TONY TEARS Voci Dal Passato (Manium Evocandorum Doctrina) cd 22.00
We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it.
We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned...
Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears...
Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around.
So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today.
Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe.
Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily!
Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be.
The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort.
Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty.
Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Even moreso maybe than The Puritan album we ROTW'd last time, being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help.
If we can persuade a ton of folks to buy this, hopefully that won't make Tony Tears any -less- unhappy, because we're looking forward to more from this miserable, mesmerizing, and altogether unique act... stay doomed Mr. Tears!
MPEG Stream: "Le Ossa E Il Fuoco"
MPEG Stream: "Voci Dal Profondo"
MPEG Stream: "Antichi Messagi"
MPEG Stream: "Mondo Parallelo"

MILLER, LLOYD A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz (Jazzman) cd 17.98
We first heard Lloyd Miller on that amazing Spiritual Jazz compilation we reviewed recently, and while pretty much every track was a killer, Miller's "Gol-E Gandom" definitely stood out, beginning with a santur solo, that sounded like a sea of buzzing sitars, until the jazz kicked in, bopping bass, fluid piano, shuffling rhythms, somehow following the melody laid out by the opening santur solo. So magical. We were smitten and were dying to hear more. Luckily, Jazzman endeavored to put together this amazing collection of Miller's various recordings, which was no small feat, considering that even after a lifetime playing jazz, most of these songs were only available on super limited self released records, which made it into fewer hands, and ears, that would seem right considering the power and originality of Miller's music.
He grew up in America, but his father was transferred to Iran, so his family moved there when Miller was 19, and they lived there for 5 years. Then Miller finally moved to Europe, to pursue jazz, after all, Europe was where it was happening, he landed in Germany, later heading to Switzerland, all the while creating these amazing, and mostly unheard pieces, incorporating an incredible array of ethnic instruments with some seriously intense and inspired jazz.
While some of the tracks here sound like straight up jazz, flecked with bits of ethnic instrumentation, others are totally far out. "Le Grand Bidou" finds his group riffing on a single chord, while Miller inserts an Indian style tonic drone played on the micro organ, and the result is bizarre, the whole track twists and squirms and heaves, it's an odd fit, but fit it does, we can only imagine how freaked out purists must have been. and frustrated, considering the caliber of playing, but it's these twisted takes on standard jazz that makes this stuff so magical, and the fact that this was the late fifties / early sixties, it's a wonder Miller didn't become a sensation. This stuff is radical, revolutionary, considering how important the incorporation of African music and instruments into jazz became (Don Cherry, Art Ensemble), how is it that this wasn't equally if not more radical? A white kid from Utah, with impeccable jazz chops, playing all sorts of Turkish and Persian instruments, wrapping standard jazz tropes around Indian arrangements, kind of mindblowing even now.
The liner notes are super detailed, and Miller's life is fascinating, but it's really about the music, and as much as we dig jazz, and fancy ourselves, if not experts, at least super fans, we had NEVER heard Miller before that comp, and this stuff is so cool, and so unlike ANYTHING we've ever heard, from the instrumentation, to the arrangements, to modal systems, some of the tracks are Indian ragas transformed, others seem to eschew the jazz completely and sound like some mysterious magical world music, but it's where the two elements mesh where things get truly magical, tablas underpinning pianos, strange horns droning over upright bass and shuffling percussion, all woven deftly into a strain of jazz that is wholly unique and original. So fantastic, and so utterly and wholeheartedly recommended. Easily THE jazz reissue of the year, if not the decade!
MPEG Stream: "Gol-E Gandom"
MPEG Stream: "Gozel Guzler"
MPEG Stream: "Hue Wail"

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER Rifts (No Fun Productions) 2cd 16.98
What a difference a year can make. Earlier this year, when No Fun Productions issued the first LP by Daniel Lopatin's Oneotrix Point Never, nobody knew who or what OPN was. We were more intrigued about that record, because Daniel was half of the impressive, cosmic drone duo Infinity Window. But since that release, OPN has emerged as a full-fledged icon of the retro-garde electronic scene, with a slew of albums that went out of print almost as soon as they were released. Rifts is an anthology of his three vinyl releases from 2009 (Betrayed In The Octagon, Zones Without People, and Russian Mind, reviewed elsewhere on this list), and it also sports a half dozen or so tracks from OPN's constant stream of cassette and cd-r releases, many of which never made there way to aQuarius.
Here's a bit of a rehash of what we've said about those earlier records: Oneohtrix Point Never is a curious resuscitation of progressive electronics which so far has not strayed into the dodgy waters of vapid ambient-lite found in so so many New Age records from the late '70s and '80s. His vision is a conscious nostalgic trip into the cosmic drones of Klaus Schulze and the lazer-ping melodies of John Carpenter. The seven tracks from Betrayed In The Octagon ripple with densely layered electronic swoosh and sweep, with more of a sci-fi sound design feel than anything else. It's not entirely ominous in these emanations of analog synths, but a gloominess persists just beneath these tumbling oscillations of electric drone. A few tracks bubble and percolate with clunky, geometric arppegiations and major chord melodies which have all of the charm of an '80s John Carpenter filmscore, or for that matter a Zombi album of today (although admittedly not as well produced).
Above a solar-powered electric hum, the tracks from Zones Without People interweave poly-synth pulses which insistently push up against each other, collapsing into the electronic sunrise which is the next track of slowly building arppegiations and sequences situated on top of cybernetically pastoral ambience. When Lapotin gets to the title track of Zones Without People, his laser beam pings have calmed into a sublimely sad offering, easily the best thing that he's produced to date. This isn't to say that the rest of these tracks are duds. Far from it, as a wigged-out squiggling collage splatters into cosmic arpeggiations and stargazing drones to amazing effect.
A set of gaseous ambient chords opens the second disc (sporting all of Russian Mind and the tape / cd-r rare tracks), and could have been lifted from an early Boards Of Canada release, although the lack of IDM-rhythms to the Oneohtrix Point Never's electronics steer this work in an entirely different direction. His bright chimes of arpeggio poly-synth tones build asymmetrical waves that are as compelling as they are cheesy. But that's always been the point, to terminally obliterate the lines between a high-brow piece of Terry Riley minimalism and a lowest common denominator of sub-Eno ambient drivel. Here, Lopatin tends to be a bit more stratospheric in nature, with these sublime arcs of vapor trails passing through moonlit nightscapes, all redrawn in neon hyperdelic colors.
A must have compilation!
MPEG Stream: "Betrayed In The Octagon"
MPEG Stream: "Woe Is The Transgression"
MPEG Stream: "Zones Without People"
MPEG Stream: "Russian Mind"

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13TH CHIME Complete Discography (Sacred Bones) cd 16.98
We reviewed the vinyl version of this a few lists back, now the cd version is available, and as the title indicates, the cd gathers up all the songs from the lp, and then some, their entire recorded discography! Very cool.
13th Chime were an obscure band for sure, having issued only 3 singles in the early '80s before calling it quits. Their history was not a charmed one for sure, as the band known as 13th Chime came out of another punk band known as The Anticx, whose bass player died during a Dead Kennedy's gig in 1980. The remaining members of The Anticx kept playing as 13th Chime, having found another bassist who helped push the band in a new direction. Perhaps because of the death of their friend, 13th Chime found themselves darkening their sound and embracing the Goth redux of punk at the time. The Damned's Black Album, the first Bauhaus record, Crispy Ambulance, the first Christian Death record, and X-Mal Deutschland would have been the contemporaries of 13th Chime's singles, with their gloomy take on punk whilst all the while maintaining driving, propulsive rhythms throughout. The guitars offered detuned buzzsaw attacks with little in the way of melody, as that was pretty much the role of the bassist (Terry Taylor) whose high-neck basslines lead almost all of the songs (a la Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order). Mick Hand's vocals are somewhat nasal in delivery, but certainly not without their Howard Devoto charm. There's plenty of Bat Cave theatrics (including some guitar cabinets made out of coffins), clearly dating this material to the early '80s; but even so, 13th Chime were better than most of the bands that seemed to emerge from that scene without these amazing songs to show for it. And all of the tracks these guys ever recorded are featured here on this fine collection from Sacred Bones.
MPEG Stream: "Cuts Of Love"
MPEG Stream: "Coffin Maker"
MPEG Stream: "Cursed"
MPEG Stream: "Dug Up"

AMBARCHI, OREN Intermission 2000-2008 (Touch) cd 15.98
Killer collection of unreleased, super limited, out of print tracks from the last 8 years, from guitarist and soundscaper Oren Ambarchi, who besides making incredible records on his own, has been spending lots of time contributing to SUNNO))) and various SUNNO)) related offshoots. But these 5 tracks, all of them looooong, find Ambarchi doing what he does best, transforming his guitar into utterly new shapes and sounds.
"Intimidator" is the bonus track from the lp version of his In The Pendulum's Embrace album, and is a super minimal arrangement of tones and overtones, a gorgeous ethereal super abstract drone, subtly pulsing and throbbing, occasionally interrupted by an errant strum or bit of glitch, but for the most part, some serious Ikeda style clinical drone minimalism. "Iron Waves" is a remix of a Paul Duncan track, and finds Ambarchi adding guitar, bells and cymbals to the original, the result is a dark and meditative drift, that grows more and more lush, perfectly complimenting the soulful croon of the original, a dark, layered sound art ballad. "Moving Violation" is from a Touch Records comp, and is another gorgeous expanse of dark meditative guitar drift, laced with crackle and glitch, a strange textural patina over an otherwise serene and smooth expanse of muted tones. "The Strouhal Number" is from a live cd released in Australia, and is warm and washed out and beautiful, minus the crackle and distorted grit, this would almost be some super serene meditation music, chiming tones, lilting melodies, dreamlike and so so pretty.
And finally, the 20 minute "A Final Kiss On Poisoned Cheeks" originally released on a clear silkscreened one sided 12" as part of Table Of The Elements Guitar series, still essentially a dronescape, A Final Kiss is rife with sonic activity, so much so that in lesser hands it would be more of a mess, a sort of pretty-ish noise record, but Ambarchi, takes all manner of buzz and glitch, of scrape and hum, and weaves it into a strangely lyrical arrangement. The core of the piece is a thick, undulating low end drone, a muted Niblockian shimmer, that seems not to change so much as shift, reflecting different colors and sounds depending on the angle. Over this nearly constant thrum, exist a veritable universe of strange sounds, streaks of feedback, cricket like electronic chitter, moaning throbbing swells of guitar rumble, brief blurs of warm soft focus fuzz, layers of crumbling distortion, all of the various elements constantly shifting and blossoming, collapsing and then blooming again, creating a super organic flow, another instance of leaving the instruments on the stage, guitars against amps, amps cranked, although here it seems the instruments have come to life, and we are glimpsing their secret lives, as the communicate musically, telling some sort of story, exchanging mysterious messages, which while indecipherable to human ears, still manage to sound magical.
Guitardrone freaks will, well, freak! Subtly heavy, darkly drone-y, slightly noisy, rich and dense and textural. Really gorgeous. And totally recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Intimidator"
MPEG Stream: "A Final Kiss On Poisoned Cheeks"

