And Scrape is also the record where perpetual "third guy in the band," Jason Lowenstein really began to shine as a more than capable songwriter; in fact, "Sixteen," "Happily Divided," and "Sister" are far and away some of the strongest songs on the album. Rather than coming off as wishy-washy in their unwillingness to as fully commit to a particular and identifiable style as his bandmates, Lowenstein's refusal to be as plaintively emotional as Barlow or as blatantly fucked up as Gaffney allows him to pick and choose elements of both and write some fantastic songs as a result.
While the bonus tracks are a nice edition to this "deluxe" repackaging of the original, the core album still shines as a rough gem from an era where polish was still regarded as something of which to be wary. Bob Weston's 'production' is as ramshackle as the band itself and complements the record perfectly - all the elements are audible in all their flawed, contradictory glory; thankfully, the remastering retains the spiky imperfections of the original mix. Domino and Sub Pop have filled out the reissue with 16 additional cuts, most of which are demos of album songs. "Reject" stands out as a solid b-side, and the home recorded version of "Soul and Fire" is perhaps the most interesting of the demos for the glimpse it gives into the evolution of the song.
We here at aQ love this band, and listening to this reissue over the past few weeks has reminded us just how much we also love this record. We have no idea why we let it slip into the cracks as the years following its release went by, but we guarantee that it won't happen again! If you were a fan back in '93, this is as good a time as any to remind yourself why; if you're new to Sebadoh, this record displays everything that made this band so amazing; if you're the rare bird who's kept this record close to his or her heart for all these years, this reissue gives you a healthy dose of demos to keep your interest piqued. Capricorn rising!  We're going to ride with the Flood tonight!
MPEG Stream: "Soul And Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Sixteen"
MPEG Stream: "Sister"

SIMULACRA Somewhere... Inside A Void (No Angels Prod.) 3"cd-r 14.98
We reviewed the debut cd-r from this Belgian deep drone one man band way back, but sold out in a blink as it was limited to 96 copies. Well, don't blink this time, as we just got a brand new 3" cd-r from Simulacra, the project of NOTHingness Records main man Miguel Boriau (who now runs Consouling Sounds, whose first few releases we'll list here next time), again WAY too limited, this time 100 copies, and we got about a quarter of those.
Gorgeously packaged in an oversized full color folder, adorned in blacks and rusty browns, with a photo print inside, each sleeve hand numbered, this latest disc from Simulacra, is a 22 minute expanse of hushed cavernous rumbles, and blurred melodic shimmer. Definitely dark and ominous and haunting and intense, but weirdly beautiful, and almost soft. It's like the sound of candlelight flickering in deep dark caves, the sound of sunlight struggling to filter through cracks and fissures to reach some subterranean underworld. The sounds are sprawling and drawn way out, it's drone music for sure, but arranged into soft swells and abstract melodies, cinematic and soundtracky, veering from intense low-end murk, to a sun dappled drift. It's like the soundtrack to a late afternoon stroll through the ruins of some ancient keep, as you wander along the walls, through the courtyard, into the depths below, sometime passing through shafts of sunlight, or stumbling into some cavern undisturbed for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. So evocative and dreamlike. As soothing and mesmerizing as it is eerie and grim.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, hand numbered, these are the only copies we'll be able to get...
MPEG Stream: "Somewhere... Inside A Void (excerpt)"

STEINSKI What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective (Illegal Art) 2cd 17.98
It may be surprising that one of the godfathers of hip-hop and DJ culture was a former ad-man who in response to a Tommy Boy remix contest in 1983 delivered one of the best mastermixes of all time. "The Payoff Mix" (aka Lesson No. 1) along with Lesson No. 2 (James Brown Mix) and Lesson No. 3 (History of Hip-hop) are legendary examples of Steinski's (and sometimes partner Double Dee) fast and furious collage style of song snippets, movie dialogue and cartoon bits over an array of classic drum breaks. More amazing because they weren't products of turntablist wizardry but painstakingly put together using a box of records, tape machines and hours of studio editing. Taking cues from of all unlikely places, the novelty records of Dickie Goodman ("Flying Saucer", "Mr. Jaws"), whose interview style parodies using snippets of popular songs as humorous responses provided Steinski with readymade samples of sixties and seventies hits. Steinski would also follow the same path as Goodman in terms of legal troubles from record companies, giving early rise to the debate over sampling and issues of fair use. Which is apropos since this 2 disc reissue is being released on Girltalk's Illegal Art label. What Does It All Mean? collects those early singles along with later production work including darker collage forays into the assassination of JFK and 9/11, with the second disc containing the entire mix album "Nothing to Fear: A Rough Mix" which was made for the Coldcut-associated show Solid Steel on the BBC. That second disc alone will jump-start any party, which you will need after the first disc schools your ass on early hip-hop history!
MPEG Stream: "Lesson No. 2 (James Brown Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Wild About That Thing"
MPEG Stream: "Country Grammar (Hydro Mix)"
RealAudio clip: "Hit The Disco (Mc Enuff Mix)"

TWINK A Very Fine Adventure (Twink Tones) cd 13.98
Twink is back! No, not the psychedelic band from the '60s, but perhaps just as trippy and mind-melting. This Bostonian (aka Mike Langlie) is a mad wizard of utterly tweaked and twisted toy piano based compositions (self-dubbed toytronica)! Some tracks on A Very Fine Adventure are dark and sorta menacing like a theme to some cartoon villain, while others are so deliriously toothsome and playful you'd swear cream soda flowed in their veins. Delight to the sounds of Mr. Langlie tickling the tiny ivories, and then masticating them artfully into some sheer madness that'll surely appeal to fans of Bruce Haack, Raymond Scott and Quintron!
Each Twink release is packaged in an imaginative eye-catching way, and this one is no exception! It comes in an adorable diecut sleeve featuring bunnies, fishies, candy canes and an octopus! Recommended for anyone whose inner child is allowed to come out and play!
MPEG Stream: "Peculiar Fruit"
MPEG Stream: "Dust Muffin"

URTHONA I Refute It Thus (Head Heritage) cd 13.98
"Feedback-laden West Country psychedelic free-noise garage metal" eh? Released by the record label division of druid rock dude Julian Cope's indispensable Head Heritage website? Gotta check that out!! And so we did, and so here it is... Urthona's I Refute It Thus.
The cover of this disc bears a picture of a giant granite outcropping on a remote moor in England, beneath white clouds and a curiously pink sky. These massive, lichen-encrusted rocks have loomed over this particular Dartmoor hilltop for untold ages. If you look closely at this photograph, you'll see the figure of a long-haired man standing amidst the stones, facing the dawning sun, holding an upside down electric guitar, headstock jammed into the earth. Now imagine that his guitar is actually powered up, feeding back, plugged in somehow to the cyclopean stones, themselves both a source of earth-energy and also an obvious visual parallel to a wall of Marshall amplifiers... well, that's just about what the music on this cd sounds like!! Rock, from the rocks. (Except, Urthona use Fender amps not Marshalls... the liner notes also tell us Urthona play Les Paul guitars, and "make frequent use of the Durham Electronics Crazy Horse fuzz pedal", aha.)
There's three long instrumental tracks on this mystic silver disc... beginning with the woozy, vertigo-inducing electric strum and howl of the ten minute "Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed", which sorta sounds like the Dr. Who theme being played on primitive feedback guitar by krautrock hippies Amon Duul... nice. Track two, "The Bright Burst Of Morning" (19:34) is dronier, calmer, yet expectant with doomic potential. And finally, the third track, "Sun And Moon So Heavy" (21:44) does indeed do justice to its title. Waves of deep, grinding, spaced out guitar, so heavy indeed. Blissful at low volumes, vibrationally destructive at louder ones... seriously you need to be carefully turning this disc up! It's certainly heavy, but in an in-the-red atmospheric way that can reward a quiet listen...
The primal sheets of shrieking skree and dense distortion unfurled by Urthona's guitars (multitracked, as it's a one-man-band; Neil Mortimer take a bow) are also intertwined with pretty, folkish melodies, with also brief bouts of hand percussion or field recordings of gurgling waters mixed in... We're put in mind of the gritter moments of Steven R. Smith's Ulaan Khol I. Or perhaps a heavy Keiji Haino session, if he were channelling some cosmic acid-folk concept in his mind's ear. The other Neil (Young) and SUNNO))) could be further comparisons.
This cd comes in a unique eco-friendly tri-fold cardboard sleeve, with card inserts bearing details of art by William Blake and quotations from Walt Whitman and Albert Einstein, amongst other thought-provoking text found here. The photograph of the "Hound Tor" on the front is by J. Cope himself... The packaging, designed by like minded pagan droner and fellow Cope associate, Holy McGrail, is fantastic, except that we have preferred if the cd itself had been given its own paper sleeve. The pocket it sits in, along with the two inserts, isn't snug enough to hold it completely securely, and some minor cosmetic scuffing might occur to the disc's playing surface as a result.
Bah, but that's a minor complaint, and interferes not a whit with our enjoyment of Urthona's glorious shoegazing freeform rural-psych-noise-guitar-drone!! We love this, and a lot of you are sure to, too.
MPEG Stream: "Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed"
MPEG Stream: "The Bright Burst Of Morning"
MPEG Stream: "Sun And Moon So Heavy"

UWAIFO, SIR VICTOR Guitar-Boy Superstar (Sound Way) cd 17.98
The mighty Sound Way label (the fine folks who brought us the killer Nigeria Special compilations) is back with another fantastic reissue of classic West African popular music, this time documenting the mid-1970s output of the enigmatic and flamboyant Sir Victor Uwaifo, the guitar-boy superstar! You might recognize Uwaifo from his appearance on the Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump compilation where his track "Dododo (Ekassa 1)" was a real skirt blower. These days, when most of us have access to this kind of music only through curated compilations featuring dozens of performers, it's a rare treat to get a more well-rounded picture of a single artist; big ups to Sound Way for delivering the goods!
The majority of tracks on this collection are based around Uwaifo's unique hybrid of the traditional rhythm of the 'ekassa' coronation dance with highlife instrumentation. The result is something joyous, funky, and soulful that manages to maintain a laid-back, upbeat feel that is distinct from the frenetic rush of Afrobeat and the other scenes happening in mid-'70s Lagos. In fact, there's a sweet, classic pop element to Uwaifo's songwriting that has more in common with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens than it does with the American funk, soul and disco that inspired his contemporaries. Valens is actually a pretty good jumping off point for comparison, as the electrified version of the ekassa rhythm lends a Latin flourish to the music that recalls Valens' Chicano rock styles saturated with fuzz, wah and a distinctly Nigerian rhythmic sensibility.
Unsurprisingly, it's Uwaifo's guitar playing that stand out as the real centerpiece of the record as it skips from traditional highlife accompaniment to psych-tinged, fuzzed-out solos to primitive delay and wah-wah experimentalism, sometimes all within the same song! Uwaifo's jangling open-string solos, jarringly nimble riffing, and ability to switch effortlessly between rhythm and lead again recall Buddy Holly and also classic US surf rock (in fact, the track "Agho" goes so far as to quote parts of "Tequila" - weird, but fantastic!), but there's a lot more going on than that. Check out "Igboroho (Ekassa 24)" to hear Uwaifo pushing his guitar into fractured, no-wave territory; given that it still sounds completely freaked out now, it must've been thoroughly mind-expanding at the time.
As with all things from Sound Ways, this disc comes with lavish packaging; meticulously researched and compiled liner notes replete with archival photographs, album art; and song-by-song gloss by Uwaifo himself. It's a fantastic package highly recommended for anyone who's been enjoying the goldmine of reissues of African popular musics we've been seeing over the past year. So good!
MPEG Stream: "Igboroho (Ekassa 5)"
MPEG Stream: "Egbe Natete"
MPEG Stream: "Agho"

V/A Basic Channel 2 (Basic Channel) cd 17.98
Basic Channel began in 1993 and produced nine 12" singles of hyperminimal techno, with very little information on the labels, very little of what information there was being easily legible, and no real marketing campaign to speak of. If anything, the Basic Channel duo of Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald seemed to propagate the mystery of anonymity behind their project, aggravating rumors that Basic Channel productions were based out of Detroit (and possibly by Mad Mike of Underground Resistance) rather than their native Berlin. By 1993, both Berlin and Detroit had formed an unusual axis through their mutual appreciation for the other's techno sound, so such a claim wasn't impossible; but over time, Ernestus and Von Oswald had to fess up to authoring these singles. Between then and now, Basic Channel (the label) re-emerged as Chain Reaction which released works outside of the Ernestus / Von Oswald collaboration; and Basic Channel (the ensemble) transformed into Rhythm & Sound for an equally hypnotic form of hyper-minimal dub. As such, Basic Channel became something of a godhead with the techno mythology. They promoted an aesthetic that always worked on the dancefloor but never dated, and always sounded adventurous without being too weird. In other words, Basic Channel made perfect techno.
In 1995, the duo released their first cd, consisting of exclusive edits and remixes from a handful of those 12" singles, mostly highlighting their abstracted ambience highjacking the 808 rhythmic underpinnings. Some 13 years later, Basic Channel has finally unleashed a collection of complete tracks from those nine singles! Despite the full 80 minutes of music you get on this disc, there are only 6 tracks (each track well over 10 minutes); hopefully leaving the door open for future compendiums. But the chosen tracks are all corkers. Throbbing techno 4/4 beats cut through the clouds of accumulated metallic hiss, reverb, and delay which have all been processed in accordance with the percolated patterns of acid house electricity. Often times, Ernestus and Von Oswald set their electronics in cruise control, just letting a small squiggling refrain and walloping beat run before they tweak their arsenal of filter banks or slide in a high-hat in the mix. It's breathtakingly hypnotic and endlessly propulsive.
Along with the Gas 4cd box, this Basic Channel compilation is an absolutely essential techno album.
MPEG Stream: "Phylps Trak"
MPEG Stream: "Inversion"
MPEG Stream: "Octagon"

V/A Eccentric Soul: Tragar & Note Labels (Numero) 2cd 31.00
There hasn't been a dud yet in the Numero Group's superb and ever ongoing Eccentric Soul series and this latest two disc offering is no exception, in fact it might find itself a special spot near the Big Mack and Deep City collections as one of our favorites so far!
This time out they dig up gems from two woefully obscure labels out of Atlanta in the late '60s. While there are some uptempo shakers sprinkled amongst the tracks on these two discs, what's swept us off our feet is the totally devastating heart broken soul that just drips with honesty and warmth. We just can't get enough of it. And it's the ladies who really shine the brightest on this collection, we now want to get our hands on everything and anything that Eula Cooper, Franciene Thomas and Sonia Ross have ever released. The kind of richly orchestrated soul that sounds so perfect when you're alone in your living room with the lights dimmed, a cocktail to lessen the pain of a broken heart and these songs to let you wallow with class, yet still enough uptempo tracks to let you cut a rug when your tears take a break. So great!
MPEG Stream: FRANCIENE THOMAS "Too Beautiful To Be Good"
MPEG Stream: NATHAN WILKES "Strange Feeling"
MPEG Stream: EULA COOPER "Let Our Love Grow Higher"