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Fall Be Kind (Domino) cd ep 10.98
While we may not drool uncontrollably over Animal Collective like so many do, there's really no denying what a force and influence they have become. If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery the boys in AC couldn't be more flattered, we've lost count of the bands who have sprung up trying to jump on AC's the multilayered infectious and ambitious psychedelic pop bandwagon, but few come close to that magic sound that these guys really have perfected over the years.
Fall Be Kind is a perfect year end ep follow up to their full length Merriweather Post Pavilion. Almost thirty minutes of high in the sky romantic and epic soaring pop that infuses indie rock with electronics, loops, repetition and vocal harmony to create the sounds and songs that seem to seep into your subconscious. Pretty rad that they are the first band ever to get official clearance to sample the Grateful Dead as they do on the ep's catchiest track "What Would I Want? Sky". But it's the track that follows, "Bleed", that we keep playing on repeat as it's one of the most simple and haunting AC tracks we've heard in ages. And the record closes with "I Think I Can" which would have sounded right at home on Panda Bear's excellent solo album Person Pitch, with its enthralling Terry Riley meets Brian Wilson in a rainbow prism sound. Fans of the band are sure to love what they hear on Fall Be Kind. So while we may not worship, we definitely dig, and there is no denying how great these guys are!
MPEG Stream: "Graze"
MPEG Stream: "What Would I Want? Sky"
MPEG Stream: "I Think I Can"

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Fall Be Kind (Domino) 12" 14.98
While we may not drool uncontrollably over Animal Collective like so many do, there's really no denying what a force and influence they have become. If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery the boys in AC couldn't be more flattered, we've lost count of the bands who have sprung up trying to jump on AC's the multilayered infectious and ambitious psychedelic pop bandwagon, but few come close to that magic sound that these guys really have perfected over the years.
Fall Be Kind is a perfect year end ep follow up to their full length Merriweather Post Pavilion. Almost thirty minutes of high in the sky romantic and epic soaring pop that infuses indie rock with electronics, loops, repetition and vocal harmony to create the sounds and songs that seem to seep into your subconscious. Pretty rad that they are the first band ever to get official clearance to sample the Grateful Dead as they do on the ep's catchiest track "What Would I Want? Sky". But it's the track that follows, "Bleed", that we keep playing on repeat as it's one of the most simple and haunting AC tracks we've heard in ages. And the record closes with "I Think I Can" which would have sounded right at home on Panda Bear's excellent solo album Person Pitch, with its enthralling Terry Riley meets Brian Wilson in a rainbow prism sound. Fans of the band are sure to love what they hear on Fall Be Kind. So while we may not worship, we definitely dig, and there is no denying how great these guys are!
MPEG Stream: "Graze"
MPEG Stream: "What Would I Want? Sky"
MPEG Stream: "I Think I Can"

ARARAT Musica De La Resistencia (MeteorCity) cd 11.98
Weird and wonderful one here, folks. And it's for folky folks, though it's got a HEAVY pedigree. A lot of you are fans, like us, of South American stoner rock cosmonauts Los Natas, so you'll sort of (but not really) know what to expect here, Ararat being Los Natas guitarist Sergio Chotsourian's solo side project, and it is psychedelic like the most darkly psychedelic of Los Natas' output, coming closest perhaps to the proggy spaciness of Los Natas' two Toba-Trance discs for Circle's Ektro label, but is even more abstract and stripped down, not actually rock at all, often all-acoustic, "New Weird Argentina" maybe we'd call it! Ararat could be some kind of haunted, campfire krautrock, more like a field recording than the finished product of a studio session (even if the studio is called Death, which is where this was in fact recorded).
It starts off with "Gitanoss", an quietly epic almost 14 minutes of moody late-night strum, ambient hum, echoes, drifting melody, hazy organ drone, ritual percussion, backwards effects... quite a trip, as is this whole disc, Chotsourian climbing his personal Holy Mountain here (Mount Ararat!), it seems, this album a musical sketchbook of his ascent, of sorts.
Track two turns out to be a reprise of "Dos Horses", the album-ender of most recent Los Natas disc, Nuevo Orden De La Libertad, this alternate version not that far removed from the acoustic guitar/piano interplay of the original (Chotsourian just must be very proud of this particular composition, and it is quite nice). Next, there's the spooky "El Carrusel", all billowing fuzz and tinkling bell, like Stephen Wray Lobdell's Davis Redford Triad doing the soundtrack for a John Carpenter film!
While that one got heavy, the next is not, the pretty "Little Grissy" being under a minute of guitar and guitar only, Chotsourian giving a delicate demonstration of his chops for the Takoma crowd, leading into the hushed and melodic "Ganar-Perder", which to us sounds like Ghost's Masaki Batoh reinterpreting "Planet Caravan" or something (it too is a version of a song from Nuevo Orden De La Libertad, but in this case much altered, extended and acoustic). That's followed by the delicate Spanish guitar and atmospheric creaky crackle of the nearly 12 minute long "Magia Negra", one that Sir Richard Bishop fans should enjoy.
Only finale "Castro" is a "real" rock song, sounding like a band (Los Natas, or even Circle), with proper drums, and amps fully cranked, with vocals that Circle's Mika Ratto might think were his own, and even this one stays freaky and uncommitted, 'til it ends with the clatter of abandoned drumsticks, electricity flickering, Chotsourian and his mysterious band wandering away into the desert night.
We always say Boris fans should check out Los Natas. And Boris fans should check this out too, but we think Ararat is also for folks into Six Organs Of Admittance, James Blackshaw, Jozef Van Wissem, Feathers, Steven R. Smith and other Jewelled Antler stuff, all that whole post-Fahey psychfolk scene, with the astral Argentinean/Amerindian/Armenian/Appalachian vibes here flowing as ominous, minimalist mesmer, intimate and entrancing...
MPEG Stream: "Gitanoss"
MPEG Stream: "El Carrusel"
MPEG Stream: "Ganar-Perder"

BONG Gilgamesh Lives (Blackest Rainbow) cd 16.98
The last missive from these drugged out UK doomlords, the criminally way-too-limited double cd-r Bethmoora, disappeared before most folks could grab one. Rumors of a repress have been going around, and we'll of course grab as many as we can get when and if that happens, but for now, this new chunk of slow and low space doooooom (on an actual cd) should tide you over if you missed Bethmoora.
Two tracks, recorded live (although you might not know it), one 32 minutes, one 18 minutes, both massive sprawling slow motion doomscapes, minimal spidery guitars, and sitar strum, all laid over a thick miasma of rumbling buzz, a thick low end raga, a black sonic fog threatening to envelop the delicate melodies above. The drums come in slowly, when they do, they're spare and sparse, spread way way out, letting the music continue to drift, it's not until nearly 20 minutes into the first track that things begin to ramp up, still slow, and minimal, but the drums are harder, the guitars more distorted, the melodies congealing into woozy riffage, synths beginning to swirl, adding another layer of buzz and rumble, some space-y swoosh, the guitars get all wah wah'd, the band build and build and build, to the edge of a full on psychedelic space rock blowout, but before anything can happen, they reign it back in, and get all meditative once again before fading out. The second track fades right back up, as if it was the same song, the way they used to split long songs on an lp, part one, flip it over and voila, part two, but THIS part two starts off already revved up, the drums pounding the guitars growling and buzzy, backing up a mournful chiming minor key melody, this part too builds and builds, but the band aren't about loud / soft, aren't about the payoff, or the destination, it's all about the journey, and for 51 minutes, Bong do just that, once again taking us on a blissed out drug fueled space psych kraut doom journey to end all journeys!
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

BONNIE BILLY & THE PICKET LINE Funtown Comedown (Sea Note) lp 17.98
A few years ago Will Oldham played the always awesome Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival that takes place in Golden Gate Park every autumn. While the festival has indeed been best known for featuring amazing performances by bluegrass and country icons like Doc Watson, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch, etc. It was such a perfect setting for the twangier side of Oldham's (Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's) sound. This new live vinyl only release billed as Bonnie Billy & The Picket Line (the man loves his ever shifting monickers!) finds Oldham and his band totally tapping into a distinctly more bluegrass sound, turning many of their great songs from the past into something completely different and way more country, much of it significantly more upbeat and uplifting than many of the studio recordings. Yet still, it's the slow and stunning rendition of "Lay And Love" that has been giving us chills. It's also fitting Oldham used this opportunity cover a Merle Haggard song, "Ramblin Fever", as well as a Ralph Stanley song, "Hemlocks And Primroses".
It's a true testament to a great songwriter when they are able to rearrange and reimagine their songs in a multitude of ways and Oldham has proven time and time again he's definitely one of the special ones.

BROWN JENKINS Death Obsession (Moribund) cd 14.98
Full length number three from this mysterious Texan one man band, whose blend of Burzumic black metal and blown out distortion drenched shoegaze has made this a longtime favorite around here. And even though the record opens with the most overtly metal track we've heard from this guy in ages, with its bellowed demonic vox and angular riffage, it still manages to be super warm and lush and in-the-red, with the guitars SO distorted they seem on the verge of crumbling.
And that feel and vibe becomes even more pronounced as the record proceeds, slow, pounding, woozy weeping expanses of mournful melody, washed out guitar fuzz, loping basslines, with some seriously gorgeous poppy moments, like the strange looping bridge on "Ashes In Her Mouth", with its spidery little repeating motif, or the almost Alcest / Amesoeurs sounding main riff of "Lifetaker", the whole record is weirdly pretty, and melancholy, it's the black metal equivalent of looking at the world on a rainy day through a window streaked with water, the rivulets, distorting everything, making shapes twist and blur, smearing forms into one another, adding a surreal quality to everything, gauzy, fuzzy, indistinct, the tone of the guitars, so dripping with distortion, evokes the same sort of soft focus feel, even though the notes and vocals and songs are still plenty black and quite METAL.
The mood is mournful, but not despondent, more like the sun struggling to shine trough pitch black clouds, the minor key melodies so intense and emotional, draped over simple driving rhythms, not blast beats here, and those guitars, to a certain degree, the defining sound of Brown Jenkins, even at its grimmest and meanest and most brutal, those guitars can't help but sound warm, washing over you, dragging you into whatever lurks below. So good. Definitely one of those rare BM records that manages to be simultaneously intense and heavy and seriously grim, but also dreamlike, mesmerizing and so so hypnotic. For the buzz obsessed, this makes some serious transcendent late night drifting off music...
MPEG Stream: "Breathless"
MPEG Stream: "Ashes In Her Mouth"
MPEG Stream: "Lifetaker"

CABLE The Failed Convict (The End) cd 13.98
Man, another favorite of ours that somehow slipped through the cracks. These guys have been rocking for close to 15 years now, they've put records out on Hydra Head, Translation Loss, This Dark Reign, now The End, eight full lengths, even a sort of greatest hits cd/dvd, and we're only now giving these guys some love. Well, apologies to the band, the labels, and to you, if you've somehow managed to miss out on these guys this whole time, you've go some serious catching up to do, cuz these guys RULE. Heavy and dirgey and noisy, definitely reminiscent of the classic AmRep sound, if you dig stuff like Today Is The Day, Botch, Neurosis, Killdozer, all that sort of low slung pigfuck heaviness, you'll probably dig these guys. They sort of get lumped in with the post hardcore / emo outfits, but they're sort of more filthy and fierce, the guitars super thick and angular, crunchy, the drums massive, and the vocals, a totally impossible throat shredding howl, that manages to still be melodic even though it sounds like the dude must be coughing up blood after every show. The arrangements are mathy and complex, lots of starts and stops, and yeah, hooks too, for being heavy and obtuse and fucked up, this stuff is pretty goddamn catchy too.
Been a while since we listened to these guys, but this record is kicking our ass, and reminding us how hard these guys rocked. We're definitely gonna revisit all those old records. That is if we can get ourselves to stop listening to this one, which at this point seems very very unlikely...
MPEG Stream: "Jim's Dream"
MPEG Stream: "Gun Metal Grey"
MPEG Stream: "Be The Wolf"

CAMINITI, EVAN Digging The Void (Students Of Decay) cd-r 10.98
We've been trying to get these in stock for a while now, solo record number two from Evan Caminiti, one half of psychedelic doom drone duo Barn Owl. The other Caminiti solo record, Psychic Mud Shrine, introduced us to a world not all that far removed from Barn Owl, or Elm, the solo project from Caminiti's partner in Barn Owl Jon Porras (who just so happens to work at aQ!), and Digging The Void does indeed delve even further into that same blissy druggy void.
Long, low, slow tones, throb, and pulse, layered tones emit subtle overtones, melodies are spidery and barely there, visible through the gauzy whir of the droning guitars, a series of spaced out otherworldly ragas, super minimal and intimate, but at the same time, sweeping and epic. Unlike Elm's, and to a lesser extent, Barn Owl's tendency to get HEAVY, and to dabble in some SUNNO)))-like density, Caminiti keeps it hushed and scaled back, these sonic rituals are not meant to conjure up the same sort of blackened mystery, instead they drift through soft clouds of hum and whir, fragments of Appalachian folk hover over deep rumbles, the sounds are ghostly, the arrangements spectral and ethereal, laced with twang, but just as likely to smooth all the notes and melodies into softened streaks of monochrome blur, and on at least one track, the drone is jettisoned, and an acoustic guitar unfurls long tendrils of steel string buzz and classic folky melody, a darkly mysterious coda, to an already haunting and murky songsuite. So gorgeous.
And of course, ULTRA LIMITED! These are probably the last copies we can get our hands on, you have been warned...
MPEG Stream: "Weaving The Great Smoke Loom"
MPEG Stream: "Glowing Corpse"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Naked Swim"

CANT / ARTHUR RUSSELL Ghosts / Come To Life (Terrible) 7" 8.98
The debut release on what looks to be a new awesome label called Terrible run by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear fame. This is the debut of Taylor's new solo project Cant and he pairs it up here with a previously unreleased Arthur Russell track!!! Makes so much sense as Taylor was one of the people responsible for putting together and producing last year's collection of songs displaying the more song based and folk/country side of Arthur Russell, Love Is Overtaking Me. And no doubt Russell's legacy has had a huge impact on the sound of Grizzly Bear over the years.
The Cant song is so good! Dare we say it, but it could definitely compete with all of the great songs on Grizzly Bear's super awesome Veckatimest, it doesn't stray too much from the Grizzly Bear sound but gets even more reverby and haunting and melodic.
The Arthur Russell track is quite sonically similar to the tracks on Love Is Overtaking Me, with its rustic twang, but it's infused with the more layered and textured aspects of Russell's sound which means shiver and chill inducing bliss. Needless to say this is a must have!

CODE Resplendent Grotesque (Tabu) cd 16.98
We'd been trying to get copies of this record for ages, but couldn't find it anywhere. We loved the first Code record so much, a record we described as sounding a bit like a black metal Interpol, and we had heard bits of the new one, and if anything the two disparate elements that made the first record so good, the strange croony gothic component, and the blasting classic Norwegian style black metal, were both somehow MORE and BETTER, if that was even possible. Well finally, we managed to get in touch with the band directly, and ordered a bunch from them, and it's just as good as we hoped or imagined.
Like the first record, the root sound is full bore, super tight and polished Norwegian black metal, a la Satyricon, incredible blackened riffs, insane super technical drumming, majestic melodies, dense convoluted arrangements, but here, those elements have a strangely industrial vibe, not to mention that weird coldwave goth pop influence that so infused their debut. The arrangements this time around are impossible, constantly shifting and twisting, dizzying song structures that manage to baffle and confuse, but remain fierce and furious and most importantly catchy. The band are not shy about their black metal, often lurching into furious bursts of black blasts, howling shrieking thrashing mayhem, but just as often, they shift gears, and the music stretches out and in come the clean vocals, very much like later Borknagar, and like we mentioned before, Interpol, although on Resplendent Grotesque if we needed to break it down comparison-wise, we might describe the sound as Satyricon meets Katatonia meets Deathspell Omega, the pop element is certainly undeniable, but even at its poppiest, the guitars are still grinding away underneath, or the band is lurching through mathy breakdowns or seasick rhythmic changeups, there's plenty of other weirdness too, spaced out collaged interludes, with processed vocals, and delayed acoustic guitars, super hooky Khold-like riffing, but it's the songwriting that really makes Resplendent Grotesque so transcendent, "The Rattle Of Black Teeth" almost sounds like black metal Morrissey, and "Jesus Fever" has a super impassioned wailing clean vocal finish, that is as dramatic and emotional as any of the blacker more metal moments, if not more so, and "A Sutra Of Wounds" starts out as pure pop, before the clean vocals are teamed up with harsh vokills, for a seriously demonic harmony, that extends throughout the whole track. The whole record is a constant battle between light and dark, pretty and ugly, harsh and melodic, and that battle is exactly what makes the sound so unique, so intense, so weird, but so utterly enthralling and fucking brilliant.
Definitely a weird record, and probably not for everybody, grim TROO metalheads might scoff, but we're all about pushing the boundaries of the genre, and moving beyond the typical tropes, hearing sounds and songs that confound and confuse and perplex, we love pure black metal, the grimmer and colder the better, but we also love the endless hybridization of that sound, seeing where it can go, and how far out it can be taken, and these guys have taken the sound somewhere entirely new, and we're loving it. Definite contender for black metal record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Smother The Crones"
MPEG Stream: "In The Privacy Of Your Own Bones"
MPEG Stream: "The Rattle Of Black Teeth"

CRUSHED BUTLER Uncrushed (Radio Heartbeat) lp 17.98
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL, with a bonus track NOT on the cd version...
We heard a lot about this before we got it in which fired up our curiosity just a little bit. Like it says in the title, this obscure post-mod trio with the cool name has been trumpeted as the "first punks" to come outta Blighty, kicking out the jams with an antisocial sneer and snarl long before the Sex Pistols and the Damned and all the rest blew up in '77. And on the strength of the seven tracks here recorded circa 1969-1971, they were indeed pretty darn punk and ahead of their time (at least, in terms of bands who made it into the recording studio). Loud fast rules with these guys, most of the tracks being uptempo rockers, though the lumbering "Love Fighter" will be welcomed by all '70s proto-metal lovers, and supports the argument that these guys are just as much a proto-metal outfit as proto-punk, being something that fans of Buffalo, Toad, Budgie, Nazareth or Black Sabbath would enjoy. Indeed, some of the riffing on here might quite well remind you of Sabbath, and we weren't surprised to learn that they'd opened for the likes of UFO and Atomic Rooster. Metal? Punk? Same dif back then really. The distortion, fuzz, and 'raw power' attitude on display should qualify 'em as pioneers in either camp. Crushed Butler were heavier than the Pink Fairies, anyway, and that (awesome) band is already rightly heralded as punks before their time. So we'd say that the legend of Crushed Butler is hereby confirmed... alongside the Fairies and Third World War and a few others in England (and the Stooges in the States, of course, and some European freaks too) they trashed the happy hippy scene of the day for something uglier, grottier and more dangerous.
Anyone into metal/punk/hard rock history should find this quite a blast.
Before the cd edition came out, there was a 10" vinyl version of this, but that's long gone and this new 12" vinyl edition, as we said, includes bonus material not on the 10" OR the cd.
MPEG Stream: "It's My Life"
MPEG Stream: "Factory Grime"

DIETER BIHLMAIER SELECTION The SWF-Session 1973 (Long Hair) cd 27.00
From the same studio that produced the amazing prog rock blowout that was the Cannabis India record from last list, comes this amazing flute led free jazz freakout from the Dieter Bihlmaier Selection, and as you probably know full well by now, we're suckers for the flute, especially when it's in the context of some fierce prog or far out jazz, as is the case here, a stripped down trio of just flute, bass and drums, recorded in 1973, this finds the band lean and mean, and so fierce, yet melodic and moody, groovy and jazzy and dreamy, slipping from fluttery drift to full on frenzy, Bihlmaier is an incredible player, expressive and all over the place, pure tones give way to stuttery breathy bursts, wild melodic runs, all tangled up with the bad ass rhythm section who lay down some seriously krautrocky jazz rhythms, locked in tight, mesmerizing and hypnotic, letting the flute do its thing over the top, but occasionally rising up and meeting the flute head on, the instruments doing a dense and dangerous dance, swirling, whirling and wild. The drums and bass get their time in the spotlight, but it's definitely all about the flute, and how the three mesh, even when they're all going full bore, which is much of the time. Hard to get your head around how three guys can be playing so wildly and so free, and yet the sounds can all fit together so perfectly. Heavy and heady and definitely far out, one of our new favorite jazz discoveries. Dying to find out what other amazing stuff SWR has tucked away in their vaults...
MPEG Stream: "Ovation"
MPEG Stream: "Roulette"

DRUDKH Forgotten Legends (Season of Mist) cd 14.98
First in a comprehensive reissue campaign of ALL of this Ukrainian horde's black metal classics, after having spent the last little while out of print and unavailable. Now available again in spiffy new digipaks, here's what we had to say about Drudkh's 2003 debut Forgotten Legends, when we first reviewed it way back when:
We've gone on and on in the past about Ukrainian black metallers Nokturnal Mortum and the NM side project Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra. Bands that perfectly straddle the line between true grim blackness and total what-the-fuck weirdness. But the Ukraine has a load of other bands who are just as buzzy and brilliantly black and fucked up. And it just so happens that they all seem to share at least one (the same?) member. Astrofaes, Hate Forest, Lucifugum, and of course Drudkh. All of these projects traffic in the same sort of buzzed out atmospheric blackness that we can't get enough of. Loping stumbling midtempo folk flecked blasts of Burzumic fuzz, long LONG tracks, melancholy melodies swathed in buzzing guitars and anguished vocals, with brief bursts of blast beats and mosquito buzz riffing. Very droney and atmospheric as well as fiercely fuzzy blackly brutal. Fans of Burzum (obviously) and bands like Graveland, Woodtemple and the like definitely need everything by any of these bands they can get their hands on. This is the very first Drudkh record, Forgotten Legends (and all the Drudkh records for that matter) and it's so so good. Dark and bleak and depressive, droney and dirgey and black, but weirdly lovely as well.
Unfortunately, no discussion of any of these bands is complete without a brief look at their politics, always a troublesome sore spot with most black metal. Drudkh focus on 'Slavonic pride, culture and mythology', an ideology only slightly removed from the full on racism of National Socialist black metal bands. Their name in fact means wood in Sanskrit, "the first language of the Aryan race." Yep. We've been through this before with Burzum and Graveland and umpteen others, we love the music, but abhor the message. In some cases, like with Drudkh, it's easy to just enjoy the music and ignore the problematic politics, there are no printed lyrics, no fucked up song titles, just images of forests and sky and rain and darkness, a mysterious booklet with no information but for the words: "sadness, bitterness, pain, despair, loss, agony, solitude, betrayal, melancholy, sorrow," all very mysterious and evocative. And it does seem like of all those bands Drudkh are more concerned with emotions and darkness and spirituality. For some though, there is no ignoring any hint of that ideology, no matter how subtle or indirect, and the thought of giving any sort of support is unacceptable. That's perfectly fine. But for us, the music -can- transcend the message, and does at least in this case, and the sound of Forgotten Legends is nebulous enough that each listener can take whatever they want from this music, a series of totally mesmerizing, gorgeously depressive black buzzing drone metal epics.
MPEG Stream: "False Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Forests In Fire And Gold"