VENETIAN SNARES Detrimentalist (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
The problem with a list like this (well one of them at least) and with bands who release a record or two every year, after a few years, you begin to run out of things to say, you end up wanting to just say something along the lines, of "read that old review" or "sounds like that other one we loved". Which is sometimes fair enough, as some bands do continue to mine similar ground. But in the case of Venetian Snares, it's not that easy. We thought we had him pegged, as a mash up jungle drill and bass freak, but then he learns how to play strings, and hits us with a gorgeous elegiac suite of moving Eastern European gypsy jams, with only a tiny bit of manic drum programming, the focus on actual songs, on mood and melancholy, then he'll flip again and kick out a disc of old school rave jams, then some old school raga jungle. The thing is, it's ALL great, and somehow it all sounds distinctly like Venetian Snares, which is especially difficult with this kind of music, sample based, chopped rhythms, but VS has such a distinctive vibe, the rhythms impossibly complex, the samples usually goofy, but sometimes freaked out, other times creepy, all the various elements seamlessly smoothed into something not really seamless or smooth at all, but wild and chaotic and well over the top.
This latest disc is all over the map, but the focus seems to be a mash up of classic hip hop, nineties rave music, and as always furious rapid fire jungle rhythms, often bordering on gabber. Listening to this, it's easy to just get lost in the flurry of beats, the chopped up and reassembled loops and samples, without asking "how the fuck does anybody make this shit?!" One can only imagine he assembles it measure by measure, slowed down to quarter speed, painstakingly assembling each beat, but then somehow being able to visualize it all revved up and lightning fast. Even then, it boggles the mind. It's like trying to figure out the working methods of a mad scientist. It's almost better not to think about it at all, just to revel in the madcap, kick ass blown-out-beat demented dancefloor world of Venetian Snares.
So how does Detrimentalist! stack up? Well obviously it's not at all dark and brooding like his two string-ed records, but it fits pretty well amidst is other dancier discs, this one somehow seems more of a party record, with lots of vocal bits, fragments of raps, bits of toasting, all chopped and tangled up within the impossibly convoluted rhythms, which here are as funky and impossible sounding as ever, thick slabs of buzzing snarling synth, even a bit of a dubstep vibe here and there, some definite nods to that classic Aphex sound, a handful of 8-bit videogame jams, dizzying rave collages wrapped around classic Amen and Apache breaks. There's an awesome ravey raga jungle jam that goes from almost traditional sounding to some sort of video game rave with some of the most awesome drill and bass all synched up with stuttering rave synths, and a toasted refrain about some motherfucker wanting to see his dogs die (?). There are a handful of the tracks laced with minor key melodies and have some serious musical weight to them, moody and intense, droney and atmospheric, even peppered with dizzying squalls of rapid fire rhythms, they still feel like more than dancefloor fodder. But it wouldn't be VS without some seriously cracked and wacked sonic wickedness, and there's plenty of that too. Once again, ESSENTIAL Snares, as it's quickly becoming one of our favorites, and for newbies, as fucked up and freaked out as Detrimentalist is (then again they all are sort of), it's a pretty excellent introduction to what will no doubt blossom into a full blown obsession.
MPEG Stream: "Gentlemen"
MPEG Stream: "Eurocore MVP"
MPEG Stream: "Koonut-Kaliffee"

VSS Nervous Circuits (Hydra Head) cd+dvd 14.98
Words can't describe how fuckin' happy we are to see this! Finally, The VSS's long out of print (and pretty hard to track down even when it was in print!) 1997 album Nervous Circuits has been remastered and reissued... and how! The new edition is bursting at the seams in sound and visuals with tons of bonus historical documentation packed on the cd and dvd!
The VSS = a short-lived yet incredibly influential and genre defining band from Southern California / Colorado in the mid-90s.
The VSS = Josh Hughes' deeply textured apocalyptic air-raid guitars, Andy Rothbard's lithe double fisting of snaking bass guitar and Juno 60 synthesizer, Dave Clifford's fevered muscular drumming, and Sonny Kay's clenched spewed vocals delivering cryptic wordplay and caustic socio-politically charged lyrics (mind you, due to his impassioned expulsionary singing style they're pretty unintelligible, you'll need to refer to the lyric sheet!).
The members of The VSS surfaced from the ashes of legendary post-punk band Angel Hair, burned incredibly hot and bright for only a couple years, and then later went on to other mighty bands Slaves, Pleasure Forever, Year Future, Rabbits, Red Sparowes and solo projects (Andrew Douglas Rothbard!) and an independent record label (Gold Standard Laboratories).
These days on paper, the marriage of post-punk, hardcore, synth-wave, electronic rock and metal is nothing short of commonplace. It's become a hip lifestyle genre, but this wasn't the case back then. And even so, this album still sounds fresh and immediate eleven years after its original release! Seeming at once wild and untethered and totally in control, it's a remarkably composed aural assault with plenty of quick shifts in mood, atmosphere and tempo that still stands head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.
The dvd offers what criminally few were able to witness in person back in the day... a young band who absolutely slayed in the live setting! There's nine song clips from various stops on their '97 U.S. tour as well as three sets in Brooklyn (six songs), Boulder (seven songs) and Berkeley (four songs). Be forewarned though, the quality of a lot of the footage is pretty poor -- having been culled from many fans' handheld home camcorder vhs tapes -- but our eyes have become accustomed to this sort of grainy, shaky stew a la murky cellphone-shot YouTube clips. Nevertheless a welcome electrically charged video document.
Yeah, definitely recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Death Scene"
MPEG Stream: "In Miniature"
MPEG Stream: "Nervous Circuits"

WANDERING MIDGET, THE I Am The Gate (Eyes Like Snow / Northern Silence) cd 11.98
Okay, how bad ass is the name The Wandering Midget for a band name? Well, okay, maybe not BAD ASS, but what a great name. Freaky, weird, certainly might not have you imagining some awesome classic doom outfit, but that's precisely what The Wandering Midget are, classic true doom from Finland. So that's pretty much all pluses across the board, insane band name, true doom, and they're from Finland. And as if that weren't enough they have an amazing vocalist, who sounds like a weird super dramatic Ozzy doppelganger, the vocals so over the top they sound almost campy, yet they fit the music perfectly, especially when they slip into a menacing grrrrrowl.
The sound is super live, the drums way up in the mix, the guitars thick and crunchy, the vocals WAY out in front, the riffs are killer too, that sort of slithery Sabbathy groove, mix in some Pentagram, some Electric Wizard, and you're in total druggy stoner doom heaven!
All the tracks are pretty kick ass, but stick around for the nearly 18 minute closer "Wasteland Shrine", a super slow, lurching doom crawl, with some killer leads, and the vocalist wailing so dramatically, the main riff all killer slow motion Sabbath, complete with a weird ambient interlude part way through, the sounds of what can only be a dungeon, dripping water, footsteps, distant rumbles, the guitar slowly creeping up from the murk, all spidery and minimal, before the band kicks in and launches back into their doomy groove, a majestic lumbering jam overlaid with increasingly maniacal vocals, pounding away, through clouds of effects, until the very end.
MPEG Stream: "Urk The Conqueror"
MPEG Stream: "Wolfslayer"

WOLD Stratification (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
One of two black metal / noise hybrids on this week's list, the other, from Australian one man band Nekrasov, this one, the latest from Canadian duo WOLD, whose discs of noise drenched outsider black weirdness have held us in their thrall from the very first listen.
But much has changed since L.O.T.M.P, which was an impossible hybrid of Philip Jeck like turntable warble, and walls of blacknoise, classic black metal buzz filtered through sheets of haze and warped shimmer, well, okay, maybe not that much has changed, if anything, the biggest change is how much noisier Wold have become, and how much more they hew to traditional black metal, albeit appropriately skewed and cracked and fractured and WELL fucked.
For those new to the strange world of Wold, they are a duo (formerly a trio), from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. They are called Fortress Crookedjaw (best black metal name ever?) and Obey, there's a picture in the new cd of two really regular looking dudes, not sure if it's Wold, but if it is, never has there been more of a "but they were such nice boys" in black metal. Because the sound of Wold is anything but regular black metal. There are riffs, and harsh screeched vocals, there doesn't seem to be drums very often, none are credited in the liner notes, and you can't really hear them, except on one track, where a primitive drum machine spews out a stuttery waltz, and often even when they're NOT there, we still feel like we're hearing them, the duo unfurl sheets of white hot guitar hiss, walls of crumbling distortion, that seem locked in some sort of static sprawl, kind of looped, but also wavery and warbly, due no doubt to the recording quality, as well as the composition. Tape hiss is much of a part of their sound as the guitars, maybe more so. An array of electronics also add layers of grit and glitch, the sounds grind and scrape, piled on top of each other until often it's a seemingly impenetrable wall of sound. But the wall is cracked, and all sort of fucked up sounds ooze through the cracks. Some tracks are super abstract post industrial ambient scrape-scapes, all grinding rhythms, and swirling hiss, others get dangerously close to classic sounding super raw primitive black metal, but as you listen, they seem to change shape, the riffs, the vocals, a glancing listen reveals nothing untoward, just some killer blasting lo-fi buzz, but once you settle in, the music drags you kicking and screaming into some jagged harsh buzz drenched, off kilter chaotic noise infested blackened sonic underworld.
If we had to pick bands to compare Wold to, it might be Ildjarn, Akitsa, Bone Awl, that sort of super raw, blown out in-the-red underproduced fury, but then add some Faxed Head, for the two share a similarly skewed and totally demented aesthetic, but where Faxed Head do it for laughs, Wold twist it into something sinister and frightening. Certainly Merzbow, as NOISE is a major component, but even when Wold are spewing sheets of what appear to be white noise, the sounds are not that simple, they churn and twist, and hide layers upon layers of sonic weirdness underneath. In fact, on first listen we were a bit put off a bit by the sheer noise level of Stratification, gone were all the warped buried 78 sounds, and in their place even more hiss and buzz and skree, but headphones changed everything. Revealing amidst the harshness an incredible array of strange sonic weirdness, buried melodies, obscured loops, bits of prettiness, almost invisible through the haze and murk and blur and NOISE, but which manage to subtly change lead into gold, turning something almost too harsh and abrasive, into something impossibly mesmerizing, and for the adventurous ear-ed, a veritable sonic wonderland of noise drenched beauty.
MPEG Stream: "Sleigh Ride"
MPEG Stream: "The Frozen Field"
MPEG Stream: "The Auld Tree"

WOODS FAMILY CREEPS s/t (Time Lag) cd 14.98
It's not often that we so highly recommend an album based on the strength of one song and one song alone, so believe us when we say that even if the remainder of the eponymous debut of Woods Family Creeps was nothing more than field recordings of mice pooping, the two minutes and 19 seconds of pop genius that are "Twisted Tongue" would still make the record a must-have. Thankfully, the rodent-pooping is kept to a bare minimum and the rest of the album is also pretty damn great!
Woods Family Creeps (formally a duo called Woods, now a trio), hail from Brooklyn and their first record under the new moniker displays the kind of charming, good-natured self-indulgence that makes us wax nostalgic about the glory days of tape-hiss drenched lo-fi pop of which we at aQ are all huge fans. You'll pick up on moments of earnest Seba/Sentri/doh songsmithery, deadpan Halo Benders/Beat Happening drawl, classic K Records twee, and even the chimpy charms of Trollin Withdrawl. Despite the occasional forays into white-dudes-with-sitar-envy territory (which seems to be the proverbial onion on the belt of the kids these days and so can probably be forgiven), the overall feel is one of pastoral noodling and lazy campfire sing-a-longs. That said, the loosey-goosey feel that the band cultivates allows them to stretch out into some surprising directions (check out the Italo-soundtrack rock of instrumental closer, "The Creeps"!), but that said we're still thankful that the their 'experimental' side is tempered by the inclusion of solid pop songs with hooks aplenty.
Woods Family Creeps, the record, comes courtesy of of Time Lag Records' "Red" imprint and was initially issued as an ultra-limited LP that sold out in about 10 seconds flat. The cd is limited to 1000 copies packaged in a gorgeous, full-color mini-gatefold sleeve. Don't sleep on this one, as it's sure to go fast!
MPEG Stream: "Twisted Tongue"
MPEG Stream: "The Creeps"
MPEG Stream: "Spike"

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ABBASI BROTHERS, THE Something Like Nostalgia (Dynamophone) cd 13.98
Another new addition to the steadily growing flock on the Bay Area's Dynamophone label (also see the new boxed 3" cdr by Curium on this list)!
The shimmering atmospheric piano dappled washes on their debut Something Like Nostalgia are a perfect fit. The Abbasi Brothers follow serenely in the formidable footsteps of granddaddies of ambient quietude Brian Eno and Philip Glass. Really really pretty.
MPEG Stream: "Kompa"
MPEG Stream: "Camera Flashes Blue"

ADEM Takes (Domino) cd 14.98
Adem spent most of his teens in one of the most influential post-rock groups of the '90s, Fridge. While his former bandmate Kieren Hebden has enjoyed a bit of a higher profile with Four Tet and his various other projects, Adem hasn't been slacking, keeping quite busy himself releasing several records of pastoral and bittersweet indie-pop. Takes is his stab at a covers record, and while we're starting to grow a bit tired of the 'covers album' concept, we have to say we do appreciate how Adem actually covers contemporary artists and doesn't try to pretend to have obscure influences just to get cool points. And thankfully we are spared from hearing another Bob Dylan cover. Instead Adem wears his influences proudly, an indie boy at heart for sure, covering the likes of Pinback, Yo La Tengo, Bedhead, Low, Aphex Twin, The Breeders, Tortoise, Bjork and more. Kind of like hanging out with your crush in their dorm room as he serenades you with all your favorite songs from the '90s.
MPEG Stream: "Loro"
MPEG Stream: "Unravel"

ARNALDS, OLAFUR Eulogy For Evolution (Erased Tapes) cd 17.98
That magical air in Iceland continues spawn some of the most soaring and beautiful sounds found anywhere on the globe. At just 21 years old, Olafur Arnalds is emerging as a strong voice in a new wave of modern classical inspired majestic sounds. On this, his debut full length, he employs strings, piano, guitar, organ, melodica and subtle ambient electronics at times, to create incredibly rich and lush sounds. Inspired by everyone from Eric Satie, to John Luther Adams, Kronos Quartet to the Rachels and even Godspeed You Black Emperor, as well as, of course, his countrymen Sigur Ros who he's often perfromed with live. Somber and elegant and packaged beautifully with artwork that compliments the kind of fragments of memory his beautiful music evokes.
MPEG Stream: "1953"
MPEG Stream: "3326"

BALDWIN, MATT Paths Of Ignition ( American Dust) lp 14.98
This list highlight from a couple weeks back is NOW ON VINYL! And, we noticed, also now the Record Of The Month for July on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website, which we love. Read our review, then go read his... from which we learned something we should have realized, that the first track is a Neu! cover! So, here's what we said before about the cd version:
We love our modern Appalachia, tangled steel strings, gorgeous sprawling avant bluegrass, Fahey, Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, it's a crowded field, but all the key players manage to create something much more special than just a Fahey rehash. Sure there are tons of folks out there with a guitar, a heavily worn copy of Death Chants, and not an original musical idea in their head, but there are the few, like the above folks mentioned, who took that sound, and were inspired to create their own soundworlds. You can add Matt Baldwin to that list.
It's a little hard to put a finger on what exactly makes Baldwin's sound so special, it could be more of a focus on classic melody, than on pick and strum, the opening track on Paths Of Ignition darkly unfurls into a warm whirring pastoral guitarscape, lots of major key melodies, unlikely harmonies, strange bits of slippery slide, and plenty of electric guitar buzz, some soaring growling leads, all woven into some haunting raga infused psychedelic space folk. The whole track is laced with tangles of wild almost-shredding guitar, deep resonant drones, swirling little melodic flourishes, it all transforms -his- take on Appalachia into something much more tripped out, psych rock and almost poppy in its prettiness.
The rest of the disc hews a little closer to the neo-Appalachia party line, but even then, his tracks slither and buzz, lots of haunting guitar rumble, intricate finger picking, delicate melodies, dreamy and drifty, mysterious and timeless. Except the one cover, the song that actually got us interested in Baldwin in the first place. It's only 4 minutes long, but it's a killer. Baldwin takes on Judas Priest's "Winter" and nails it. The main riff of the original sounds perfect on a steel string, brooding and ominous, beneath that guitar deep swells of buzzing guitardrone pulses and throbs, and the vocals, Baldwin does a pretty excellent Halford, a reverb drenched high pitched croon, complete with vibrato and little trills, the track finishes off with some killer lead guitar, sprawled over that gorgeous languorous main riff, that seems to slither and drift on forever.
Any one into the current crop of modern Appalachian / neo-folk / whatever-you-call-it guitar music will definitely dig this, and while it's worth it for the Priest cover alone, the whole record is pretty fantastic. Now it's up to Blackshaw to cover some old Scorpions, or Rose to take on a classic UFO or Uriah Heep track, so if either of you guys is reading this...
MPEG Stream: "Winter"
MPEG Stream: "Weissensee"

BECK Modern Guilt (DGC) cd 15.98
While Beck's last album, The Information wasn't all that bad, it sure didn't leave much of a lasting impression. Which broke a streak of very memorable and eclectic releases from the all-grown-up-now wonder-kid from LA.
With Modern Guilt he's enlisted the services of Danger Mouse for production duties and has crafted a really solid West Coast pop record. We can't help but be reminded of Spoon, not only because of the cover art, but also some of the hooks and melodies in many of the songs are definite Spponisms. But ultimately this sounds like a really solid Beck record without any kitsch but with lots of catchy and earnest songs throughout. Very nice.
MPEG Stream: "Gamma Ray"
MPEG Stream: "Replica"

CLOUDLAND CANYON / LICHENS Exterminating Angel (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
NOW ON VINYL!
This is a match that makes perfect sense. As Lichens and Cloudland Canyon have both been making some of the most compelling and rewarding crystalline soundscapes of the last few years. One long track clocking in at around a half hour "Exterminating Angel" does sound like the sum of both of these artists' parts. With the first half sounding much more like Lichens, gorgeous deep in space hazy explorations while the krautier leanings of Cloudland Canyon come into focus in the second half of the track propelling the sounds into their kosmiche orbit. Fans of mid-late '70s Tangerine Dream and early Heldon will for sure want to jump aboard this cosmic adventure.
MPEG Stream: "Babylon"

CRYSTAL CASTLES s/t (Lies / Last Gang) 2lp 14.98
NOW ON VINYL!
Man, we really, really love old school video games around here. The Tron and Rastan games in the store, the Arcade Ambience field recording series, Power Pill Fist, etc. It has to be part of what lured us into the world of Toronto's Crystal Castles and their 8-bit electro mayhem. We're so glad this finally came out, because half of these tracks have been on the internet for about two years and a legitimate release was looking sort of unlikely. But here it is! We digress, on with the review.
Okay, so the duo has been lumped in -- maybe mistakenly -- with the Klaxons, Justice, Digitalism, and the like, but we hear darker, more interesting minor key melodies that occasionally hint at things like The Knife and Junior Boys. In reality, they're not divorced from any of those bands, but there's something about them that gets us. No, not just the aural video game quality, but the undeniable urge to somehow say they're just a bit more punk. Fun. Playful. In fact, there's a handful of tracks on the record that aren't even mixed. And when we saw them play here a year or so ago, their singer Alice was telling us about how she had been kicked out of the previous night's venue for underage drinking.
It doesn't hurt their art-punk street cred that they're best buds with LA's own Health, who they did a split 7" with a year or so ago. When listening to Crystal Castles, there's the feeling that this duo would be just as happy blasting their sounds through a shitty stereo system at their friend's house party, but lucky for us everyone else seems to be feeling it too -- and now they can invite us along to the party.
MPEG Stream: "Untrust Us"
MPEG Stream: "Xxzxcuzx Me"

CURIUM Bism (Dynamophone) 3" cd-r box 8.98
The third release from SF's Curium comes in the form of a 3" cd-r encased in a slightly larger gift box. As with the rest of the Dynamophone Parcel series, this is a delight to open up and delve into.
Curium (aka Evan Sornstein aka the man behind the label) draws inspiration from literary works, this time it is C.S. Lewis' fantasy realm Bism which "lies below the Shallows of the Underland below Narnia. Gnomes grow living gems and salamanders swim in rivers of fire giving great words of wisdom" (quoted from the liner notes). While the three instrumentals may not necessarily conjure such fantastical visions in your mind, they will offer a soothing dreamy respite from the hecticness of your day. Diminutive as this 3" may seem, there's twenty minutes of loveliness for you sink into as it drifts slowly through limpid, wistful melodic lines.
Psst, seeking more new calming contemplative sounds on this label? Be sure to check out Abbasi Brothers (also reviewed this week) and Fjordne!
MPEG Stream: "Subshallow"
MPEG Stream: "Cliffbeckon"

ENDLESS BOOGIE Focus Level (No Quarter) cd 14.98
Kinda too bad this didn't make it onto our list last week with the other Endlessess (Dismal Moan, Blizzard) found therein, woulda been funny, but this is a whole different thing anyhow as you can tell from the second half of their name. Endless Boogie (now that's a handle that will make 'em or break 'em!) are a NYC band featuring two dudes who work at Matador records (we think). Real famous record collector types or so we're told. Now doing their own brand of dumbo psych rock blurt, indeed boogying (they wasn't kiddin'!) and probably all too endlessly for some, in the spirit of their evident sixties/seventies heroes. They got de mojo too, it seems, rubbin' off all those elpees they been collectin'. Cool enuff stuff (though they ain't no Vermonster).
"Smoking Figs In The Yard", the first track, starts off with a spoken "get down have a real good time" intro done in a hokey, jokey (we hope) Beefheart/Billy Gibbons/Edgar Broughton sorta grunt. Ouch. Then they git to rockin'. It's sorta Monster Magnet, sorta Rolling Stones (well, the vocals are kinda Jagger). Meh. But then track two's hypnotic throb, and beerbellycrawlingkingsnake scat singing moves, make it more akin to a redneck version of Circle, or Pharaoh Overlord. Starting to like this better... Endless Boogie coming on like a wanky hybrid of somethin' Circular, with the likes of Drunk Horse or maybe Howlin' Rain.
When track 4, "Executive Focus" rolls around, it's guitar solo wah wah time (moreso even than earlier), stuff that any Comets On Fire, Wooden Shjips or Julian Cope fan can flash on and dig... Acid Mothers too. By the time this song was over, eleven heavy and a half minutes later, we'd been swayed. Endless Boogie is all right with us. And we think we've got the idea. Yep, soon enough, sure enough, track six "Steak Rock" is another repetitive throbber with weird caveman mumblin' Tourette's babble o'er top. Circle's Mika Ratto could speak in tongues with this guy, and they'd understand one another we're certain.
A little later, the album's eighth cut "Jammin' With Top Dollar" sounds like "Mississippi Queen" Mountain with more of that tweaked out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth bugeyed blues holler...
That's followed by the over sixteen glorious guitar-centric minutes of "Low Lifes", a moody, mesmerizing epic of stretched out six string psych action. And then, they rock out the 2:38 duration of the disc's final number "Move Back!". As for the tracks we didn't touch on, "Bad River", "Gimme The Awesome", "Coming Down The Stairs", you can more or less guess at descriptions from the above.
So, the verdict - this gets better n' better as it goes along, though we still find it tough to tolerate the vocals, which are a tongue in cheek tribute to ZZ Top we guess. Struth, if we didn't think the Endless Boogie guys were NYC hipsters taking the piss, we might cut 'em more slack on that. Like, if they were Finnish... but that's hardly fair. Still, the guitars are way cool (if'n you like geeetar), but vocals sorta sound like it's a joke. Yr mileage may vary. You do pretty much get what you'd expect from a band called Endless Boogie! Fans of Wooden Shjips, Itavayla, and of course ZZ Top should check it out.
MPEG Stream: "The Manly Vibe"
MPEG Stream: "Executive Focus"
MPEG Stream: "Jammin' With Top Dollar"

ENDLESS BOOGIE Focus Level (No Quarter) 2lp 17.98
Kinda too bad this didn't make it onto our list last week with the other Endlessess (Dismal Moan, Blizzard) found therein, woulda been funny, but this is a whole different thing anyhow as you can tell from the second half of their name. Endless Boogie (now that's a handle that will make 'em or break 'em!) are a NYC band featuring two dudes who work at Matador records (we think). Real famous record collector types or so we're told. Now doing their own brand of dumbo psych rock blurt, indeed boogying (they wasn't kiddin'!) and probably all too endlessly for some, in the spirit of their evident sixties/seventies heroes. They got de mojo too, it seems, rubbin' off all those elpees they been collectin'. Cool enuff stuff (though they ain't no Vermonster).
"Smoking Figs In The Yard", the first track, starts off with a spoken "get down have a real good time" intro done in a hokey, jokey (we hope) Beefheart/Billy Gibbons/Edgar Broughton sorta grunt. Ouch. Then they git to rockin'. It's sorta Monster Magnet, sorta Rolling Stones (well, the vocals are kinda Jagger). Meh. But then track two's hypnotic throb, and beerbellycrawlingkingsnake scat singing moves, make it more akin to a redneck version of Circle, or Pharaoh Overlord. Starting to like this better... Endless Boogie coming on like a wanky hybrid of somethin' Circular, with the likes of Drunk Horse or maybe Howlin' Rain.
When track 4, "Executive Focus" rolls around, it's guitar solo wah wah time (moreso even than earlier), stuff that any Comets On Fire, Wooden Shjips or Julian Cope fan can flash on and dig... Acid Mothers too. By the time this song was over, eleven heavy and a half minutes later, we'd been swayed. Endless Boogie is all right with us. And we think we've got the idea. Yep, soon enough, sure enough, track six "Steak Rock" is another repetitive throbber with weird caveman mumblin' Tourette's babble o'er top. Circle's Mika Ratto could speak in tongues with this guy, and they'd understand one another we're certain.
A little later, the album's eighth cut "Jammin' With Top Dollar" sounds like "Mississippi Queen" Mountain with more of that tweaked out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth bugeyed blues holler...
That's followed by the over sixteen glorious guitar-centric minutes of "Low Lifes", a moody, mesmerizing epic of stretched out six string psych action. And then, they rock out the 2:38 duration of the disc's final number "Move Back!". As for the tracks we didn't touch on, "Bad River", "Gimme The Awesome", "Coming Down The Stairs", you can more or less guess at descriptions from the above.
So, the verdict - this gets better n' better as it goes along, though we still find it tough to tolerate the vocals, which are a tongue in cheek tribute to ZZ Top we guess. Struth, if we didn't think the Endless Boogie guys were NYC hipsters taking the piss, we might cut 'em more slack on that. Like, if they were Finnish... but that's hardly fair. Still, the guitars are way cool (if'n you like geeetar), but vocals sorta sound like it's a joke. Yr mileage may vary. You do pretty much get what you'd expect from a band called Endless Boogie! Fans of Wooden Shjips, Itavayla, and of course ZZ Top should check it out.
MPEG Stream: "The Manly Vibe"
MPEG Stream: "Executive Focus"
MPEG Stream: "Jammin' With Top Dollar"

FIERY FURNACES Blueberryboat (Rough Trade) lp 16.98
NOW ON VINYL! Here's what we said when the cd was first released:
Delving deeper into the strange and the eccentric and in the process carving out their own lil' musical niche, The Fiery Furnaces' impressive sophomore album Blueberryboat is like one heck of a wild carnival ride - like a tilt-a-whirl, funhouse and rollercoaster all rolled into one. At times Eleanor Friedberger's vocals seem more oddly affected in a Kate Bush sort of way laced with a mix of campy glam Rocky Horror Picture Show, old tyme cabaret, and sing-song nursery rhyme stylings. The music is heady, sometimes plodding, sometimes careening and often quite surprising, occasionally blending a thick squidgy electronic backdrop with their more familiar acoustic and electric guitar-based instrumentation. A wonderfully woozy listening adventure!