EGYPT s/t (MeteorCity) cd 14.98
We sold out of the vinyl version of this lost Midwestern stoner doom classic, but now finally it's available again, this time on cd!
How many bands can you name from Fargo, North Dakota? None. That's the number we came up with. Ever hear of the stoner doom outfit Egypt? We hadn't either.
But this here 4 song mini lp will change all that.
This short lived band hailed from North Dakota, and only managed to commit to tape these 4 tracks, but doomlords and stoner rock freeks will definitely wish there was more where these came from. Lurching doomic slow and low, heavy on the bass, heavy on everything really, but the songs were pretty reliant on thick bass grooves and the pounding drums, lazy sunbaked Kyuss-y riffs were then draped over the top, plenty of wah guitar, and wailed, SUNG not screamed vocals, that were also reminiscent of the late great Kyuss.
This is not funeral doom, or ultra doom, this is groovy stoner doom, classic metal filtered through the sound of old school doom. Sabbath, Pentagram, that sort of thing, heaped with some Kyuss, left out in the desert to bake, doused in LSD, just enough to give it a slightly psychedelic vibe, and let loose. Most of the songs slink along for ages, growling and simmering, slithering darkly, all low end groove, before exploding into furious space rock freakouts, wicked wah guitar solos, thick crunchy rhythms and those impassioned FX soaked vocals. The label suggests that Egypt will appeal to fans of Sleep, Sir Lord Baltimore and Deep Purple, which is definitely true, but expand that to include anyone into classic metal, fuzzy psych rock, and heavy doom metal. And again, fans of Kyuss, and THAT sound, will eat this up.
Mastered By James Plotkin. Cool eye popping packaging, mini lp style gatefold sleeve, black and white on the outside, full color and psychedelic on the inside, super super striking.
MPEG Stream: "Valley Of The Kings"
MPEG Stream: "Queen Of All Time (Red Giant)"

EL-G Capitaine Present 5 (Nashazaphone) lp 30.00
More twisted collaged schizophrenic cabaret French pop folk weirdness from mysterious troubadour Laurent Gerard aka El-G! Where El-G's last record was a dizzying shimmery Gainsbourg meets Animal Collective song suite, that slipped from delicate hushed French pop, to more abstract free rock weirdness to epic dense dronemusic, Capitaine Present 5 is something way more out there.
On the surface, it almost sounds like one of those Sublime Frequencies collections, that just features snippets collected from the radio, short snippets, mysterious disembodied voices, a glorious barrage of constantly shifting sounds and textures, but as the record progresses, it becomes easier and easier to become lost in El-G's sound, tolling bells, thrummed bass, maniacal spoken word, bursts of noise, and tangled fractured melody, wheezing organ, delicate acoustic guitar strum, the vocals dramatic and passionate, the single song (?) that takes up the record's one playable side, shifting constantly from total chaos, to fluttery folk, to dreamy avant pop, to mysterious foreign radio play, to Residents-like art rock, to warm orchestral shimmer, to sultry smoldering torch song, to total what the fuck mashup and every possible permutation in between.
It's definitely chaotic, and a bit out there, a total head phone trip for sure, but the chaos is infused with plenty of jangle, subtle hooks, some pretty vocals, and irresistible melodies, even some cinematic strings, which makes Capitaine Present 5 a fantastic, and fantastically confounding listen.

EXPO 70 Sonic Messenger (Beta Lactum Ring) 2cd 19.98
More epic and dense heart-of-the-sun blissed out heavy space drones from Expo 70. And the thing is, we're running out of superlatives, we can only gush so much before we run out of new things to say, which is especially difficult when every record is as good as if not better than the last. So do forgive us if we're repeating ourselves, but hell, any one into spaced out heaviness, and droneprogbliss, who hasn't heard Expo 70 is missing out on one might just be their favorite band EVER.
Like past records, Expo 70 suck the essence out of every Hawkwind record, the soul of every Tangerine Dream record, and filter it through filter of SUNNO))) black hole heaviness, and come up with their own unique psychedelic space rock krautdrone, a sound we just can't get enough of. Expansive and sprawling, dark and meditative, washed out and dreamy, heavy and layered, the opening track on Sonic Messenger is a crushing chunk of low end rumble and pulse, which immediately gives way to some ultra hushed bliss, which smolders and flickers and expands in slow motion like a time lapse film of a planet being birthed. And so it goes, rhythms surface and blink out, guitars groan and whir and weep, synths wheeze and unfurl glimmering sheets of sound, the guitars sometimes coalesce into psychedelic almost-leads, but more often than not fade into clouds of hazy reverb and ethereal delay, the record closes with a 21 minute slow burn that is subtly fierce, a muted ominous swell of sound, wrapped in airy tendrils of fragmented melody, and swaths of gritty texture, a brooding and intense stretch of dreamy darkness.
Once again Expo 70 deliver the divine drugged out sonic space drone bliss.
And while they last (only 150 copies!!), included is a whole extra disc, an actual cd, not a cd-r, 50 more minutes of blissed out krautdrone space psych ambience. Three long long long songs, much more hushed and almost new age sounding that the record proper, except for the first 22 minute jam, that builds to a frenzied psychedelic freak out coda.
Deluxe packaging too, a glossy full color mini hardcover book-like sleeve, while the bonus disc comes in a cardboard sleeve, but there are instructions how to get some bonus stuff for the limited cd via the label's website. Cool!
MPEG Stream: "Amplifying Umbras"
MPEG Stream: "Analog Dreamscape"
MPEG Stream: "Hamadryad"

GNOD The Crystal Pagoda (Sonic Meditations) cassette 5.98
You can often tell a lot about a band by the other bands they share splits with. And considering the fact that Gnod have done split time with both psychedelic space rockers White Hills, and space psych doomlords Bong, it's pretty much a no brainer. And the fact that these guys can pretty much hold their own with both says it all. And actually, the sound of Gnod does fall somewhere right between Bong and White Hills, beginning super murky and minimal, doomy and slow, the guitars abstract and space-y, fluttery flutes laced over whirring low end, the sound builds quickly to something seriously explosive, the drums pounding, lots of bagpipe like horns offering up more layers of drones, mumbled vox, distortion and noise and effects piling up until the rhythmic almost krautlike groove is buried beneath a heaving churning pile of constantly shifting and swirling sound. Pretty stellar for sure.
The second track here, another 20 minute space doom jam, is much less expansive, instead, it's a solid chunk of hypno space rock, the drums and bass locked tight, weird vocals drift in and out, swirls of space-y FX swoop down from above, the surrounding ambience is ever changing, but the rhythm keeps the song grounded, a head nodding, drug addled non-stop mesmerizing groooooove, lysergic and psychedelic but pretty stripped down compared to that opening salvo. Good stuff for sure. Anyone into the current crop of space rock explorers (like Expo 70, too, whose limited edition cassette/cd-r label put this out) will no doubt dig this BIG TIME.
MPEG Stream: "The Crystal Pagoda"
MPEG Stream: "Tony's First Disco"

GNOD The Crystal Pagoda (Sonic Meditations) cd-r 5.98
You can often tell a lot about a band by the other bands they share splits with. And considering the fact that Gnod have done split time with both psychedelic space rockers White Hills, and space psych doomlords Bong, it's pretty much a no brainer. And the fact that these guys can pretty much hold their own with both says it all. And actually, the sound of Gnod does fall somewhere right between Bong and White Hills, beginning super murky and minimal, doomy and slow, the guitars abstract and space-y, fluttery flutes laced over whirring low end, the sound builds quickly to something seriously explosive, the drums pounding, lots of bagpipe like horns offering up more layers of drones, mumbled vox, distortion and noise and effects piling up until the rhythmic almost krautlike groove is buried beneath a heaving churning pile of constantly shifting and swirling sound. Pretty stellar for sure.
The second track here, another 20 minute space doom jam, is much less expansive, instead, it's a solid chunk of hypno space rock, the drums and bass locked tight, weird vocals drift in and out, swirls of space-y FX swoop down from above, the surrounding ambience is ever changing, but the rhythm keeps the song grounded, a head nodding, drug addled non-stop mesmerizing groooooove, lysergic and psychedelic but pretty stripped down compared to that opening salvo. Good stuff for sure. Anyone into the current crop of space rock explorers (like Expo 70, too, whose limited edition cassette/cd-r label put this out) will no doubt dig this BIG TIME.
MPEG Stream: "The Crystal Pagoda"
MPEG Stream: "Tony's First Disco"

A HANDFUL OF DUST Panegyric (Next Best Way) cd 14.98
Some DIFFICULT listening from a duo who's whole career is based on making difficult sounds. Bruce Russell from the Dead C, and his countryman Alastair Galbraith, team up for two long form explorations, all improvised, glass harmonica, violin, guitar and clavioline. The first track is a stumbling chaotic minimal assemblage of tones, and lots of space, streaks of feedback, little curlicues of high end guitar, amp buzz, bits of clatter and crunch, thump and rattle, at moments it sounds like the duo gearing up to play, the avant rock version of an orchestra tuning up, but then they'll come together and for a brief moment, offer up a bit of strange melody or buzzing texture.
The second track though is much more musical, after a slow start of truncated melodies and random noisemaking, the sounds begin to sprawl and open up, loooong high tones overlap, the layers shifting and changing timbre, gradually, overtones loosed from their moorings and hovering over the proceedings, a gorgeous tangle of high end feedback, that manages to be quite hypnotic, especially when the band shifts gears, and introduce some buzzing low end, the rest of the track, a slow shifting shimmering expanse of high end tones, and occasional bassy rumbles, the propulsion and rhythm a direct result of the tones interacting.
Weird stuff, and quite difficult for sure, but patient ears will discover a weird bit of unlikely loveliness hidden amidst the sonic brambles.

HOLLOWAY, IAN & BANKS BAILEY A Brief Sojourn (Quiet World) cd-r 13.98
Here's an impressive collaboration between the underappreciated British drone specialist Ian Holloway and the Arizona-based field recordist Banks Bailey. The two had actually worked together on an album entitled Summerland with Darren Tate; yet A Brief Sojourn improves upon the ideas of composing through interlaced field recordings, tone-bent drones, and synthetic ambience. The opening swells of filtered synthesis coalesce into a dark hypnotic tapestry of buzzing noises, although chirping birds from the Arizona desert that Bailey bring to the composition do lighten the mood. About ten minutes into the piece, the recordings of the birds give way a series of water recordings where washes of distant thunderstorms situate next to closely recorded sounds of rain splashing against concrete. As with the transition from one set of field recordings into another, the synthetic undulations are overtaken by a series of reverberant vocal bellows and stretched out guitar tones, which seem to recall the ritualist pieces of Zoviet France meeting the sodden drone restraint of the Ora recordings of old. Certainly not a bad place to be!
Limited to 100 copies!
MPEG Stream: "Extract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"

HORNA Musta Kaipuu (Moribund) cd 14.98
Not technically a new release, but the first time on cd for some grim black rituals captured way back in 2004 by one of our favorite Finnish black metal hordes, Horna. And right out of the gate, it's everything we love about Horna, raw and grim and black, filthy and primitive, but also weirdly melodic and catchy, the opener "Piina" initially sounds like classic old school BM, but then Horna inject a woozy melancholy melody, which changes the tenor of the song big time, as it swings back and forth from pounding black filth, to moody lumbering depressive blackness, at some points it almost sounds like a muted muddied lo-fi Iron Maiden, which in the context of Horna's blackened sound is pretty excellent. And that song pretty much sets the template for the rest of the record, a blackened concoction equal parts grim black blast, and strange loping melodicism, the band never blast, but do get to some fairly punkish tempos, but also slip into weird waltzes and stumbling doomic pounds, the lilting melody of "Unohdetut Kasvot, Unohdettu Aani" is deftly wrapped around some furious black buzz, the result is dangerously lovely, and then there's "Oi Kallis Kotimaa", that's almost a sea shanty, with its jaunty tempo, epic soaring melodies and weird grunted sing songy vox, but the band quickly shift back into something much less melodic and way more grim in the form of the churning blackness of "Pohjanportti".
The final three tracks offer up more of that strange blend of buzz and howl, and moody melodic drift, dipping into Katatonia or Lifelover territory here and there, which is well balanced by bursts of serious blackness and gnarled UNmelodic riffs, like the one that bookends the impossibly lovely main melody of album closer "Menneiden Kaiku". Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Piina"
MPEG Stream: "Haudanvarjo"
MPEG Stream: "Aldebaranin"