FIERY FURNACES EP (Rough Trade) lp 14.00
NOW ON VINYL! Here's what we said when the cd was first released:
Another great release from this truly dynamic duo! Following two awesome albums comes this collection of b-sides and unreleased tracks. Now for most other bands the phrase "b-sides and unreleased tracks" usually means "cast-offs and not-good-enoughs", but for the 'Furnaces it means nothing of the sort. Their consistent high standard carries through all of their releases including this one. With their broad palette of instruments and ideas they fly in the face of current trends. They thoroughly enchant, puzzle, and rock, adding a novel 'talky' electric guitar line, some beautiful waterfall piano melodies, or some bubbly blurbly synthesizer whenever the occasion calls for it. They shuttle through and blend styles with carefree glee - barreling in one direction with full momentum and then turning completely on a dime. Eleanor Friedberger has one of the most expressive devil-may-care voices around, delivering her vocals with a knowing nod and a sly wink. Her brother Matthew is sure no slouch either. However perhaps the thing that sets them apart the most from a lot of bands these days is their lyrical content. Theirs is true 'story rock'. Each song unfurls a whimsical yarn or intriguing tale, but the subject matter is seldom fluffy, hell, it's frequently downright dark and twisted. Great stuff!
Oh and please note that although it's titled "EP", it's not all that short... it actually has ten songs!

FIERY FURNACES Gallowsbird's Park (Rough Trade) lp 14.00
NOW ON VINYL! Here's what we said when the cd was first released:
Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger, the brother and sister duo known as The Fiery Furnaces have certainly drawn lots of comparisons to the plethora of other boy/girl, brother/sister duos of late (White Stripes, The Kills, The Raveonettes to name just a few), but hang on a sec! Don't dismiss them as a bluesy, garagey raw rock copycat pair. 'Though there's definitely waves of low slung slouchy blues, garage and rock flowin' through their veins, there's also plenty more goin' on here. While The Fiery Furnaces are definitely not silly, they are full of whimsy, wit and carefree spirit. Gallowsbird's Park begins at a frantic pace of descending xylophone and piano lines while snarky guitars and thumpin' drums elbow their way through the fray. Eleanor's delivery has a distinct saucy devil-may-care tone to it. She seems to be having a blast kicking out each verse and chorus with such sass. This album is a rambunctious freewheeling jumble, however that's not to say it's by any means messy. What it is is a darn good time! Recommended.

GRAND MAGUS Iron Will (Candlelight) cd 12.98
These (formerly) stoner rockin' Swedes didn't used to interest us all that much, until their last album Wolf's Return, where their previous sound took a terrific turn into epic doom METAL. Suddenly they sounded a lot more Viking! Dooming like blood brothers to countrymen Candlemass, Grand Magus gained new fans at AQ with that release, their power trio hard rock proudly wearing the leather and spikes of true metal.
This new album, if anything, is even more metallized, picking up the pace a bit (due to an eager new drummer?) on several tracks, galloping with the fervor of thee classic ass kicking acts of olde. When they slow it down a bit, we're hearing plenty o' the mighty Manowar, especially on the standout track "Silver Into Steel". Seriously good stuff. Frontman JB's manly singing remains strong and melodic as ever. His guitar riffs and leads aren't bad either!! Iron Will is proof that Wolf's Return was no fluke.
MPEG Stream: "Iron Will"
MPEG Stream: "Silver Into Steel"

GRIMFAUG Defloration Of Life's Essence (Eerie Art) cd 15.98
Latest blast of buzzing black filth from this Belgian horde and it's a doozy. Nothing avant or freaked out, fucked or damaged, nope these guys are masters of the pure black arts, channeling the spirit of Darkthrone, through a wall of murky majestic riffing, blasting beats almost totally obscured and buried by the massive amounts of murk and buzz, the vocals a reverb drenched, an animalistic growl that comes as close to throat singing as any "vokills" we've heard, a raw rough sort of slow guttural roar.
Minus some awesome almost Sabbathy doom style riffing (complete with tolling bell right at the beginning of the first track), and some lurching woozy eighties style classic metal (sometimes underpinned by strange sounding double kick rumbles), the band spend most of their time in a wintry flurry of blown out buzz and furious blast.
Fast, primitive, ugly and raw, Grimfaug unfurl track after track of mesmerizingly hypnotic old school Nordic style buzz, and sometimes that's really all you want or need.
MPEG Stream: "...As Foretold (Holocaust)"
MPEG Stream: "Solar Demise"

GROUPER Dragging A Dead Dear Up A Hill (Type) lp 18.98
NOW ON VINYL!
Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill opens with an entirely characteristic yet coy swell of effected elemental smear, crumbling delicately yet forcefully, until giving way to what is, to date, and here is the coy part, Liz Harris' most songwriterly and structured album. As opposed to the rich swaths of drone that up until now defined her sound, Harris has shifted from the abstract towards a more distinct and figurative sound. True to the title, the record unfolds like a sort of mysterious and morbid fairytale, innocent in its clear and elegant melodies, yet creepy and highly abstract in its more droney and sublime interludes. For the most part, her guitar playing is laid bare, removed from the dense fog of effects that typically occlude them. And what we discover is actually a pretty strummy record, with plenty of clean guitar articulation though certainly the aroma of her previous tech heavy approach remains in what is relatively speaking still pretty effected. At times she even reverts back to the gorgeous icey crunchy string attack of some previous efforts. With so much space liberated in the absence of drones, we also get to hear her stunning voice. Furthermore, the occasional audible lyric creeps to the surface, one standout fragment being "Love is enormous," a somewhat shockingly affirmative sentiment from an otherwise darkly mysterious and abstract persona. From start to finish "Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill" lulls you into its graceful murmurings and hypnotic thrumming. An exquisite addition to an already compelling discography. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Disengaged"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Water/ I'd Rather Be Sleeping"

HEAD HITS CONCRETE Summer 2004 Tour ep (Plastic Airlines) 7" 3.50
We reviewed a cd by these Canadian grinders a long ways back, a furious twisted atonal slab of spazzed out math grind, that reminded us of Drop Dead or Crossed out all tangled up with the Locust and as we said before sounded quite a bit like your head hitting concrete. Well we managed to get a small handful of these tour only singles, and it's more of the same. But here, the sound is even more convoluted, chaotic, spastic, angular off kilter riffing, freaked out drumming, super dense and dizzying arrangements, with long drawn out stretches of droney repetitive chug, peppered with bits of lightning fast blasts, the guitar constantly slippery and slithery, the chords unhinged, the notes seeming to twist and warble, almost like a slide guitar, but this woozy weirdness gives the whole records a super unhinged feel. Reminds us a whole lot of some long lost Gravity band, which is a VERY good thing indeed. (and we just might have a few copies of the HHC cd in stock, check elsewhere on the site). LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.

ISIS Holy Tears (Ipecac) cd ep 7.98
It's weird to think of Isis as a real band. And by that we mean, the sort of band that plays arenas and makes videos and you might see on MTV if MTV played videos anymore. And we've been fans for so long, it's sometimes difficult to get a handle on just how popular they are. And they are HUGELY popular. And rightfully so. They rule. They are one of the metallic post rock elite. Straddling the sounds of Mogwai and Neurosis, mixing the two into their own potent brew. We've yet to be disappointed by an Isis record, and we predict we won't be anytime soon. But we were surprised by some of the tracks on their most recent full length. How much they've evolved, and it's never more evident than on "Holy Tears", easily the most epic, and weirdly enough commercial sounding track we've heard from them. All clean vocals, barring a few monstrous bellows, and long stretches of moody meandering; hearing this, it's no surprise that Isis toured with Tool. This is the sound of a real rock band. An arena rock band even. It's an awesome song, but not nearly as feral and crushing as other tracks, which makes it the obvious choice for a single. That said, the heavy parts here are still MUCHO heavy, but even when the band is at their heaviest here, it's still melodic and dare we say, accessible. There's a live version of "Holy Tears" too, which is pretty cool, but probably the track that most folks will be after is the Melvins / Lustmord remix of "Not In Rivers, But In Drops", which takes the original, and seems to strip away all the guitars, replacing it with a layer of buzzy murk, and takes some of the vocals and process them into something super alien. The drums remain, still tribal and heavy, but the whole track is rendered hauntingly barren, mysteriously muddy, fuzzed out and druggy, almost dubby at times. The guitars return later, but even then they're buried under layers of blurred buzz and wrapped around super loud industrial percussion. The vocals are let loose to howl wildly over just drums, before everything coalesces into a final blow out of roiling crumbling guitar, fuzzed out bass, and a chugging feedback drenched finish. Fucking awesome. Would love to hear a whole Isis record remixed by those guys (and we bet it might just exist already).
Also added on as a bonus is a gorgeous video for "Holy Tears", a super stylized slow motion shot of a body falling from a building, haunting, abstract, so creepy, cutting to black as he hits the ground, then revealing some beautiful and intense shots of veins and organs and fetuses, like some Max Aguillera Helweg photos come to life. Before finishing off with some ultra fucked up footage of the jumper's face 'on impact'. Cool!
MPEG Stream: "Not In Rivers, But In Drops (Melvins / Lustmord Remix)"

LEVIATHAN Massive Conspiracy Against All Life (Moribund Cult) 2lp 23.00
NOW AVAILABLE ON BLACK VINYL! Packaged in a super deluxe, full color, extra thick, gatefold sleeve, that makes Hildolf's (from Draugar) creepy cover art all the more striking. Includes a massive 12"x12" lyric / photo book, printed on cool textured paper, and LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!!! Here's what we had to say about the cd version when we reviewed it a few weeks back:
We talk about 'long awaited' releases all the time, records we hear about well before their actual release date, forcing us to wait and wait and wait, but few records have been as eagerly anticipated, or generated so many emails from customers as this, the latest from SF black metal behemoth Leviathan. Especially considering the rumors circulating that this may indeed be the final recording from Wrest and his one man band, Leviathan. If it is indeed a swansong, it's hard to imagine a more fitting or more powerful farewell-and-fuck-off.
Even being a huge fan and voracious devourer of black metal, we would be hard pressed to tell lots of BM bands apart. It's the nature of the beast in some ways. But the second we threw this on, even if we hadn't known what was playing, there's no mistaking the sound of Leviathan, the guitar tone, those demonic croaked vocals, the dizzying lush black buzzscapes, the convoluted song structures, the weird mathy rhythms and the incredible riffs.
Massive Conspiracy is not a huge departure from the sound of Tentacles Of Whorror, if anything, it just takes all the elements of that record and pushes them just that much further out. The sound is a bit more dense, more epic, the drumming is amazing (especially after the switch from electronic drums to real drums) the compositions more sprawling and expansive in scope. Which is saying a lot since past Leviathan records were pretty dang epic and sprawling already.
The sheer hatred of the titles is certainly expressed in the music as well, this is some scathing, hateful furious sound.
The record begins with some strange static, hissing drone-like buzz, ominous ambience beneath it, a haunting melody, then Wrest's howl and the record explodes in a flurry of rapid fire riffing and relentless blasting, but only briefly, the song immediately switches gear into a lurching lope, then right back into the blast. The song is peppered with super dense squalls of high end buzz, streaks of ultradistorted skree, while beneath all sorts of murky melodies lurk, almost like some old 78 was left playing in the background, giving the track an incredible creepy vibe, the last half of the song wraps itself around a slithery downtuned staccato riff, a gorgeously grim dirge that pounds its way to a burst of black chaos at the finish.
The second track is all whirring drones, loping drums, and Wrest's gurgling growl, a weird skeletal ambient dirge that is soon swallowed up by keening high end guitars, crunching downtuned churn, and some super freaky almost operatic vocals, the middle of the song is all full speed freaked out intensity, before again, the song locks into a super riffy groove, much like the opener, before finishing off in another black blaze.
The rest of the record follows suit, weaving super elaborate soundscapes of black metal buzz, and moody mathy meandering, dense black ambience, and swirling low end drones, the tracks rife with parts and bridges and confusional changes, all masterfully wound up into dense convoluted blackened, that while on their own are strange enough, are also peppered will all manner of sonic weirdness, be it slippery peals of woozy, dizzying melody, garbled vocal fragments, soaring harmony guitar melodies, super obtuse dynamics,
All culminating in the final two tracks. "Vulgar Asceticism" is definitely the most fucked, and maybe most amazing song Wrest has ever recorded. Even the opening, with its muted riffing and murky bass throb, staccato riff, and weird Greg Ginn-ish scrape and grind, before the song takes off. And the main riff is super warbly, almost sounding like he's playing with a slide, the notes wavering and detuning, only to be yanked back in line, and then bent way out of tune again, the result a blurry seasick lurch, exacerbated by the dynamics, the riffs often slipping into strange start stop stutters, until the song reaches it's middle stretch, the bass and drums locked into a relentless midtempo blast, while layers of guitars, and various riffs slip and slide, waver and warble, a super dizzy expanse of funhouse mirror blackness that is as fucked up and far out as it is amazing and masterful.
The closer, "Noisome Ash Crown" is an appropriately somber end to Massive Conspiracy, maybe even Leviathan itself. The whole first half a funereal crawl, a bleak grim landscape of whirring thick black ambience, and strange squalls of processed vocals, squiggles of distorted guitar, the drums a solid framework for the drifting abyss above. A strange washed out, gauzy black ambient bridge, gives way to a crushing almost industrial dirge, the melodies majestic and sorrowful, the vocals harrowing and harsh, the drums furiously flailing before transforming into muted little tangles, the rest of the song following suit, a dark minor key outro that gives way to the same black static that started the record.
MPEG Stream: "Vesture Dipped In The Blood Of Morning"
MPEG Stream: "Merging With Sword, Onto Them"
MPEG Stream: "Made As The Stale Wine Of Wrath"

M.B. Evidences Volume 1 1980 (Final Industrial Music) (Vinyl On Demand) 5lp 99.00
Anyone familiar with the Vinyl On Demand label is probably well aware of how utterly amazing their releases are, how well researched, gorgeously packaged, and of course how limited and difficult to track down. We managed to get three titles, all of them amazing, we only have one copy of each, and wanted to give some of our mailorder folks a shot and snagging one of these. So a brief description follows, and we only have a single copy so first come first served.
M.B. Maurizio Bianchi. Check the aQ site for tons of reviews, as we gush all about one of our favorite industrial music makers EVER. Dark drones, haunting buzz, primitive synths, busted tape machines, old turntables, delay pedals, all woven into something truly divine.
Contains all of MB's tape music from 1979 and 1980, for the first time ever on vinyl.
Five lps, housed in printed hand numbered sleeves, pressed on thick vinyl, all in a gorgeous printed, black box embossed with metallic text.
WE HAVE ONLY ONE COPY!!