IMPETUOUS RITUAL Relentless Execution Of Ceremonial Excrescence (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
We love death metal as much as the next guy (okay, maybe not the NEXT guy, but possibly the next guy after that!), we love all the classics, Incantation, Suffocation, Morbid Angel, but as you might imagine we do lean toward the stranger and more fucked up side of the death metal spectrum. The more twisted and tweaked and off kilter the better, which is probably why we were so into Portal, the Aussie horde whose sound was like a death metal lp left in the back seat of your car all summer, only to be played back on a Fisher Price turntable plugged into a foghorn, everything about that band was so geniusly wrong, the beats were off kilter, the riffs were fractured, the arrangements were dizzyingly chaotic, but totally a case of so wrong it's right, all of those random fucked up elements came together to form what we considered to be one of the coolest and weirdest death metal records ever.
Which brings us to Impetuous Ritual, featuring members of Portal, supposedly channeling the spirit of classic death metal, and were pleased to say, these guys playing classic death metal is still completely and utterly removed from how it actually sounds. Sure compared to Portal, IR is definitely a smidge more traditional, but it's still massively demented and OUT THERE.
The opening track "Elegy" begins the proceedings with an awesome sprawling doomy slow motion chug, that goes on and on and on, like the slow doomy part from a Morbid Angel song, but even filthier and murkier, it's so good, we sort of wished it went on for the whole record, totally mesmerizing and minimal, and thankfully, while that specific part doesn't happen again, much of the record is spent trudging along doomily, a lumbering series of tarpit chugs, and even though the band continually launch into sounds more death metal, the overall sound stays weird and obtuse for the whole record.
Even when the band are blasting full speed ahead, the recording is so murky, and the sound so lo-fi, that the riffs become washed out blurs, sheets of undulating buzz, peppered with bursts of frenzied death metal freakouts, demarcated by stretches of weird blackened drones, and lurching chugging start / stops. The record finishes with the appropriately titled "Dirge", which is more of that lumbering lysergic muddy death metal doom, that sounds like your stereo is melting, or the tape deck is slowly swallowing your tape. So fucking twisted, and so unbelievably awesome. Another metal record of the year contender for sure...
MPEG Stream: "Elegy"
MPEG Stream: "Convoluting Unto Despondent Anachronism"
MPEG Stream: "Dirge"

INCA ORE / GROUPER split (self-released) lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Originally released as an insanely limited cassette, one that we sold out of in a matter of minutes, then on vinyl, which sold out super quick as well, but just managed to get a handful direct from Inca Ore, so if you missed out, one more chance before they're maybe gone forever...
As we mentioned in the original review, Inca Ore and Grouper are two of the few females currently kicking ass in the seriously dude oriented noise rock scene (Leslie Keffer and Valet are a couple others), and they approach their 'noise' with a distinctly different aesthetic, instead of walls of sound or sheets of distorted skree, the two focus on the sound of the human voice, their vocals cloaked in reverb and delay and echo, layering their blurred croons over swirling seas of smeared shimmery sound and delicate spidery guitars, wheezing organs and warm whirring buzz. Thankfully, together, the sound remains much the same, but blossoms a bit, two different, but complimentary voices, each with a knack for soft focus minor key melodies, each contributing their own particular style of washed out fractured folk, and the results are divine, fans of either band won't be disappointed, hushed and dreamlike soundscapes, dark, delicate cinematic ambience, gauzy and wispy, mysterious and haunting murky and muddy, a vast expanse of distant shimmery drones washing over abstract lo-fi song fragments and chunks of fragmented folks drifting in the abyss.
MPEG Stream: INCA ORE "Churpa Champurrado"
MPEG Stream: INCA ORE "Baby Tiger, I Went Far Away"
MPEG Stream: GROUPER "Little Grey Cat"
MPEG Stream: GROUPER "Poison Tree"

KBG MAN / ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER KGB Nights / Blue Drive (Catholic Tapes) 2 x cassette 15.98
KGB Man & Oneohtrix Point Never are both the work of Daniel Lopatin; however, neither of these tapes are marked as to what sound is to be ascribed to which project. Ultimately, it matters not; as everything that Lopatin has touched over the recent year has been golden.
So, here we've got two cassettes, each clocking in around 20 minutes in total length. The first OPN track (well at least on what was the first tape that we grabbed) is a cold undulating set of slightly modulated tones set on glacial cruise control; the flip side of this cassette (which might also be by OPN) continues in this sentiment with a more wash, blur, and synthetic shimmer, still wrangling all of those nostalgic images of a future once imagined but now abandoned. What appear to be the KGM Man tracks finds Lopatin in his subaqueous, sampledelica vein somewhat like those earlier Caretaker recordings but with Lopatin twisting and bending maudlin piano notes into seasick electronic flanges and slippery looped structures. His luminous synth melodies do occasionally flicker through these mutant constructs; and oh yeah, drum machines, you don't find that in OPN. A very nice touch!
Limited to 125 copies of which we only have 10 copies, never to restocked!!!

KOREKYOJINN Swan Dive (Magaibutsu) dvd + cd 17.98
Seeing is believing. Knowing that the music they make is pretty much mindboggling, perhaps that's why Japanese power-prog trio Korekyojinn elected to package their new album as a double disc set, one an audio cd, the other a live dvd, packaged in a slim, dvd-sized case. The dvd portion provides the visual proof of their ability to play like this live, if there were any doubt about it, while fans already convinced of their genius will enjoy watching it over and over while bowing down in front of the screen chanting "we're not worthy". And since this unit hasn't toured much outside of Japan, it's also the only way we can get to see 'em short of springing for a plane ticket to Tokyo!
The cd constitutes Korekyojinn's 5th album, Swan Dive, an album entirely, amazingly improvised by the trio of Mitsuru Nasuno (bass), Natsuki Kido (guitar), and linchpin Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins fame (drums) plus very special guests Uchihashi Kazuhisa and Hoppy Kamiyama, who contribute on guitar and keyboards/vocals, respectively, on two tracks each.
Of course it gets pretty wild, there's only six tracks but they're mostly all loooooong ones, up to 11, 17, and even 24 minutes in length... yet somehow they manage to keep it up, both the energy and creativity, their frenzied improvisations sometimes sounding rather more like the most complex COMPOSED prog rock music you could imagine (Orthrelm?), it's pretty insane. However, their convoluted chaotic outbursts are occasionally tempered by stretches of truly lovely, melodic, momentary mellowness. Melt-Banana meets Mahavishnu???
With herky jerk rhythms and heavy riffing, jazzy tinkling keys (when Hoppy sits in) contrasting with massively distorted electric bass, plus sheer avant-guitar textural shred-grind (the ante on that, upped by Uchihashi), this pretty much rules. As we had no doubt it would, considering who the heck this is (members of Ruins, Altered States, Bondage Fruit, etc.).
On the live dvd (70 minutes, NTSC, all region), they do a dozen songs, mostly from previous albums (though we think a couple, like the title track, are new), all of which we should mention are pieces in fact composed by mastermind Yoshida, NOT improvs. Again, total math-rock madness, very Ruins-esque, but with guitar. We are not worthy!
MPEG Stream: "Magnetic Pole"
MPEG Stream: "Vothqrassent"

LA IRA DE DIOS Apus Revolution Rock (World In Sound) cd 23.00
All right, this is a relief. Reviewing a freakin' kick ass real ROCK N' ROLL record. Nice to know they still can make 'em. Not that we didn't expect a healthy helping of rockin' from Lima's La Ira De Dios, whose previous album more than lived up to its title, Cosmos Kaos Destruccion (no translation needed, right?). We compared 'em to stonery stuff like Monster Magnet and Hawkwind last time 'round, but on Apus Revolution Rock they've gone even more raw and retro, punking it up '60s garage fuzzmonster style, with nods to surf music and other retro sounds, to the extent of including screaming girls (La Ira De Dios mania!?) in the mix on the blown out opening cut "Revolucion", which has a '50s meets the Stooges vibe that sounds a lot like '70s Japanese jams-kicker-outers Gedo. Good grief! What's not to like about that? And if you like to rock that is. THEY sure do, second track "No Hay Control" not letting up, in fact, cranking it up, it and ALL the dozen tracks on this album delivering nothin' but 110 percent high energy distortodelic rock action.
Need we say more? 'Cause La Ira De Dios really say it all with the slogan on the cd booklet: "Peru Psicodelia Punk". Another one they're fond of: "MAXIMUMVOLUMEROCKANDROLL!!!" If you're looking for catchy amped up anarchistic rawk with tons o' frantic fuzz, and cowbell too, for fans of The Heads, The Hives, Crushed Butler, Mudhoney, Larry Wallis era Pink Fairies, Motorhead, Boris circa Pink, fellow Peruvians / labelmates El Cuy, and other rad rockin' coolness of that ilk then La Ira De Dios have a rekkid for you!! Or if you can, imagine Los Natas on a search and destroy mission to do a Louie Louie and you're close to what La Ira De Dios is dishing out here.
So yeah, reviewing this was a blast, just turned it up and let the rock dictate these words... now the problem is turning it off and trying to put on something else we gotta review, which almost by definition will be less rockin' and thus less worthwhile. Plus somehow, in the process of reviewing this, we had a couple beers...maybe we'll just play this record one more time.
By the way, the vinyl version of this comes with a bonus 7", featuring of all things, a cover of "Shadowplay" by Joy Division (!), whereas the compact disc includes an exclusive bonus video for the track "5000 Anos".
MPEG Stream: "Todo Arde En Llamas"
MPEG Stream: "5000 Anos"
MPEG Stream: "Atravezare"

LA IRA DE DIOS Apus Revolution Rock (World In Sound) lp + 7" 30.00
All right, this is a relief. Reviewing a freakin' kick ass real ROCK N' ROLL record. Nice to know they still can make 'em. Not that we didn't expect a healthy helping of rockin' from Lima's La Ira De Dios, whose previous album more than lived up to its title, Cosmos Kaos Destruccion (no translation needed, right?). We compared 'em to stonery stuff like Monster Magnet and Hawkwind last time 'round, but on Apus Revolution Rock they've gone even more raw and retro, punking it up '60s garage fuzzmonster style, with nods to surf music and other retro sounds, to the extent of including screaming girls (La Ira De Dios mania!?) in the mix on the blown out opening cut "Revolucion", which has a '50s meets the Stooges vibe that sounds a lot like '70s Japanese jams-kicker-outers Gedo. Good grief! What's not to like about that? And if you like to rock that is. THEY sure do, second track "No Hay Control" not letting up, in fact, cranking it up, it and ALL the dozen tracks on this album delivering nothin' but 110 percent high energy distortodelic rock action.
Need we say more? 'Cause La Ira De Dios really say it all with the slogan on the cd booklet: "Peru Psicodelia Punk". Another one they're fond of: "MAXIMUMVOLUMEROCKANDROLL!!!" If you're looking for catchy amped up anarchistic rawk with tons o' frantic fuzz, and cowbell too, for fans of The Heads, The Hives, Crushed Butler, Mudhoney, Larry Wallis era Pink Fairies, Motorhead, Boris circa Pink, fellow Peruvians / labelmates El Cuy, and other rad rockin' coolness of that ilk then La Ira De Dios have a rekkid for you!! Or if you can, imagine Los Natas on a search and destroy mission to do a Louie Louie and you're close to what La Ira De Dios is dishing out here.
So yeah, reviewing this was a blast, just turned it up and let the rock dictate these words... now the problem is turning it off and trying to put on something else we gotta review, which almost by definition will be less rockin' and thus less worthwhile. Plus somehow, in the process of reviewing this, we had a couple beers...maybe we'll just play this record one more time.
By the way, the vinyl version of this comes with a bonus 7", featuring of all things, a cover of "Shadowplay" by Joy Division (!), whereas the compact disc includes an exclusive bonus video for the track "5000 Anos".
MPEG Stream: "Our Cold War"
MPEG Stream: "Chemical Restraint"
MPEG Stream: "Halo Becomes A Noose"