MAGNETIC FIELDS Distortion (Nonesuch) lp 22.00
Now on vinyl! Here's what we said when the cd was first released:
It's only January but we're pretty sure we have a contender for record of the year on our hands! We're always so impressed with the rare examples of bands who have reached such heights of popularity yet still keep challenging themselves and their fans. Sadly there aren't many in that club, but folks like Yo La Tengo, PJ Harvey and Sonic Youth have helped demonstrate that even many many records deep into a career you can still make thrilling and rewarding music. With their latest, Stephen Merrit's Magnetic Fields have proven to be a full fledged member of that elite club as well.
While Magnetic Fields last album, I, found Merrit pouring it on pretty thick, this long awaited follow up (with plenty of extracurricular activity by Merrit in the meantime) finds Merrit stripping it down and finding the fun in layers, noise and yes...distortion. Many tracks feature the charming and beautiful voice of Shirley Simms, and the songs that Merrit sings find his vocals way more buried in the mix than usual. Distortion reminds us a lot of the early bedroom charm of Magnetic Fields records like Charm Of The Highway Strip and one of Merrit's many alter egos The Future Bible Heroes. We love how it sounds like they are tapping into the spirit of the New Zealand lo-fi pop underground of the '80s and even hints of the fuzzy and dreamy qualities of the heyday of Creation records. Not many people could get away with having a major label release such a non-slick and unpolished record. In fact there are moments on Distortion that sound like they could have been on some awesome cassette release from Shrimper back in the day.
Distortion is a timeless gem. While it does tip its hat to some of the most yummy and fuzzy pop of the last couple decades and boasts a wall of sound that's kind of like Phil Spector producing a twee-like Jesus & Mary Chain record, what makes the album so special is that you know it's going to sound as meaningful and alive twenty years from now as it does today. Merrit is still writing music for wry and broken hearts but he's injected new life into old pain and in doing so he's created another classic!

MAMMATUS s/t (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98
NOW, AT LAST, ON VINYL!!! Here's what we said when we reviewed these AQ faves debut when it first came out on cd back in 2006:
Whoa, heavy!! This is a whole-body vibrating, brain-melting, serious amplifier worship ceremony! The first time I (Allan) saw these guys, last year sometime at the Hemlock here in San Francisco, I was blown away... I'd been told the were a heavy 'stoner rock' outfit from Santa Cruz and worth checking out, but I didn't realize they were gonna be quite so AMAZING. Hairy backwoods hippy dudes, the drummer wearing what looked to be a home-made Whysp t-shirt, guitars turning the air to cottage cheese a la Blue Cheer while creating a trance-zone worthy of Finland's Circle!! So good that I immediately bought the live cd-r they were selling... we were gonna try to get some for the store, in fact, but then we found out that local label Holy Mountain run by our pal JW was on the case already and would be issuing Mammatus's debut studio full-length album Stateside (with Rocket Recordings, home to the most recent UFOmammut, putting it out in Europe).
So yeah, heavy stoner rock this is, but waaay psychedelic and Hawkwindy, kinda like what maybe you thought Circle side-project Pharaoh Overlord was gonna (and sometimes does) sound like. Loud, massive and mesmerizing, swirling sludge psych! Their songs, often of epic length, are ever chugging skyward, dripping molten goo, full of feedback and fx. Their energetic riffage and warm drones are adorned by drifting vox (not unlike Dead Meadow, with whom they share certain proclivities) and fantastic, metallic, progtastic imagery. Take note of titles like "Dragon Of The Deep" (parts one and two!) and the Roger Dean-esque cover art by Arik "Moonhawk" Roper.
Further musical comparisions aren't hard to come up with - Mammatus belong in the company of such bastions of cosmic heaviness as Sleep, Boris, YOB, UFOmammut, Earthless, old Monster Magnet, Acid Mothers Temple (at AMT's heaviest, like on Starless & Bible Black Sabbath), Tarantula Hawk, and even Amon Duul (especially on the druggy, krautrocky jam "The Outer Rim"). And of course they're now labelmates with OM, which also makes perfect sense. If you love many, or even just any, of those bands and the sounds they make, this comes highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Righteous Path Through The Forest Of Old"
MPEG Stream: "Dragon Of The Deep Part One"

MOLJEBKA PVLSE Lvde Dings (Drone) 7" 9.98
Probably the most well known of the groups contributing to this most recent collection of limited 7" singles from Germany's Drone Records. Gorgeously packaged, matte black ink on gloss black sleeves, pressed on black vinyl, black on grey cardstock insert, the first edition and thus limited to ONLY 300 COPIES!
Two short tracks, the first an ominous ambience of deep rumbles and hushed atmosphere, haunting minor key melodies stretched into blurred streaks of sound, after drifting through a little cloud of percussion at the beginning, only to emerge into a bleak expanse of slowly unfurling low end and soft black shimmer. The flipside picks up right where the A side ends, growing less and less ominous, becoming more and more dreamy and blissed out, the ominous black clouds slowly parting to reveal a sprawling expanse of steel grey winter sky. So nice!

NELSON, DAN All Known Metal Bands (McSweeny's) book 22.00
We had been hearing about this book for a while. While we were intrigued, we definitely had mixed feelings about it. What is it? Simply a list of metal band names. No logos, no information, other than names, lots and lots of names. More than 50,000. So the question is then, WHY? That's a tough one to answer. It's a pretty book, and the list is of course impressive. Page after page, silver metallic ink on matte black paper (of course), all housed in a gorgeous blue, black and metallic gold hardcover, it's not really readable, unless you're some sort of metal rain man, and it serves no real purpose, you could maybe look up some metal band you like and see if they're in there, but then what? Nothing really. The first strike is calling it All Known Metal Bands. Metalheads by their very nature are obsessive, so that's just begging for an onslaught from 'readers' of all the bands NOT included, and believe us, there are plenty. If Rolling Stone can't do a feature on the best song ever, or the 50 guitar gods, without getting THOUSANDS of people writing in telling them who they forgot and chastising them for leaving out so and so, well just imagine essentially telling metalheads, this is a list of all known metal bands. It might have worked better as a website, some sort of evolving online art project. But wait, there already is something like that. The Metal Archives, the ULTIMATE resource for metal, band bios, albums, album covers, logos, reviews, it's a lot like Wikipedia for metal. And we can't help but think, that -anyone- could have 'written' this book, after spending a few hours on Metal Archives. Which has us thinking that it's hard to believe the 'author' didn't do just that. And we're not alone. Have a look at Cosmo Lee's Invisible Oranges (one of the best heavy music blogs out there!):
http://invisibleoranges.com/2008/07/all-known-metal-bands.html
Yep, we're not alone. In fact when we first heard about the book, we all immediately thought "Oh, like Metal Archives." Except minus everything but the names of the bands. There is some sort of cool stuff, for instance bands with the same name just get listed as many times as there are bands, no way to tell them apart, no countries listed, just the name. Over and over and over. Normally that would be annoying, but in the context of this project, it's actually kind of cool. Bands called Hellbound? The list reads:
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Hellbound
Yep, there are eight. And so it goes. Ten Leviathans, etc. Interesting to see what the popular names are.
So take away the pointlessness, remove the hyperbolic title, and assume that these names weren't all just yanked from Metal Archives, and you've got a pretty cool, sorta dumb, little object, that as metalheads, we almost feel obliged to own. So yeah, we bought one. You probably will too. But then, we love metal, and we love books, we love lists, and even though we really shouldn't, and if called on it will claim not to, we sort of love this here book. But only sort of.

NOISE DREAMS MACHINA In / Out (Drone) 7" 9.98
One of four new releases from Germany's Drone records. This one from the new to us group Noise Dreams Machina. And their name does not lie, especially the Noise part, as this is definitely some noisy business, especially for the more often droney and dreamy Drone records. Right out of the gate a growling super distorted wall of crumbling feedback and blown out electronics, churning and roiling and throbbing until it finally gives way to something slightly more subdued and muted, but still managing to be subtly noisy and intense. The track transforms into a constantly shifting swirl of sonic chaos, often so in the red it seems to seize up, clog the speaker, before lurching back into skipping stuttery noise. Right near the end of the A side it gets all rhythmic like a symphony of skipping digital clicks.
The flipside is much more serene, deep and shimmery, barring a brief squall of glitched out digital damage right up front. The track drifts abstractly from whispery hiss to muted thrum to washed out buzz and back again, never getting as fierce or as fucked up as the A side, but somehow managing to imbue its dark drone with plenty of noisy menace.
Packaged in a thick, black and white sleeve, pressed on clear vinyl, with a grey cardstock insert, and a first edition LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!

NUDITY The Nightfeeders (Discourage) 12" 11.98
The Nightfeeders is the newest release from Olympia Washington's, Nudity! This group of self-proclaimed astral travellers brings us a highly limited, vinyl-only 12" of heavy kraut freak-out! Their sound is huge and galactic, bluesy and blown out, the perfect formula for some solid psychedelic jams. Music that makes you want to knock over amps and take your shirt off. Get this one before it's too late, we only have a handful... you don't want to be shirtless without it.

NURSE WITH WOUND Huffin' Rag Blues (United Jnana) cd 14.98
Steven Stapleton has long appropriated those sounds which have interested him, recontextualizing them through the surrealist lens of Nurse With Wound. Robert Ashley's Automatic Music had worked its way into the minimalist masterpiece A Missing Sense. Brainticket begat Brained By Falling Masonry. Perez Prado and Jac Berocal feature in a pantheon of esoteric experimental music spelled out in the infamous Nurse With Wound list of influences that graced the first NWW record. There's even been a threat that Stapleton will produce a Nurse hip-hop record. Here on Huffin' Rag Blues, Stapleton turns to a familiar infatuation: exotica, easy listening, and lounge jazz records. Where the previous escapades had been deliriously fractured collages (i.e. The Sylvie And Babs Hi-Fi Companion), Huffin' Rag Blues is a bit more straight forward with slinky Martin Denny vibes and grooves dominating the album. Stapleton did make a pretty notable change in his production personnel as venerable technician Colin Potter takes a back seat to the occasionally brilliant Andrew Liles. The vocals which pop-up throughout the album hold the greatest sense of absurdity, as Diana Rogerson (aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd) and Matt Waldron (aka irr. app. (ext.)) offer their eccentricities alongside some vocalists we don't quite recognize. It must be noted that Waldron's contribution has been a regular occurrence in the recent NWW performances with him adopting a Tom Waits / Beefheart croon to junked percussion tossed around.
MPEG Stream: "Black Teeth"
MPEG Stream: "Cruisin' For A Bruisin'"
MPEG Stream: "Juice Head Crazy Lady"

QUETZOLCOATL Sleeping Within The Sun (Phantom Limb) cd-r 9.98
Over the last few months we've been systematically going through our warehouse (read: not very big back room) and unearthing all manner of gems, limited cd-r's misplaced box sets, long out of print lps, and getting them back in the store, or if there are enough, getting them reviewed and onto the list. That way, even though we'd normally try to have 30 or 40 of something, at least a handful of you can get your hands on something instead of it sitting neglected on some shelf.
So here's another recent discovery, a cd-r from a long time aQ fave, Quetzolcoatl, aka Timothy Hurley, who also does time in Taj Mahal Travellers worshipping outfit Bonecloud, both hailing from Ireland. Released on Phantom Limb a while back, and limited, to, oof, 90 COPIES! Which of course means WAY out of print, and these are the very last copies.
The sound of Quetzolcoatl is dreamy delicate stuff, Warm washed out landscapes of high end tones, blurred into cloudy streaks, spread out over angelic voices and tinkling chimes, gritty buzz over distant percussion, and haunting ghostlike melodies, gentle swells of fuzz and hiss, sun dappled and ethereal, murky stretches of low end crawl, and majestic lo-fi chorales, smeared into long indistinct stretches of stained glass sound, glimmering and prismatic and so gorgeous.
Amazing packaging, a full color insert, with printed vellum sheets on either side, a small printed vellum insert, each one hand numbered, limited to only 90 copies. Again, already out of print, last copies everŠ
MPEG Stream: "Sleeping Within The Sun"

RATATAT LP3 (XL) cd 13.98
New York's guitar/synth duo Ratatat hits us hard with another hefty dose of instrumental electronica, the follow up to 2006's summer jam Classics. Very similar to that album indeed. Not veering far from their usual sound, catchy synth and guitar melodies woven within a bright world of danceable sounds and beats, LP3 is a sure pleaser for any fans of radiant electronica. As familiar as LP3 sounds, there are glimpes of a more refined Ratatat here. Accoustic, steel-stringed intruments and eastern rythyms bring some spice to the album. Charming and vivid, you can't help but wonder if this is the music an arcade would make if it came to life after closing. These guys really conjure a nice balance between pop sensibility and musicianship. In a genre so heavily reliant on machines and buttons, they create a sound so organic and sincere.
MPEG Stream: "Mirando"
MPEG Stream: "Imperials"
MPEG Stream: "Mumtaz Khan"

RATATAT LP3 (XL) lp 14.98
New York's guitar/synth duo Ratatat hits us hard with another hefty dose of instrumental electronica, the follow up to 2006's summer jam Classics. Very similar to that album indeed. Not veering far from their usual sound, catchy synth and guitar melodies woven within a bright world of danceable sounds and beats, LP3 is a sure pleaser for any fans of radiant electronica. As familiar as LP3 sounds, there are glimpes of a more refined Ratatat here. Accoustic, steel-stringed intruments and eastern rythyms bring some spice to the album. Charming and vivid, you can't help but wonder if this is the music an arcade would make if it came to life after closing. These guys really conjure a nice balance between pop sensibility and musicianship. In a genre so heavily reliant on machines and buttons, they create a sound so organic and sincere.

ROSETTA Cleansing Undertones Of Wake/Lift (Translation Loss) cd 9.98
The debut double disc from long time aQ metallic post rock faves Rosetta, was a massive dose of high concept heaviness. A disc of proper songs, all churning heaviness and doom drenched math rock blow outs, and a second disc, a companion of sorts, more ambient and abstract, it was unclear whether the two were meant to be played simultaneously, of if they merely complimented each other, two sides of Rosetta's sound. Not sure it mattered. Both discs were amazing, both sounded great on their own or played in tandem.
We originally assumed that this disc was a companion to the newly released Wake/Lift (reviewed elsewhere on this list), but on closer examination, and after repeated listens, it seems to be something entirely different. The liner notes explain that this disc is made up of EVERY sample the band collected or manipulated over the course of the last 7 years or so, with the final declaration "I Am Starting Over". It's hard to tell if these sounds were indeed actually used on the records proper, or if this disc is merely a clearing house for cool left over and unused sounds, but it hardly matters, as these 4 extended sound collages function just fine on their own, as their own record, and it's the sort of sound that most cd-r noise bands would kill for. Dense and dark, evocative and atmospheric, crumbling and chaotic, dreamy and droney, layered and rife with fuzzy buzzy texture. Rhythms surface from strange looped sounds, melodies buried beneath constantly shifting walls of sound, massive chunks of super distorted heaviness, streaks of glitch and hiss, wild dubbed out drumming, mysterious voices and samples, an expansive organic whole, the four tracks functioning as one epic, seamlessly woven together, slipping one track to the next, the track markers seemingly arbitrary, as it all sort of bleeds into one massive textured slow motion abstract doomdrone. So divine. If this was a limited cd-r released on some super cool underground microlabel, limited to 100 copies, people would lose their living shit. So don't let the fact that it's a real cd released on a real label keep you from checking it out. Fans of stuff like Acre, Tunnels, Expo '70, Birchville, Axolotl, Black Boned Angel and other purveyors of buzz and murk and drone, should absolutely check this out.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 3"

SEVERED HEADS Adenoids 1977-1985 (Vinyl On Demand) 5lp 149.00
Anyone familiar with the Vinyl On Demand label is probably well aware of how utterly amazing their releases are, how well researched, gorgeously packaged, and of course how limited and difficult to track down. We managed to get three titles, all of them amazing, we only have one copy of each, and wanted to give some of our mailorder folks a shot and snagging one of these. So a brief description follows, and we only have a single copy so first come first served.
Another collection of rarities unearthed by VoD, all of the earliest recorded material from the legendary Severed Heads, recorded between 1977 and 1981, as well as some unreleased bonus material from 83-85. Five lps, housed in printed hand numbered sleeves, pressed on thick vinyl, all in a gorgeous printed embossed box.
WE HAVE ONLY ONE COPY!!