LOCRIAN / HARPOON split (HeWhoCorrupts Inc.) 7" 12.98
Killer tag team from two of Chicago's finest, Locrian and Harpoon. We've long been fans of Locrian's grim dark drift, infusing their ritualistic black ambience with plenty of black metal, but here, they go full on black, spitting out a slab of dirgey, muted, murky, howled hate. After a rumbling intro, the track explodes into a swirling cloud of frenzied riffing, loping demonic pound, and shrieked anguished vokills, with the drummer from Velnias driving them in their dirgey blackened plod, grim and atmospheric and surprisingly metal. We dig. Ambient drone fanciers might be a bit... overpowered, but everyone else will definitely dig.
The flipside comes from Harpoon, who we've yet to list, which is a bummer as it features ex members of LONG time aQ faves (and tUMULt recording artists!) 7000 Dying Rats. But Harpoon is not comedy grind, no this is some serious metallic brutality, slipping from frenzied blackened thrash, to pounding downtuned doom, throat shredding vox, crushing riffage, all wound around some complex arrangements and of course some seriously brutal drum damage.
A pretty heavy seven inches for sure. And in some seriously sweet packaging. Letter pressed black on black gatefold sleeve on super thick nice cardstock, green and black swirled vinyl, a full color two sided printed insert, and a download card.

MEW No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away (Columbia) cd 13.98
We've been meaning to review this for a while, the latest from Mew, another band who have gotten short shrift on the aQ list, which is a shame, cuz we dig em a lot, they're pretty hard to describe though, poppy and a little bit commercial, but also way proggy, strangely twisted, catchy, but in an oblique, WAY left of center way, gnarled guitars, skittery rhythms, gorgeous vocals... thankfully, our customer Derek was able to get a better handle on Mew than we've been able to, so take it away Derek:
The title of Mew's latest record's makes it seem a tad bit pretentious and a bit too "precious." The record is both, but still immensely enjoyable. (Their last album, And the Glass Handed Kites, was great too - even more rocking, and with loads of low end!) The sound is a little like late '80s Rush filtered through the Flaming Lips and played by Care Bears in a room made of sheet metal. The Mew guys (from Copenhagen) have come out and said they're a "pop" band, but their notion of what bubblegum pop should be is intricate, proggy, far out and a little spacey -loosed from many of the traditional tropes of pop music. In an alternate universe, they'd be teen idols with hordes of screaming fans and respected 'artists' simultaneously. (Apparently, there is such an alternate universe, and it's called "Scandinavia", where they're hugely popular - sort of like that odd interval of pop history here when the members of Yes were showing up on fluorescent Trapper Keepers.)
Outwardly uncool but accomplished and somewhat unhinged and really pretty fantastic - dig the first track, which is actually two different songs played forward and in reverse!!!

MEW No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away (Columbia) 2lp 23.00
We've been meaning to review this for a while, the latest from Mew, another band who have gotten short shrift on the aQ list, which is a shame, cuz we dig em a lot, they're pretty hard to describe though, poppy and a little bit commercial, but also way proggy, strangely twisted, catchy, but in an oblique, WAY left of center way, gnarled guitars, skittery rhythms, gorgeous vocals... thankfully, our customer Derek was able to get a better handle on Mew than we've been able to, so take it away Derek:
The title of Mew's latest record's makes it seem a tad bit pretentious and a bit too "precious." The record is both, but still immensely enjoyable. (Their last album, And the Glass Handed Kites, was great too - even more rocking, and with loads of low end!) The sound is a little like late '80s Rush filtered through the Flaming Lips and played by Care Bears in a room made of sheet metal. The Mew guys (from Copenhagen) have come out and said they're a "pop" band, but their notion of what bubblegum pop should be is intricate, proggy, far out and a little spacey -loosed from many of the traditional tropes of pop music. In an alternate universe, they'd be teen idols with hordes of screaming fans and respected 'artists' simultaneously. (Apparently, there is such an alternate universe, and it's called "Scandinavia", where they're hugely popular - sort of like that odd interval of pop history here when the members of Yes were showing up on fluorescent Trapper Keepers.)
Outwardly uncool but accomplished and somewhat unhinged and really pretty fantastic - dig the first track, which is actually two different songs played forward and in reverse!!!

MOORE, STEVE Fever Dream / 30,000 Feet Deep (Mexican Summer) 10" 16.98
John Carpenter. Goblin. Eighties sci-fi soundtracks. If those words have you frothing at the mouth, then this is for you. Also consider the facts: 2 new songs by 1/2 of Zombi, synth wizard Steve Moore, pressed onto limited edition 10" vinyl by Brooklyn's Mexican Summer label. They made just 500 copies, we only got a dozen. 'Nuff said? Another chunk of gloriously grooving yet sinister instrumental electronic sci-fi spaceouts, that sound like they could have been lifted straight out of some late night, straight to video, lost Carpenter flick. It of course sounds quite a bit like Steve's band Zombi, and thus suggest the above mentioned soundtrack music, but could also (like some of Zombi's output too) find a spot in a stargazing "cosmic disco" DJ's set.
Soaring synths, pulsing rhythms, fuzzy synthesized bass, mournful minor key melodies, primitive programmed rhythms, dramatic and moody and mysterious, so totally evocative and dreamy, and a bit cheesy, but in a good way. Shades of Tangerine Dream, this is definitely at the crossroads of spacey sci fi synth music and new age drift, bloopy and bleepy, almost video game sounding at times, but more often like the mood music from Phantasm or Halloween, where the main character is driving along the dark roads, it's probably raining, and while it's not explicitly scary yet, darkness and danger lurk just up ahead.
Ethereal and washed out, minimal and even a bit cold wave, this is total cinematic sci-fi new age space prog dream synth bliss.
Gorgeous packaging, extra thick vinyl, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one machine numbered...

MYRMYR The Amber Sea (Digitalis) cd 12.98
Not to be confused with the field recordist Murmer or the improv-drone Murmur or even the dubstep Murmur, this Myrmyr hails from Oakland and features Marielle Jakobsons (aka Darwinsbitch) and Agnes Szelag. Together they present fragmented orchestrations of post-classical arrangements alongside minimalist avant-folk gestures and a restrained use of electronics. Strings of all sorts are central to Myrmyr, whether that be cello, violin, cymbalon, harp, or ukulele, as they compose elongated passages which billow out of a cinematic post-classical sensibility and blossom into occasional shanty arrangements which allude to Baltic folk traditions. In moving between the more academic aspects and more folk stylizations, Myrmyr also incorporate male and female vocals into their arrangements. The occasional use of clanking bells and playful clatter of objects does offer some parallels to a few of a more abstract elements of the Finnish freakfolk community, but more often than not, Myrmyr's studied compositions glide more towards the work of Hildur Gudnadottir and Max Richter, rather than Lau Nau. Very nicely done!
MPEG Stream: "Jurata"
MPEG Stream: "First Seed"
MPEG Stream: "The Sea Returns"

NIGHT TROLL / TREMOR OF THE BLACK MANX Circle Of Witches / Armor (Jeshimoth) 3"cd-r 6.98
We're a sucker for a band name, you should definitely know that about us by now. And a lot of you are the same. The thinking is, if you're that creative with just the name of your band, imagine how nuts the music must be?? Sure, that doesn't always hold true, but in the case of the awesomely monickered Tremor Of The Black Manx, the name couldn't suit the music more.
On the same label as last week's record of the week, the bizarre black metal weirdness of Jute Gyte, comes TOTBM, who we know NOTHING about, but it hardly matters, what does matter is that this is some awesomely confusional and fucked up stuff, like some sort of fractured electronic hyper grind, or maybe we could call it grindtronica, or something like that. The structure is definitely grind, the songs are short, the arrangements are head spinning, but all of the sounds seem to be synths and not guitars, although sometimes the sounds DO seem to resemble guitars, maybe they're just super processed, regardless, the result is a strangely synthesized bit of frantic buzz, tangled melody, moody murky drift, all wrapped around skittering, stuttering programmed drums, that go from plod to pound to inhuman blast in the blink of an eye, dragging the rest of the sounds along with it. Really rad, and WAY weird.
TOTBM are teamed up here with Night Troll, who sound like a slightly electronic, WAY fucked up, ultra lo-fi raw primitive black metal. Ildjarn, Bone Awl, Akitsa, if you love that stuff but wish it was WEIRDER, more damaged and demented, with throbbing sub bass, tangled atonal guitars, processed death metal grunts, and all sort of other random fuckery, then this is for you. Total lo-fi stumbling ultra raw outsider electronic black metal. Which to us reads: SUPER RAD.
MPEG Stream: NIGHT TROLL "Circle Of Witches"
MPEG Stream: NIGHT TROLL "Dungeon Forest"
MPEG Stream: TREMOR OF THE BLACK MANX "Opal Blondes"
MPEG Stream: TREMOR OF THE BLACK MANX "Carving Sea Altars"

NIRVANA Live At Reading (DGC) cd 15.98
Nirvana were always a pretty iffy proposition live. Always sloppy and chaotic, sometimes inspiringly so, other times not so much. It wasn't always clear whether it was a drug thing, or a disdain for playing live, or being sick of the music business, but for all of the perfect pop and classic heaviness to be found on their records, live, things often devolved into total mayhem, often gloriously so. Fucking up songs, destroying drum kits, mixing in random covers, letting songs just sort of stumble to a halt, or more famously, changing the lyrics, singing in a deep baritone and hamming it up when forced to lipsync on TV, or not playing the hit the TV people were expecting, instead playing one of the super noisy thrashers. All part of what made Nirvana so cool, and so fun to watch. We had the records if we wanted to hear those songs, we'd much rather see the trainwreck that often occurred live.
This show, for all it's fucked-up-ness and weird goings on, was anything BUT a trainwreck. Widely considered to be one of the best live recordings of the band, hearing this again, all polished up definitely drives that point home. Lots of stuff from both Bleach and Nevermind, the band sound incredible, the recording does too, and even Kurt's vocals are pretty together, the crowd goes apeshit between songs, and rightfully so, witnessing a band totally hitting their stride, and for a band prone to falling apart live, just utterly destroying.
For folks who don't necessarily watch music videos, the cd should be plenty, but we'd have to recommend getting the dvd too, as there was some crazy shit going on (Kurt being rolled on stage in a wheelchair wearing a hospital gown), hilarious between song banter, some equipment destruction and other stuff worth seeing, that was edited out of the recording for the proper release.
Essential for Nirvana fans, and if you need some convincing as to the merits of Nirvana, check out some of the other reviews elsewhere on the aQ website, and we'll do our very best to convince you that Nirvana were indeed one of the best bands EVER.
MPEG Stream: "Breed"
MPEG Stream: "Drain You"
MPEG Stream: "Aneurysm"