SHRINE Distorted Legends Pt. 1 (Drone) 7" 9.98
Another surprisingly noisy missive in the latest salve of 7"s from the always impressive Drone Records. This one comes from a one man outfit called Shrine, and as with all Drone discs is gorgeously packaged in a full color sleeve, pressed on thick black vinyl, with a printed cardstock insert printed with metallic ink, and as with the others, first edition, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
The record begins all glimmering and glistening, a slowburn of keening feedback and grinding metallic shimmer, the sounds thick and corrosive an caustic, fuzzy, blurred and distorted, with what sounds like filed recordings underneath, dark and dense but still quite lovely. The flipside is the big surprise though, a creepy soundtracky drift, deep pulsing bass notes, and fuzzy Goblin like synths, all ominous and mysterious, plenty of whirring ambience beneath, but over the top those sweeping epic minor key melodies and those haunted house synth swells keep the mood foreboding and a little bit frightening. The track gets more and more intense and distorted as it goes, but never loses its grim chill.

SILVER JEWS Lookout Mountain, Lokout Sea (Drag City) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL!
David Berman's Silver Jews have hit the half dozen mark with their album Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. As you might recall, album #5 (Tanglewood Numbers) left us cold. It seems we must've missed being warmed by the malt beverages that the band sounded like they'd been enjoying in abundance. This full length pretty much picks up where they last left off, but now with Berman's wife Cassie on bass and vocals. Still unapologetically ramshackle and unravelling. So why do we keep anticipating goodness from this band? Why do we keep wanting to like them? Sure the roster over the years has been an indie rock kid's wet dream (including HRH Malkmus, Nastanovich, Denison and Oldham), but there is more to it than that, right? On each Silver Jews album there are always bright flashes of dark awesomeness from Berman's songwriting pen. They're just very fleeting and you have to wade through an often frustrating logjam of murk and shambles to spot them. Where are they on Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea? We caught glimpses in the trippier moments of songs such as "Candy Jail" and "My Pillow Is A Threshold" as well as on the surprising cover of Maher Shalal Hash Baz's "Open Field".
MPEG Stream: "Candy Jail"
MPEG Stream: "My Pillow Is A Threshold"

SPK Dokument III0 1979-1983 (Vinyl On Demand) 6lp/shirt/box 200.00
Anyone familiar with the Vinyl On Demand label is probably well aware of how utterly amazing their releases are, how well researched, gorgeously packaged, and of course how limited and difficult to track down. We managed to get three titles, all of them amazing, we only have one copy of each, and wanted to give some of our mailorder folks a shot and snagging one of these. So a brief description follows, and we only have a single copy so first come first served.
SPK, Industrial legends. This over the top, already out of print box set is a doozy. Compiling recordings that document the band's first 5 years, the box includes 6 lps, all housed in printed numbered sleeves, collecting several long gone tape only releases as well as a handful of live performance. Also included is a shirt, with the same image as the box, size XL, a 36 page booklet, all housed in a gorgeous hinged wooden box.
LIMITED TO 800 COPIES. OUT OF PRINT. WE HAVE ONE SINGLE COPY! On your mark, get set, go...

SUNSET PARK SCHOOL OF MUSIC (AXOLOTL) s/t (Loci) cd-r 9.98
We got a handful of these limited cd-rs from Karl Bauer aka Axolotl and we're not sure we can get more so don't hesitate!!
Recorded in 2000 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in Bauer's apartment which was around the corner from the actual Sunset Park School of Music and directly above the apartment of Michael Gira of Swans, these recordings feature members of Axolotl, Mouthus, Black Dice, and Nick Bohn who passed away a few years ago and this disc is dedicated to him.
Nine tracks of noisy electric skree featuring a microphone once inserted inside GG Allin, pots, pans, pot, tons of effect petals, mushrooms, pills, and youthful vigor that represents a crucial early chapter in the musical development of most involved. Fans of any of the above bands, Skaters, early Animal Collective, Starving Weirdos, and Burning Star Core should definitely check this out.
MPEG Stream: " 4"
MPEG Stream: "5"
MPEG Stream: "7"

SWORD, THE Gods Of The Earth (Kemado Records) lp 16.98
NOW ON VINYL! If you're gonna call your metal band The Sword (not just Sword, of which there have been a few, but THE Sword) you've got a lot to live up to. So maybe it's not such a surprise that lots of folks in the scene have been hatin' on this band 'cause somehow they're not "true" enough. And/or they got just too darn popular. Ironic hipster metal they get called. We've probably said it ourselves. But of course what's ironic is how 'cause a band gets big, suddenly they're not cool anymore. Now, it does seem that Austin's The Sword live charmed lives, young undoubtedly hipster dudes bringing the heavy to a maybe not entirely metal audience, getting all kinds of hype with only one album (well, now two) to back it up. That there's OTHER bands out there equally worthy who don't get on MTV or Guitar Hero, we won't deny! Better bands, even. Heck, the world ain't fair. But that doesn't mean that The Sword aren't good fist in the air fun. C'mon, their High On Fire meets The Fucking Champs brand of HEAVY, guitar harmony laden, stoner/doom rumble, replete with swords & sorcery fantasy metal '80s influences, might not be the most original or imaginative thing ever but sounds pretty good to us, even if they're certainly no Slough Feg.
And this sophomore effort, Gods Of The Earth (oooh, full of themselves, are they?), is probably up a songwriting notch or two from their Age Of Winters debut two years ago, though following the same general template, so if you liked that one you'll like this too. There's a couple melodic acoustic guitar intros and interludes, but mostly massive amps to 11 guitar crush and drum pummel the rest of the time. The Sword's seriously stentorian riffage rules, conjuring images of conquering armies sweeping savagely across ancient bloody battlefields. Kings and wizards, rogues and rangers populate their lyrics, and they even do a song about an axe. It's all very D&D, straight faced no joking (which should be a point in their favor). If The Sword's songs were airbrush artwork they'd go great on the side of your van.
'Tis true, sometimes their rather relentless (or shall we say epic?) chugga-chuggery and lackadaisical singing/shouting (Sleep style, as is much else of their sound) can eventually sound a bit been there done that. But not when you're fully engorged with headbanging lust, which you as a redblooded metalhead ought to be! That is, as long as you're not being a scene policeman too worried about what's metal and what's poseur to have a good time. What do you want to be, high school hall monitor or sword-swinging barbarian berserker?? The Sword offer you the choice of either role we suppose.
MPEG Stream: "Lords"
MPEG Stream: "The Black River"

TUNNELS On A Body Of Nothing But Radiance (self released) cd-r 8.98
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
MPEG Stream: "1"

TUNNELS Vexations (self released) cd-r 8.98
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
MPEG Stream: "Vexations"

TUNNELS What Happens To Us Is Pure (self released) cd-r 8.98
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
MPEG Stream: "2"

VERY HUSH HUSH, THE Evil Milk (Sao Bento) cd 9.98
For the follow-up to their 2006 debut Mourir C'est Facile, The Very Hush Hush take a bold and unexpected turn away from the Interpol moody rock territory into a less song-structured and much more varied and discordant album. In fact, the seventeen songs and noisescape interludes almost seems cut-up and randomly reassembled. For instance, at one point a solemn piano number nudges into something that resembles a dismembered M83esque shoegazerly track that builds into fuzzy prickly blasts. Definitely as dark in tone as their previous album but the dour male swagger is now tempered with non-anthropomorphic ominous presences. Cool.
MPEG Stream: "Soul Projector"
MPEG Stream: "Anathema"
MPEG Stream: "Milk Of The Light"

VICTIM'S SHUDDER, THE Terror Romance (Paradigms) cd 12.98
While many assumed that Paradigms was an exclusively heavy music label, seeing as many of its early releases were metal, and that it was born out of the death of the truly kick ass Rage Of Achilles label, in fact, from the very beginning, Paradigms has been releasing drone records and free folk records, weird prog records, along side the heavier metal and black metal and noise records, discs by bands like Gnaw Their Tongues, The Angelic Process, Throne Of Katarsis, Titan, Utlagr were balanced by discs from Plants, Tropes, Amber Asylum, Somnam, Snowdrift, this latest from California's The Victim's Shudder definitely fits more with the latter group.
Long dreamlike expanses of synthesized shimmer, drifting female vocals. The obvious reference is Cocteau Twins, maybe Dead Can Dance, TVS would have been right at home on 4AD, or at their most bleak and drone-y on Cold Meat Industry. TVS is essentially a one man band, who weaves massive reverby drifts of soft sound, shimmery and dreamlike, ethereal and New Agey at times, flurries of delicate piano drift over synthesized strings, cooing vocals hover in wide open expanses of sun dappled ambience, everything is gauzy and soft around the edges, bleary eyed and blurred.
A few tracks up the ante heaviness-wise, like "For Francesca" with its buzzing synths (or could they be real guitars?), growling demonic vox, lots of distortion and crumbling rumbles, grit and interference, all draped over a soaring chunk of stately neo-classical, or the cinematic drift of "A Godless Serene", replete with the sound of water and wind, field recordings layered beneath quivering strings and mournful melodies. The disc closes with the 13 minute "One Last Fatal Suite", beginning as another delicate crystalline blur, vocals indistinct and wordless, piano, simple and pointillist, eventually joined by strange electronic specters, high end streaks, grinding bits of crunch, static, hiss, building to a haunting caterwaul before drifting away completely. Beautiful and haunting, definitely for the 4AD inclined, and fans of neo-classical dark ambience. Maybe not heavy enough for some of the Paradigms faithful, but quite pretty nonetheless.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a white dvd style case, with a full color cover and printed black and white insert.
MPEG Stream: "Silent When You Scream"
MPEG Stream: "Enchanting Spiral Gears"

WHISKEYTOWN Strangers Almanac (Deluxe Edition) (Geffen) cd 27.00
An oldie but goodie! This deluxe reissue of Whiskeytown's awesome Stranger's Almanac album has renewed the love side in our love/hate relationship with the music of Mr. Ryan Adams. In fact, all the bonus tracks (alternate takes, demos, etc) that accompany their 1997 major label debut album seem superfluous (yet fan-pleasing!) when held up to the solid original baker's dozen songs. To be honest we spent far more time revisiting those thirteen tunes than all of the bonus ones! Alt-country, new Americana... label it what you will, but when the tempermental Whiskeytown were 'on' their feisty, yearning songs were picture-perfect example of the genre's finest.
MPEG Stream: "Yesterday's News"
MPEG Stream: "House On The Hills (live in-studio)"

XABEC Feuerstern (Drone) 7" 9.98
A whole mess of new releases from Germany's drone records, as always gorgeously packaged, super limited, and some of the deepest, darkest, loveliest and most mysterious dronemusik around.
This one comes from a group called XABEC, whose installment comes pressed on thick maroon vinyl, and housed in a gold embossed 7" cardboard box, with a printed cardstock insert. As always, it's a first edition and is thus limited to only 300 copies.
The A side begins as two simultaneous drones, one soft and shimmery and static, the other more buzzy and distorted, a hissing rumble, wrapping itself all around the main drone. Later on, creepy footstep-like percussion drifts in, and distant keening metallic melodies. Whirring distortion underpins bits of clatter, and various random sounds, all woven into a darkly undulating sonic tapestry.
The B side is a piece from a performance based on music and fireworks, and thus ends with field recordings, captured by Mnortham, the track opens with a flurry of fireworks a cloud of skittery pop, like an army of tiny machine guns, quickly giving way to a wash of deep resonant metallic drones, and a strange alien groove over the top, some sort of squeaky looped rhythm that sounds a bit like Drone meets Kompakt. Weird but quite cool.

XELA WITH GREG HAINES & DANNY SAUL The Late Chapel (Type) lp 14.98
WHOO-HOO! We found we had a (small) secret stash of these, so here's another chance to grab one. Ultra limited one sided vinyl only release from AQ faves Xela. Already out of print, we have the last copies anywhere.
A single long form composition, more classical and minimal sounding than the most recent Xela full length, beginning with gentle simple piano, tinkling chimes, distant whirs, folky steel string twang, subtle percussion, a subtle mixture of cello, piano, vocals, acoustic and electric guitars and effects, all woven into a lovely stretch of active ambience. Soon though this tranquil drift is enveloped in a thick sonic haze of blurred buzz, and the instruments all seem to be deeply effected by the change, the guitars begin to stutter and glitch, the piano detunes and becomes more atonal, throwing out dense little flurries of notes, steel strings scrape and creak and groan, becoming more and more intense, building to a lengthy drone, everything whipped into a frenzy, swirling whirring, intense and dense but still strangely melodic and quite lovely.
Pressed on thick vinyl, packaged in plain white sleeves, each one stamped and hand numbered, limited to 300 copies, and again, already out of print, these are the last copies ever...

ZAIMPH Emblem (Heavy Blossom) cd 14.98
Yet another missive from Zaimph, the one woman noise/drone outfit helmed by Marcia Bassett, she of Hototogisu, Double Leopards, GHQ and loads more. As Zaimph, Bassett can be pretty unpredictable, dabbling in blissed out Sunroof! style ragas, cripplingly brutal white hot noise, or super subdued minimal ambience, although she does tend toward the noisy heavy side of things.
Emblem is no different, definitely noisy, and heavy, not to mention textural, expansive, gritty, buzzy and psychedelic. Two long tracks, the first, clocking in at about 10 minutes, is based on a growling guttural grinding low end foundation, what sounds like a guitar tuned so low it sort of rumbles and whirs, creating a gristly fuzzy drone, over which, all sorts of disembodied melodies and fractured harmonies soar and swoop, wreathed in effects, and heavily distorted, the sky above is filled with streaks of crumbling feedback, whirring clouds of hiss and scrape and amp buzz, but always grounded by that churning undulating low end short circuited drone beneath.
The second track, a nearly half hour epic, is not so corrosive, beginning with some languid raga-like buzz, a warm whir drifting in a wide open expanse of barely there shimmer, very dreamy and mesmerizing, other instruments join in, but only swirl gently around each other, a loosely woven midnight sky full of reverberating strings and moaning melodies. It's not until about 20 minutes in, that things get any wilder, and even then, it's just a matter of several of those buzzing melodies becoming ensconced in warbly effects and super charged a bit, upping the intensity, but remaining hypnotic and trancelike, eventually building to a glorious harmonic coda, the tones floating and drifting majestically over a softly swirling sea of sweet sweet buzz and drone.
Beautifully packaged, in an oversized black cardstock sleeve, with metallic silver ink. And be warned, we've actually had these for a while, so as they're not new, they might be tough to restock when we run out.
MPEG Stream: "One"

ZAIMPH Live Hasselt (Heavy Blossom) cd-r 11.98
One of two new releases from the strangely named Zaimph, which just so happens to be the monicker Marcia Bassett, of Hototogisu, GHQ and Double Leopards fame, uses for her solo noise and guitar explorations.
As we mention in the other review, the sound of Zaimph, and Bassett's projects in general can range from soft and lovely to not soft at all and not so lovely, dabbling in noise, psych, drone and raga, often melding all of those into one single organic whole.
For this disc, a 30 minute live set recorded in 2006, after some strange smooth jazz over the house PA and what seems to be a recording of Bassett setting up, things get rolling with a cloud of dark metallic shimmer, that spreads and oozes and envelops the crowd in a soft swirl of whirling effects and blurred drones, eventually, the sound shifts gears and the guitar (at least we think it's a guitar) becomes more caustic, more metallic, the sound more buzzy and sharp, almost like a buzz saw playing out some subtly melodic drone, the sound billowing into thick swells of grind and skree, before slipping back into a deep minimal hum, and beginning the slow build to the eventual cathartic explosion of guitarnoise and fractured FX freakout that finishes the set.
Heavy and noisy, will definitely hit the spot for folks who dig the meaner side of Hototogisu and Matthew Bower's old Total project. Super limited cd-r, that we've had for a while, so there's a good chance these might be the last copies we can get.
MPEG Stream: "Live Hasselt (excerpt)"

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V/A After Dark (Italians Do It Better) 3LP 23.00
NOW ON VINYL!
Chances are lots of us here at AQ are like you in that we can get a bit overly obsessed when we fall in love with something. Case in point: this mind melting electro-disco compilation from the new Troubleman Unlimited offshoot label Italians Do It Better. There are thousands of amazing records here in the store to listen to everyday yet we can't stop putting this on. Day after day and often multiple times during the day this always seems to find its way back to the cd player, making us feel like we're dancing on clouds, floating high in the sky, never to come down. Influenced by the best moments of early disco, Giorgio Moroder and the whole Italo-disco scene (of which the label name is a tip o' the hat to) this comp is a collection of tracks from 12"s, LP's and demos that have been pretty impossible to come by in these parts. Folks like Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, Professor Genius, and more have channeled their inner Moroder and captured that perfect late night dancing on air sensation after a long night of consumption and exertion, dancing your ass off, dressed to the nines and never wanting the party to end. Whether they're covering Kraftwerk or R.L. Crutchfield's Dark Day (a legendary and sadly obscure project by DNA co-founder!) or creating their own songs that fit perfectly into this after dark wonderland, all these artists have totally dialed into a sound and style that we find so irresistible. Where electro-clash was cold and calculated, these sounds channeling a heartfelt love of vintage disco have a seductive and sensual quality that's been making lots of us swoon. So highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: CHROMATICS "Hands In The Dark"
MPEG Stream: GLASS CANDY "Computer Love"
MPEG Stream: MIRAG "Lady Operator"

V/A Soul Messages From Dimona (Numero Group) 2lp 17.98
Now available on vinyl!!
Bet you don't have any Black Hebrew soul in your record collection. We sure didn't! But leave it to the folks at the Numero Group to extract this amazing document of the diaspora of black folks from Chicago and Detroit who converted to Judaism and made the pilgrimage to Israel, and more precisely to a city located just west of the Dead Sea called Dimona. When in Israel it was the music and spiritual soul that many of these people brought with them from Chicago and Detroit that would become the soundtracks to their new lives. Musically this is very much in line with the best of spiritual soul and gospel of that era (early '70s) and you can hear the influence of many of their Chicago brethren (Pieces of Peace, The Dells, Earth Wind & Fire). But of course what makes this so cool is the totally unique context that these songs came out of. On a few tracks they even sing some lines in Hebrew and the amazing pictures and in depth liner notes of this very obscure movement and moment in time makes not only for a great record but an even more amazing historical document.
MPEG Stream: TONISTICS "Holding On"
MPEG Stream: SOUL MESSENGERS "Our Lord And Savior"
MPEG Stream: SONS OF THE KINGDOM "Modernazation"

V/A The Mighty Striker Shoots At Hits (Moll-Selekta) cd 17.98
Moll-Selekta brings us its second collection of Bunny Lee productions, this time a compilation of roots reggae tracks dating from 1973-79. The Mighty Striker Shoots At Hits is a solid group of songs that balances classic hits from big names such as Horace Andy and Delroy Wlson with more obscure cuts such as Hortense Ellis covering her brother Alton's smash, "I'm Still In Love." Depending on your inclinations, the fact that this disc focuses on shorter, 7" sides rather than extended DJ and dub cuts may or may not be to the record's benefit. The concision of the tracks is refreshing and highlights the strength of the vocal performances and songwriting, but unfortunately means that the engineering prowess of frequent collaborators like King Tubby are largely underrepresented. That said, we're of the opinion that the heartbreaking beauty of tracks like Cornell Campbell's soulful "Give Me Love" benefit from the unadorned presentation they receive here.
What this disc does best is document the early stages of the transition from ska and rocksteady to the more Rastafarian-oriented themes of the Roots movement that would come to define Jamaican music's most celebrated era. Likewise, the vocal performances on display in these cuts show Bunny Lee's unparalleled ability to coax beautifully emotional deliveries out of his singers that are at once simple, sweet and massively evocative. While the collection is hardly perfect (as with so many other reggae compilations, the liner notes and packaging leave a lot to be desired) and definitely not recommended for those interested mostly in dubby tape echo workouts, it still serves as a fantastic introduction to the production skills of one of the most important figures in Reggae's mid-'70s rennaissance. For fans of lover's style roots ballads, classic rockers and sweet Jamaican soul, there is more than enough here to make this a highly recommended purchase!
MPEG Stream: CORNELL CAMPBELL "Give Me Love"
MPEG Stream: HONEY BOY "Jamaica"
MPEG Stream: RONNIE DAVIS "I'm Just A Man"

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GALLHAMMER Ruin Of A Church (Peaceville) dvd 17.98
Every metalhead we know has been freaking out over Hellhammer worshipping all girl crusty black metal outfit Gallhammer. And for good reason, the dew spit up a filthy sludgey blackened pound, that pays proper homage to the 'Hammer that came before. But truth be told, there is a bit of novelty to their appeal, hard to argue with three young cute Japanese girls in bullet belts and Amebix shirts, adorned in spikes and smeared black raccoon eye makeup, making this gloriously unholy racket. And we'd be lying if we didn't admit to at least a few aQ staffers having a bit of a metal girl crush on Ms. Vivian Slaughter.
Thus, those not afforded the luxury of actually seeing Gallhammer play live, have been clamoring for a live video. The music is awesome, but somehow more awesome when that harsh hellish howl is coming out of such a diminutive frontwoman, and this din is being produced by this all female trio. So here you have it, Gallhammer, performing live, like the title says in "the ruin of a church", the band set up upon the altar, in front of glowing stained glass windows, pretty striking visually for sure, and the sound is fantastic, thick and chuggy, pounding and blackened, the vocals a blasphemous presence in this house of God. BUT, the band aren't all that exciting to watch play. They don't headbang, they don't jump around or thrash wildly, and to be fair, maybe this music doesn't lend itself to that sort of action. Instead the band sort of sway back and forth, entranced, occasionally stepping to the mic to bellow hellishly (and it's revealed that both axeslingers have wails that could peel paint!). So minus any sort of extreme action, it is mesmerizing, helped along by the massive riffs and pounding rhythms, the whole band conjuring up some early eighties demons and channeling them into filthy crusty buzz.
There are plenty of extras, two other live shows, a bunch of videos (that are mostly the band rocking out live, but they rock out WAY harder for the camera), a photo gallery (!), and a band interview, but again, it's slow going as it's subtitled, and being translated, so there's plenty of waiting for questions, answers, and nothing wild or shocking, just a mellow conversation, interesting for sure, but not mind blowing.
But so what. It's GALLHAMMER!!! And for all our minor kvetching, this disc is pretty cool, and for now, as close as we're gonna get to sweating and swaying wildly in the pit at a Gallhammer show, and certainly as close as we'll ever get to actually talking to Vivian. Swooooon. So yeah, recommended.

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ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT "Absolute Magnitude" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98
AETHENOR "Betimes Black" (VHF) cd/lp 13.98/14.98
AIR "Moon Safari" (EMI) cd + dvd + book 26.00
ALLIEN, ELLEN "Sool" (BPitch Control) cd/lp 15.98/19.98
AMEBIX "No Sanctuary" (Alternative Tentacles) cd/lp+7" 14.98/13.98
AMON DUUL II "Hijack" (Revisited Records) cd 17.98
ANAKRID "Banishment Rituals of The Disenlightened" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 16.98
ANAKRID "s/t" (Fever Dream Fever) lp 13.98
ANAL MAGIC & REV. DWIGHT FRIZZELL "Beyond The Black Crack" (Paridigm) cd 16.98
ANIMUS "Hallucinations: Ideals Surrounding Water, Sand, And Clouds Of Dust" (Ars Manga) cd 14.98
ANNIVERSARY, THE "Devil on Our Side: B-Sides & Rarities" (Vagrant) cd 14.98
ATAVIST "Alchemic Resurrection" (Rise Above) 10" 17.98
AVSKY "Malignant" (Moribund) cd 14.98
BEHEXEN "My Soul For His Glory" (Moribund) cd 14.98
BUN B "II Trill-(Chopped up not Blopped up version)" (Rap-A-Lot) cd 14.98
BUN B "II Trill" (Rap-a-lot) cd 14.98
BURNING BRIDES "Anhedonia" (Cobraside) cd 14.98
CELESTIAL BLOODSHED "Cursed, Scarred and Forever Possessed" (Moribund) cd 14.98
CLOUDLAND CANYON / MYTHICAL BEAST "split" (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98
CLOUDS "We Are Above You" (Hydra Head) cd 14.98
COFFINS "Buried Death" (20 Buck Spin) cd 14.98
COFFINS "Mortuary Of Darkness" (Kreation Records) 2lp 22.00
COUGH "Sigillum Luciferi" (Forcefield Records) cd 10.98
COURTIS, ANLA / SEIICHI YAMAMOTO / YOSHIMI "Live At Kanadian" (Public Eyesore) cd 10.98
DEADBIRD "Twilight Ritual" (At A Loss) cd 13.98
DISKJOKKE "Staying In" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98
DRUMM, KEVIN "Imperial Distortion" (Hospital) 2cd 19.98
DRUNK INJUNS "From Where The Sun Now Stands I Will Fight No More, Forever" (Alternative Tentacles) cd 10.98
EATER "The Album + Singles Plus" (Anagram) 2cd 17.98
EMPIRE AURIGA "Auriga Dying" (Moribund) cd 14.98
FERN KNIGHT "s/t" (VHF) cd 13.98
FLAMES OF HELL "Fire and Steel" (Draconian Records) cd 18.98
FLEET FOXES "s/t" (Sub Pop) cd/lp 13.98/15.98
GOTO80 "Made On Internet" (Pinipung) cd 17.98
HOLLENTHON "Opus Magnum" (Napalm Records) cd 15.98
I SHALT BECOME "Requiem" (Moribund Records) cd 15.98
IHSAN "Angl" (Candlelight USA) cd 12.98
INDIAN JEWELRY "Fake and Cheap" (dLTD) lp 17.98
INDRICOTHERE "s/t" (Gilead Media) lp+cd 14.98
ITAL TEK "Cyclical" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98
JEPSON, WARNER "Totentanz and Other Electronic Works, 1958 - 1973" (Melon Expander) cd 19.98
JEX THOTH / PAGAN ALTAR "split" (I Hate Records) 7" 12.98
JIMMY CAKE, THE "Spectre & Crown" (Pilatus) cd 17.98
JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN "To Survival" (Chrysalis) cd 13.98
KULTIVATOR "Barndomens Stigar" (Mellotronen) 2cd 28.00
KWELI, TALIB "Eardrum" (Blacksmith) cd 13.98
LES TROUBADOURS DU ROI BAUDOIN "Missa Luba" (El / Cherry Red) cd 17.98
LIL MAMA "VYP Voice Of the Young People" (Zomba) cd 17.98
MACHINEFABRIEK "Bijeen" (Kning Disk) cd 14.98
MACHINEFABRIEK & STEPHEN VITIELLO "Box Music" (12K) cd 14.98
MANIACS DREAM "Turku Hold 'Em" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98
MASTERS, MARC "No Wave" (Black Dog Publishing) book 29.95
MGR "Wavering On The Cresting Heft" (Conspiracy) cd 14.98
MONOLAKE "Hongkong (Remastered)" (Monolake) cd 17.98
MONOTONIX "Body Language" (Drag City) cd/lp 12.98/12.98
MORGEN "s/t" (Phoenix) cd 17.98
MY MORNING JACKET "Evil Urges" (ATO Records) cd 13.98
N.E.R.D. "Seeing Sounds" (Star Trak) cd 14.98
NACHTMYSTIUM "Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1" (Century Media) cd 13.98
NATURAL FOOD "s/t" (Porter Records) cd 16.98
NEED MORE SOURCES "Shed" (Moteer) cd 15.98
NEGATIVLAND "A Big 10-8 Place" (Seeland) 2cd 15.98
NEGATIVLAND "Presents Thigmotactic" (Seeland) cd 13.98
NEMESIS "The Day Of Retribution" (GMR Music) cd 23.00
O LEVEL (TEENAGE FILMSTARS) "A Day In The Life of Gilbert and George: 1977-1980" (Artpop!) cd 17.98
OMEGA "10000 Lepes" (Hungatron) cd 17.98
OPETH "Watershed (Collector's Edition)" (Roadrunner) 2cd 23.00
PATE, JOHNNY "Outrageous" (Dusty Groove) cd
PEACE, THE "Black Power" (Groo) lp 30.00
PENTEMPLE "s/t" (Southern Lord) cd 15.98
PINK FAIRIES "Finland Freakout 1971" (MLP (Major League Productions)) cd 27.00
PLUXUS "Solid State" (Kompakt) cd 16.98
PRISONERS, THE "Rare And Unissued" (Big Beat) cd 17.98
PUMICE "Quo" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
QUANTEC "Unusual Signals" (Echochord) cd 16.98
REATARD, JAY "Singles 06-07" (In The Red) 2cd 17.98
RILEY, TERRY "The Last Camel In Paris" (Elision Fields) cd 14.98
RUSSIAN CIRCLES "Station" (Suicide Squeeze) cd 14.98
SARMANTO, HEIKKI "Moonflower" (Porter Records) cd 16.98
SEMIMUUMIO "Vamos" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98
SEVEN THAT SPELLS "Black OM Rising" (Beta-Lactam) cd 26.00
SHY CHILD "Noise Won't Stop" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98
SIC ALPS "U.S. EZ" (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98
STAR STANGLED BANGER "s/t" (Aztec) cd 24.00
STOOGES, THE "Gimme Some Skin" (Get Back) cd/lp 17.98/16.98
STUDIO "Yearbook 2" (Information) cd 17.98
TAPE "Luminarium" (Hapna) cd 16.98
TILLY AND THE WALL "s/t" (Team Love) cd 15.98
U.S. CHRISTMAS "Eat The Low Dogs" (Neurot Recordings) cd 14.98
UNEARTHLY TRANCE "Electrocution" (Relapse) cd 15.98
V/A "Des Jeunes Gens Modernes" (Naive) 2cd 27.00
V/A "Disco Italia" (Strut) cd 14.98
V/A "Do The Pop! Redux Part One" (Savage Beat) 2cd 24.00
V/A "Ed Rec Vol III" (Ed Banger) 2lp 29.00
V/A "Ethiopiques 23 : Orchestra Ethiopia" (Buda Musique) cd 15.98
V/A "Japanese New Music Festival 2008" (Magaibutsu) cd 13.98
V/A "Well Hung: 20 Funk-Rock Eruptions From Beneath Communist Hungary - Vol.1" (Finders Keepers) cd 23.00
VILLALOBOS, RICARDO "Enfants (MAGMA REMIXES)" (SED) 12" 17.98
WHITE STRIPES, THE "De Stijl" (Third Man / Warner) cd 12.98
WHITE STRIPES, THE "Elephant" (Third Man / Warner) cd 13.98
WHITE STRIPES, THE "Get Behind Me Satan" (Third Man / Warner) cd 14.98
WHITE STRIPES, THE "Icky Thump" (Warner Bros.) cd 16.98
WHITE STRIPES, THE "s/t" (Third Man / Warner) cd 13.98
WHITE STRIPES, THE "White Blood Cells" (Third Man / Warner) cd 14.98
WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE SON GOD "Out of Body Diva" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON "Love & Lamentation" (Pogus Productions) cd 14.98
WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON & RICHARD YOUNGS "Veil (For Greg)" (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98
WILSON, GARY "You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Story" (Plexifilm) dvd 26.00
WOLF PARADE "At Mount Zoomer" (Sub Pop) cd/lp 14.98/14.98
YA HO WHA 13 "Feather Of Wisdom" (Phoenix) lp 23.00
YELLOW SWANS "Deterioration" (Modern Radio Record Label) cd 11.98