NIRVANA Live At Reading (DGC) dvd 21.00
Nirvana were always a pretty iffy proposition live. Always sloppy and chaotic, sometimes inspiringly so, other times not so much. It wasn't always clear whether it was a drug thing, or a disdain for playing live, or being sick of the music business, but for all of the perfect pop and classic heaviness to be found on their records, live, things often devolved into total mayhem, often gloriously so. Fucking up songs, destroying drum kits, mixing in random covers, letting songs just sort of stumble to a halt, or more famously, changing the lyrics, singing in a deep baritone and hamming it up when forced to lipsync on TV, or not playing the hit the TV people were expecting, instead playing one of the super noisy thrashers. All part of what made Nirvana so cool, and so fun to watch. We had the records if we wanted to hear those songs, we'd much rather see the trainwreck that often occurred live.
This show, for all it's fucked-up-ness and weird goings on, was anything BUT a trainwreck. Widely considered to be one of the best live recordings of the band, hearing this again, all polished up definitely drives that point home. Lots of stuff from both Bleach and Nevermind, the band sound incredible, the recording does too, and even Kurt's vocals are pretty together, the crowd goes apeshit between songs, and rightfully so, witnessing a band totally hitting their stride, and for a band prone to falling apart live, just utterly destroying.
For folks who don't necessarily watch music videos, the cd should be plenty, but we'd have to recommend getting the dvd too, as there was some crazy shit going on (Kurt being rolled on stage in a wheelchair wearing a hospital gown), hilarious between song banter, some equipment destruction and other stuff worth seeing, that was edited out of the recording for the proper release.
Essential for Nirvana fans, and if you need some convincing as to the merits of Nirvana, check out some of the other reviews elsewhere on the aQ website, and we'll do our very best to convince you that Nirvana were indeed one of the best bands EVER.
MPEG Stream: "Breed"
MPEG Stream: "Drain You"
MPEG Stream: "Aneurysm"

NIRVANA Live At Reading (DGC) dvd + cd 36.00
Nirvana were always a pretty iffy proposition live. Always sloppy and chaotic, sometimes inspiringly so, other times not so much. It wasn't always clear whether it was a drug thing, or a disdain for playing live, or being sick of the music business, but for all of the perfect pop and classic heaviness to be found on their records, live, things often devolved into total mayhem, often gloriously so. Fucking up songs, destroying drum kits, mixing in random covers, letting songs just sort of stumble to a halt, or more famously, changing the lyrics, singing in a deep baritone and hamming it up when forced to lipsync on TV, or not playing the hit the TV people were expecting, instead playing one of the super noisy thrashers. All part of what made Nirvana so cool, and so fun to watch. We had the records if we wanted to hear those songs, we'd much rather see the trainwreck that often occurred live.
This show, for all it's fucked-up-ness and weird goings on, was anything BUT a trainwreck. Widely considered to be one of the best live recordings of the band, hearing this again, all polished up definitely drives that point home. Lots of stuff from both Bleach and Nevermind, the band sound incredible, the recording does too, and even Kurt's vocals are pretty together, the crowd goes apeshit between songs, and rightfully so, witnessing a band totally hitting their stride, and for a band prone to falling apart live, just utterly destroying.
For folks who don't necessarily watch music videos, the cd should be plenty, but we'd have to recommend getting the dvd too, as there was some crazy shit going on (Kurt being rolled on stage in a wheelchair wearing a hospital gown), hilarious between song banter, some equipment destruction and other stuff worth seeing, that was edited out of the recording for the proper release.
Essential for Nirvana fans, and if you need some convincing as to the merits of Nirvana, check out some of the other reviews elsewhere on the aQ website, and we'll do our very best to convince you that Nirvana were indeed one of the best bands EVER.
MPEG Stream: "Breed"
MPEG Stream: "Drain You"
MPEG Stream: "Aneurysm"

NO BALLS s/t (Release the Bats) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
FINALLY! It's here, the first full length from NO BALLS. The new project from TWO of the Brainbombs, and it's just like the 7" (which is sadly now out of print): a noisier, more metal, more stripped down, more mesmerizingly hypnotic, even more fucked up and fractured and RAW, nearly instrumental Brainbombs which means this is fucking AMAZING!!!
If you love the Brainbombs, and how could you NOT, then you'll love this. Looped, motorik rhythms pound away relentlessly, through thick clouds of crumbling distortion, the recording super fucked up and in the red, with a super freaked out spatial thing going on, some of the drums seem to be blasting away right up front, while other drums sound off to the side, while the distorted guitars seem to seep into EVERYTHING, the result is head nodding (banging?) and totally dizzying. It's like these guys took unreleased Brainbombs jams and stripped them down to their bare essentials, then dipped them in a boiling cauldron of blown out distortion, hurling them into the void, picking out just a single riff from each track, and looping it, over and over and over, pounding away at that same riff FOREVER, total maximalist minimalism, like some impossible hybrid of Brainbombs, Gore, Black Flag and Lubricated Goat, hypnotic and mesmerizing, filthy and raw, metal AND punk, post everything noise rock, this shit is so fucked up and fierce.
Angular slashing riffage, buried super distorted vocals, but only here and there, some of that old dented BB trumpet bleat pops up every once in a while too, but those elements are practically swallowed whole by the churning black mass of sound that is No Balls, a gloriously sludgey and psychedelic kraut punk doom, mantra like, but also totally rocking, and simultaneously the best and the worst thing that's ever happened to your stereo. And your ears.
Totally ruling, utter sonic destruction, total musical bliss, filthy and fantastically and utterly recommended. Some of us are thinking... RECORD OF THE YEAR. Oh yeah...
The bad news is these are limited to only 300 copies, and once the batch we have is gone, we probably won't be able to get more. Super simple packaging, black on brown jackets, with that bunny image from the 7", plain white inner sleeve, pressed on nice thick vinyl... grab one before they're gone...

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER Russian Mind (No Fun Productions) lp 15.98
Russian Mind is the third piece of vinyl to be released in 2009 by Daniel Lopatin's ever-amazing Oneohtrix Point Never, following Zones Without People and Betrayed In The Octagon. All three of these LPs have recently been collected on the Rifts anthology, also released through No Fun, and this week's Record Of The Week!
The ideas of a forgotten future had been recently employed by Leyland Kirby on the driftscape trilogy Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was; but where Kirby pegged his lost future as somewhere in the early portion of the 20th century, reclaimed through downpitched and blurred 78s, Lopatin firmly pegs his lost future as the one perceived from the time period between 1975 and 1985. Given the title of this album, Lopatin's retro-garde zone-tripping looks back to the former Soviet Union. Such is also the case for some of Lopatin's appropriated video work, which features '80s Russian commercials with all sorts of a wonderfully corn-ball, lazer-clad video effects. Furthermore, he claims this album was "transcribed by the Material Eye Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 1, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia." Nope, there is no such institute at the Russian Academy, but it makes for a good piece of fictional context.
A set of gaseous ambient chords opens Russian Mind, and could have been lifted from an early Boards Of Canada release, although the lack of IDM-rhythms in the Oneohtrix Point Never's electronics steer this work in an entirely different direction. His bright chimes of arpeggio poly-synth tones build asymmetrical waves that are as compelling as they are cheesy. But that's always been the point, to terminally obliterate the lines between a high-brow piece of Terry Riley minimalism and a lowest common denominator of sub-Eno ambient drivel. Russian Mind tends to be a bit more stratospheric in nature, with these sublime arcs of vapor trails passing through moonlit nightscapes, all redrawn in neon hyperdelic colors. A marvelous record for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Russian Mind"

OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD Fucking Dracula Clouds (Blackest Rainbow) lp 21.00
Another explosive slab of world destroying sonic love from Campbell Kneale and his new one man wrecking machine known as Our Love Will Destroy The World. Taking up right where the now defunct Birchville Cat Motel left off, Kneale is a master of constructing impossible dense assemblages of sound and noise and rhythm, layer upon layer upon layer, a one man band that sounds like 5 or 6 bands playing at once.
Infusing a droney drift, with industrial rhythms, metallic riffs, textural buzz, blown out crunch, all manner of hum and howl and skree and clatter and clang, which like many things, in the hands of someone less deft, could be and most likely would be a massive sonic clusterfuck, but Kneale, like some insane sonic juggler, manages to herd all these sounds into a constantly evolving shape, not that it's not a struggle, part of the joy comes from listening to the various sounds and elements and layers do battle, the magic happens when what sounds like pure noise, suddenly reveals itself as a lumbering doomic drone, or a weirdly melodic drift, what sounds like random bits of crunch, suddenly take shape and become rhythm, what sounds like a wall of heaving low end, becomes melodic, and suddenly things seem strangely songlike, and dare we say, sort of pretty.
Fucking Dracula Clouds is the perfect representation of what Kneale can do seemingly so easily, and so many others find difficult bordering on impossible, turning noise into music, but without losing any of the noise, creating sounds that are caustic and abrasive, but weaving them together into something that is neither, like building a warm roaring fire out of shards of ice, or assembling a warm secure shelter out of wet leaves and cold mud, it's some kind of magic for sure, and we are definitely under its spell.

OVERSTREET, THE REV. LOUIS An Evening With The Rev. Louis Overstreet (Mississippi) lp 15.98
MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!! MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT!!
The above is of course for the benefit of the legions of Mississippi obsessives, that seems to be growing with each and every release. Fans who will buy anything and everything Mississippi, whether it's blues, or gospel, or world music, whether it's African or Greek, classic New Zealand pop, or legendary underground Portland Punk. Which is totally understandable, the guys at Mississippi have great taste, and besides their incredible compilations, and unearthed rarities, they also have a knack for picking out old records that folks have been DYING to get on vinyl. But even if you're not a Mississippi obsessive, this here is well worth checking out. And may be just the disc to convert you to the cult of Mississippi...
Here we have a kick ass gospel record from 1963, originally reissued on Arhoolie, now available on Mississippi, ON VINYL. And while we're not super well versed in gospel music, we do dig what we've heard, but very little of what we've heard sounds like the Rev. Louis Overstreet. It's festive and inspirational, but at the same time it's super rocking. Most of the tracks collected here are relentless garage gospel grooves, the guitar and drums locked into killer jams, the guitar occasionally pealing off some wild licks, but for the most part offering up a jangly twangy strum, the congregation clapping in time, and hooting and hollering. The testifying is minimal, and when there are vocals, they are alternately crooned and howled, The Rev.'s voice is gritty and soulful, but even when he's singing, it's the groove, irresistible and unstoppable and most certainly inspired. It does slow down here and there, and gets all super bluesy and soulful, but for the most part, An Evening With is some seriously rollicking and rocking praise-the-Lord good time gospel rhythm and blues!
Probably would have been a lot easier to get us to go to church when we were younger if it sounded like this!

OXBOW Songs For The French (Hydra Head) lp 15.98
San Francisco's legendary confrontational exports Oxbow return with another sonic beatdown in the form of this vinyl only release. The first side features the band and French noisemaker Philippe Thiphaine winging it in the studio. The fact that these songs are improvisations recorded "in 180 non-successive minutes" is testament to this band's unholy powers. The songs are lumbering and almost doomy at times, but Eugene Robinson's crazed vocals give the band a slurred swamp blues feel. It kind of sounds like the Jesus Lizard on quaaludes - meaning this is right up our alley. It's disturbing and awesome, and Oxbow, more than most bands, really understand how to work with negative space for that extra dose of creepiness. It's sort of like walking down a dark alley and knowing you're about to get your ass kicked, without knowing exactly when. At the same time, Oxbow are experts at rocking out. Their sound is nihilistic and unstoppable like few others. It wouldn't be right to call them "metal," but they certainly possess many attributes that so many metal bands just can't grasp but desperately wish they could. One thing's certain: Oxbow are scary as fuck.
Side 2 features the band in the most ideal setting - live, in concert, terrifying small clubs throughout Europe (though not France, if you are curious). The band simply SLAYS here, and if you needed any more proof of their truly unique sound, look no further. It's interesting that Oxbow takes a sort of post-punk starting point and ventures seamlessly into greater realms of musical exploration. Robinson's voice is something to behold here as he screeches and moans like a crazy man. The band is in top form on these tracks, displaying a loping, queasy attack that is both tight as hell and almost, ahem, "jazzy" at times. It's heavy and atonal as it winds all over the place, and strangest of all, it's actually kind of catchy. It sounds like the culmination of years of collective hatred and a perfect understanding of their own sound.
This one comes housed in a classy thick sleeve on nice heavy vinyl, and we give this bad boy our highest recommendation.