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Please place your order via our website.

[1] We will contact you to verify your order and let you know when it will be shipped. Please note that occasionally it may take a day or two for us to reply. We are not a faceless bunch of computers replying to your order -- we are human beings!

[2] If we are out of some of your items and we think we will get them within the same week, we can wait to ship. Or... If it's going to be more than a few days to complete your order, we will ship what we have and then will contact you as the remainders arrive.

[ note ] Due to the everchanging nature of the independent record business, we are not responsible for listed price changes (due to supplier price changes) and often cannot update our site fast enough to reflect these changes, but we will always try to let you know of any differences.


DOMESTIC SHIPPING :
--------------------------------
1-2 items $4.50 USPS Priority Mail
3+ items $6.50 UPS Ground

Further Explanation (Please Read!):
Within the USA, an order of 3 or more items will be shipped via UPS ground for a flat fee of $6.50. These packages are automatically insured and trackable.

However, if your package contains just 1 or 2 items, we will ship your order via USPS Priority Mail, and charge you $4.50 for shipping. These packages are NOT insured or trackable, sorry. So if you desire those safeguards, please request UPS delivery at the $6.50 rate. You must mention this in the comments field of our online order form.

Also, please note that UPS will not ship to PO Boxes. If you only have a PO Box, we can ship packages of 3+ items via US Postal Service and charge you by weight according to their rates. Special shipping needs (e.g. UPS Next Day) are also do-able, just ask.

Another important note: box sets DON'T (usually) count as one item. Sorry. A box set will generally bump you up into the "three or more items" category. Y'know, they're big. Boxes.


INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING :
-------------------------------- For foreign customers we ship via US AIRMAIL ("Letterpost"). Your price is based on the actual cost of shipping plus $1. You can check the US Postal Service international rate calculator: http://ircalc.usps.gov/. (Use the "Package, No Correspondence" category and see the price for "Letterpost". 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound.)


We highly recommend insurance for your international package, but it is very expensive! You can check the US Postal Service international rate calculator: http://ircalc.usps.gov/. (Use the "Package, No Correspondence" category and see the price for "Parcel Post". 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound.)


INTERNATIONAL INSURANCE :
-------------------------------- You are hereby forewarned that Aquarius is not responsible if your international package gets lost in the mail. Insurance is your only recourse if your records never show up. Since the terrible events of 9/11, mail service has been slow and undependable... and while we haven't experienced any *confirmed* permanently lost mail, insurance might provide some additional piece of mind in this time of upheaval. We strongly recommend it. But yes, it is very expensive. It's your choice. Again: Aquarius is not responsible for lost mail, so if you aren't willing to take a (slight but real) risk, please buy the insurance.

International insurance is very expensive! In fact often the insurance costs more than the value of your package, in which case it obviously does not make sense to insure it. You can check the US Postal Service international rate calculator: http://ircalc.usps.gov/. (Use the "Package, No Correspondence" category and see the price for "Parcel Post", which is the way insured packages are sent. 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound.)

For example: for a one-pound package worth $18 going to England, shipping without insurance is about $8. But with insurance, the shipping / insurance total is over $16!

It is your reponsibility to check the international rate calculator in order to determine whether or not you want international insurance. If you tell us you want international insurance, we will add it to your order no matter how much it costs!


PAYMENT :
-------------------------------- Payment is via credit card: Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex. Money orders are accepted only from customers within the USA. If you must pay by money order, you have to confirm the order with us through email or phone BEFORE you send any payment. We cannot take personal checks for mailorder, sorry!


QUESTION?
-------------------------------- Email the mailorder department: mailorder@aquariusrecords.org

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SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} July 15th
CSS "Donkey" cd
Earl Rodney "Friends & Countrymen" cd on EM Records (in the Steel Pan Series!)
Jay Reatard "Singles 06-07" lp version on In The Red
Daedelus "Love To Make Music" cd/lp on Ninja Tune
Damon & Naomi "More Sad Hits" cd/lp on 20/20/20
Jucifer "L'Autrichienne" 2lp version on Alternative Tentacles
Wire "Object 47" cd on Pinkflag
Nas "(title tba)" cd
Cobalt "Landfill Breastmilk Beast" cd on Profound Lore
Cloudland Canyon / Lichens "Exterminating Angel" lp version on Holy Mountain
A Storm Of Light "And We Wept The Black Ocean Within" 2lp on Neurot
Black Devil Disco Club "Eight Oh Eight" cd/lp on Lo
Ladytron "Velocifero" 2lp version on Cobraside

----} also real soon
Expo '70/Be Invisible Now! "split" cd-r on Kill Shaman/Boring Machines
Quest For Blood with Yukihiro Isso cd on Ektro
Motorspandex "Torment Star" 7" on Ektro
When "Are You Silent" cd on Jester
Padded Cell "Night Must Fall" cd/lp on DC Recordings
Kelpe "Ex-Aquarium" cd/2lp on DC Recordings
v/a "Death Before Distemper 2" cd/lp on DC Recordings

----} July 22nd
Prurient "Arrowhead" cd on Editions Mego
Josephine Foster "The Coming Gladness" cd on Bo Weavil
Boris "Smile" domestic 2lp version on Southern Lord
Julie Doiron "Loneliest In The Morning" cd on Jagjaguwar
De La Soul "De La Soul Is Dead" lp on 4 Men With Beards
Merzbow "Eucalypse" cd on Soleilmoon
Mr. Bungle "Disco Volante" lp reissue on Plain
v/a (Dr. Boogie) "Shim Sham Shimmy" cd on Sub Rosa
Fucked Up "Year Of The Pig" 7"/12"/cdep on Matador

----} July 29th
The Bug "London Zoo" cd/3lp on Ninja Tune
Coolio "Steal Hear" cd
Free Blood "Royal Family" 12" on DFA
Sonic Youth With Mats Gustafsson "Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth" cd on SYR

----} August 5th
The Faint "Fasciinatiion" cd
Conor Oberst "s/t" cd
Atavist/Nadja "II: Points At Infinity" cd on Profound Lore
Zach Hill "Astrological Straits" 2lp on Anticon
Jesu / Battle Of Mice split cd/lp on Robotic Empire
LCD Soundsystem "Big Ideas" 12" on DFA
Sic Alps "U.S. Ez" lp version on Siltbreeze
Aidan Baker "Green & Gold" cd version on Beta-Lactam Ring

----} August 19th
Stereolab "Chemical Chords" cd/2lp on 4AD

----} August 21st
Suarsama "Jajar Di Atas Awan" cd on Drag City

----} August 26th
Missy Elliott "Block Party" cd
KK Null "Oxygen Flash" cd on Neurot
Alias "Resurgam" cd/lp on Anticon
v/a "Notwave" cd on DFA
Trees "Light's Bane" lp version on 20 Buck Spin

----} September 9th
Mogwai "Batcat" 12" on Matador

----} September 23rd
Mogwai "The Hawk Is Howling" cd/lp on Matador
Brightblack "Motion To Rejoin" cd/lp on Matador
Girl Talk - Feed the Animals CD (Illegal Art: ill117) LIMITED TO 5000 copies!

----} also upcoming sooner or later
Coh "Strings" 2cd on Raster
Ratto Ja Lehtisalo / Reverend Bizarre "split" 12" on Ektro
Ray & Pete "The Complete Recordings" 7cd-r
Asva "What You Don't Know Is Frontier" cd on Southern
Darsombra "Eternal Jewel" cd on Public Guilt
Necrofrost "Blackeon Lightharvest" cd
Machinefabriek "Mort Aux Vaches" cd on Staalplaat
Mariana Topley-Bird w/ Dangermouse
Paavoharju "Laulu Laakson Kukista" cd/lp on Fonal
Loren Chasse & Michael Mnortham "Otolth"
Jandek "Manhattan Tuesday" dvd on Corwood
The Wrens new album
Andrew W.K. new album
Wolfmother new album
White Heaven "Levitation" cd edition on Farside
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
The Heads tba 2cd 'best of' on Leafhound
Like A Kind Of Matador "Halfway To Dangerous" cd on tUMULt
Gore reissues on Southern Lord
Black Boned Angel / Nadja collaboration cd/lp on 20 Buck Spin
Black Boned Angel "The Endless Coming Into Life" cd on 20 Buck Spin
Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Serge Gainsbourg "Histoire de Melody Nelson" cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Serge Gainsbourg "L'homme à tête de chou" cd reissue on Light In The Attic
Masayoshi Urabe "Flag Of Midsummer" cd on PSF
Tamio Shirashi & Mico Tamio "Live Duo" cd on PSF
Shizuka "Live/Traditional Aesthetics" cd on PSF
Kazuki Tomokawa "Blue Water, Red Water" cd on PSF
Scott Walker "'Til The Band Comes In" cd reissue on Water
Omit "Interceptor"
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
Walker Brothers "Take It Easy With The Walker Brothers" cd reissue on Water
Feelies "Crazy Rhythms" cd reissue on Water
Kath Bloom "Terror" cd on Chapter
Iro "Tamafuri" cd on PSF
Love "Out Here" cd reissue on Collector's Choice
Love "False Start" cd reissue on Collector's Choice
John Cale & Terry Riley "Church Of Anthrax" cd reissue on Wounded Bird
US Christmas "Eat The Low Dogs" cd/lp on Neurot
Ice Cube "Raw Footage" cd
Superchunk "Rock Is What You Got" cd
v/a "African Scream Contest" cd domestic release
Teenage Filmstars "Star" cd reissue on Artpop!
The Peace "Black Power" cd reissue on Groovie
Q65 "Nothing But Trouble: The Best Of" cd on Rev-Ola
Fiery Furnaces "Remember" 2cd/3lp on Thrill Jockey
Pocahaunted "Mirror Mics" lp on Weird Forest
and a bunch of new Raster-Noton titles including Ryoji Ikeda "Test Pattern"

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Tues. Sept. 30 at GAMH
Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator
$25
Doors 7, Show 8 - SEATED SHOW!

Peter Hammill was born in London in 1948. His career began as the singer and
songwriter for Van der Graaf Generator, the chaotic, scary and highly
influential underground group of the Seventies. The adventurous attitude
which they brought to their music remains a feature of Peter's work to this
day.

By the time the group folded in 1978 Peter had already recorded seven solo
albums, covering numerous lyrical and musical bases in the process. If one
did not know otherwise the proto-punk of "Nadir's Big Chance", the
full-blown emotion of "Over" and the scatter-gun arrangements of "The Silent
Corner" could well have been the work of three entirely different artists.

Peter's work has always been independent and uncompromising and it is
perhaps because of this that he has been cited as a major influence by so
many other artists. In their respective contexts he is as happy working with
pure sonics as he is with fully orchestral songs, with three-chord electric


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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanLaurenIrwinScottSallyAntaeusCameronMichaelFrankandJon