PARTCH, HARRY The World Of Harry Partch (Scorpio / Sony) lp 15.98
Harry Partch's ingenious and prodigious musical output can be a bit too much to wrap your mind around, especially considering his vastly unique and maverick musical theories involving microtonalities and the arsenal of unique hand-crafted instruments he used to create them. But all it takes to reel us in, is just to look at all the amazing instruments on display on the back-cover: The Cloud-Chamber Bowls, the Chromelodeon, the Diamond Marimba, the Kithara, the Harmonic Canon, and an odd array of metal cylinders called The Spoils of War, amongst many other musical curiosities. Even if you are not quite sure what they sound like, you just know they sound like no other instrument could. There's been plenty of Partch collections, but it's really nice to just get a small but lovely dose on vinyl especially for the uninitiated, for whom a large collection may be too overwhelming.
The World of Harry Partch, originally released in 1969 on Columbia Masterworks, was the first introduction of Harry Partch's music to the larger world, and still serves as the best starting point to immerse oneself into the Partch universe. Three long form compositions, "Daphne of The Dunes", "Barstow" and "Castor & Pollux", each take us into a different realm of his pantheon of influences from soundpieces for theatre and dance, his folkloric ruminations on hobo life (he lived life as a hobo during the Great Depression), and his great dedication to non-Western musical scales and ideas culled from Chinese, Indian and Greek musical forms. Partch's intensive compositions and exacting instructions for his performers can be an acquired taste for some (the vocal intonations on "Barstow" for instance, have a definite beat poet vibe that hasn't particularly aged well in our opinion, but it's also the shortest track!). But the gamelan-ish bell tones, plucked string runs and metallic percussive noises on his longer compositions are often quite eerily beautiful!
Yet, this is definitely not "free" music, and though we appreciate Partch's considerable genius, we can't help but wonder what those instruments would sound like in the hands of latter day free players like No Neck Blues Band or even a group like Taj Mahal Travellers. Still, a highly worthy addition to any seeker of other-worldly and eccentric musical forms!
RealAudio clip: "Castor & Pollux"

PHANTOM LIMB & EARTH'S HYPNAGOGIA In Celebration Of Knowing All The Blues Of The Evening (Unframed) cd 14.98
Phantom Limb is a Brooklyn based drone-noise exploratory project that shares some of its members with the clattery improv noise-rock ensemble Peeesseye. It's also one of those projects that claims to channel the creativity all of its members even if they are not present during the recording sessions. Very transcendent, eh? On this production for Gill Arno's art label Unframed, Phantom Limb (here adding the "and Earth's Hypnagogia" to the name) finds just two of the members (Jaime Fennelly and Shawn Hansen) actually recording in the studio, with the absentee members adding their own two cents presumably through astral projection or maybe just heavy drug use.
Fennelly Hansen employ two sets of instruments for this piece: a pair of sine-wave generators and a pair of Farfisa organs. During the first 30 minutes or so of the piece, the two slump over their sine-wave generators which are tuned to an exquisitely body rumbling set of harmonic frequencies. Ones that would make the elder Niblock very proud! When the Farfisas enter the mix with a certain jolt to the narcotic vibe of the sine-wave drones, the mood shifts dramatically towards a sparkling arpeggiation much more in line with the classic Terry Riley pieces of old. Recorded in a single take in a warm sounding room, with all of the rustling and knee shifting that keep the legs from falling asleep. Beautifully designed by Mr. Arno and exquisitely printed by Ben Owen on his letterpress with die-cuts. Limited to 400 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 5"

PHILLIPS, TOMAS & DEAN KING Les Mailles (Monochrome Vision) cd 15.98
Tomas Phillips is a literary professor (currently teaching at NC State) and a lowercase electronic composer, whose work has been alternatingly brilliant and somewhat banal. Such is the dilemma in using minimal constructions and reduced sound sources as Phillips is wont to do. His 2003 On Dit album for Trente Oiseaux was an impressive album for sure, harkening back to the earlier musique concrete sensibility of Jim O'Rourke especially the album Scend. But since then, the albums have been rather polite but somewhat uninteresting. Fortunately, our skepticism ends with Les Mailles, an album Phillips composed with fellow North Carolinian Dean King.
The title translates from the French as 'the meshes' and specifically references Maya Deren's 1943 film Meshes Of The Afternoon, one of the earliest successes of American avant-garde film that worked through repetitively imagery to unveil an interlocking series of psychological symbols culminating in the protagonist's own suicide. Where that films is quite striking in its imagery even in its slow repetitions, the Phillips & King construct is incredibly subtle, maintaining a slow rumbling drone pocked with small renderings of digital artifacts, ghostly harmonic swells, and quiet field recordings of incidental sounds from enclosed spaces. At times, the album can be quite reverberant and achieve a similarly wintery paralysis that comes from listening to Thomas Koner's recordings; but out of these darkened passages, the two interlock distilled melodies (maybe from the digitally tricked out sounds of a piano?) and fizzing textures that align much more with the 12K / Richard Chartier ethos. Very nicely done.
MPEG Stream: "Extract 1"
MPEG Stream: "Extract 2"

Q & A Tumbling Cubes / Trap Door (DFA) 12" 8.98
The last few years have been pretty damn great for electronic and dance minded sounds. Folks like The Field, Gui Boratto, Hercules & Love Affair, Zomby and Subway have blown us away with their fresh approach and different shades of dance floor glory. But at the same time so much of what has been coming out really does subscribe to an instantly recognizable reference point. Whether it's retro space disco, brooding dubstep, or minimal techno, there's been so much undeniably exciting music that still doesn't really bring any new vision to the table.
With their debut 12", Q & A prove to be a duo who for sure have their own unique groove going, and it's a groove we can't get enough of! Seamlessly mixing their love of kraut, disco, minimal-funk, hacienda clouds of ecstasy, prog, Detroit techno, and dub, Quinn Luke (The Phenomenal Handclap Band, Coppa, Bing Ji Ling) and Alexis Georgopoulos (Arp, The Alps) have truly created one of the most enjoyable and memorable slabs of dance music this year. These two long tracks sound great on first listen, but the fact that we keep playing them over and over and only get more into them each time is a testament to the fact that it's possible to make groove filled dance jams that also have substance.
Alexis was one of the founding members of Tussle and you can for sure hear some of that signature Liquid Liquid inspired sound in the midst of these songs but in a much more fleshed out and flowing style. While this is their debut outing you just might have heard them before as they briefly were recording and remixing under the moniker Expanding Head Band, and had one of the standout tracks on that bad ass Milky Disco 2 compilation. One of the hottest 12"s of the year without a doubt!

RAPE & HONEY Issue One: Funeral Mist magazine 3.00
Oaken Throne is dead. Sad but true, that beloved magazine chronicling all things black and grim, dark and sonically adventurous, has been laid to rest, a labor of love for sure, but it got to the point where no amount of love could sustain the amount of labor that went into producing each issue. So sad. We still have copies of the last few issues, so do grab them while you can, and while OT is gone, one half of the team behind OT, John Mincemoyer, is forging ahead with his own idiosyncratic magazine, Rape & Honey. Not so much a magazine as a broadsheet, it's a handful of pages, each issue focused on a single band, we still have a few copies of issue one, which was all about Razor Of Occam, but this second issue, expanded to nearly twice the size of number 1, might be of even more interest to most of the aQ faithful, being as its focus is on longtime aQ favs, the mighty Funeral Mist.
You can read our rants and ravings about Funeral Mist elsewhere on the aQ site, we gushed about pretty much every FM release, even going so far as to make Maranatha our Record Of The Week a while back. But Rape & Honey Takes you even deeper, incorporating interviews, background, history, reviews, musings, plus Mincemoyer is an excellent writer, and Funderal Mist are indeed fascinating subjects. 8 pages, 8 1/2" by 11", full color, plenty of illustrations, with two printed full color inserts, as well as a Mincemoyer penned Funeral Mist review printed on a cool colored transparency. A great read, and a killer object de' metal art, WAY recommended, to fans of the band of course, but also folks who read Terrorizer and Oakan Throne and Decibel and the like, plus it's super cheap! Skip a cup of coffee and read all about one of our favorite bands...

ROCKMORE, CLARA Theremin (Mississippi) lp 16.98
MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!!!
Ok, that no doubt got your attention. However, unlike Mississippi's forays into blues, world music, and, uh, Dutch punk rock, this record (an alternately titled reissue of Rockmore's The Art Of The Theremin album) takes a surprising turn into the realm of classical music. But not just *any* classical music, no, this here record will no doubt be familiar to many aQ customers, as Lithuanian born Clara Rockmore (1911-1998) is legendary for her mastery of one of the first and strangest electronic musical instruments ever - the theremin. Even if you think you are unaware of what this unique instrument sounds like, you've definitely heard it SOMEWHERE, most likely in some cheesy sci-fi movie from the 1950s. But rather than retread the story of the theremin in general and Clara Rockmore specifically (for that you're advised to check out the amazing documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey), we will just let you know that this record is completely amazing, absolutely beautiful, and probably unlike anything else you've heard before. Covering selected works from composers such as Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky, among others, Rockmore is capable of creating some of the saddest, most mournful sounds ever committed to tape. With literally every song, the theremin sounds like it is weeping out its melodies alongside its piano accompaniment, provided by Rockmore's sister Nadia Reisenberg. Soundwise, many of you will be reminded of a singing saw, or perhaps some heavily sustained bowed string instrument, but the buzzing electronic warmth of the theremin is really beyond classification. The sounds are at once familiar but also totally alien, and anyone who has actually played a theremin should be well aware of how unbelievably difficult they are to control (you don't even touch the thing!). But Rockmore was clearly cut from a different cloth altogether, and to this day she remains undisputed master of the instrument.
Mississippi really outdid themselves with the packaging on this one, the heavy duty lp comes housed in a beautiful thick gatefold jacket with all kinds of detailed information. And we should hardly have to warn you of this record's limited availability, so don't miss out.
MPEG Stream: "Vocalise (Rachmaninoff)"
MPEG Stream: "Berceuse (Stravinsky)"
MPEG Stream: "Berceuse (Tchaikovsky)"

ROSE, JACK & THE BLACK TWIGS Shooting Creek (The Great Pop Supplement) 7" 9.98
First let us say how sad we are about the passing of Jack Rose. Such a tragedy. An incredible musician taken from us way too young. We didn't know him that well, but we loved his records, solo and with the group Pelt. He once played in instore at aQuarius, and it was incredible, seeing him play live was totally mind blowing. He was fun, and funny, and friendly, and we are truly saddened. We offer our condolences to his family and friends.
This 7" is festive and rollicking, as if to celebrate Rose's life. Here Rose is teamed up with VHF bluegrass outfit The Black Twig Pickers for one traditional and one Rose original. The traditional is a wild bluegrass stomp, complete with whoops and hollers, the original is, as always, gorgeous, a minor key lament, a classic Rose rag, fleshed out here by the Twig Pickers, plenty of twang, soaring fiddle melodies, just total timeless classic Rose style bluegrass.
He will be missed. But his music, and memory will live on!

SANDWITCHES, THE Back To The Sea (South Paw) 7" 5.98
One of the really cool things about working at a record store is how you get to watch as a band gets more and more popular... One day they are just a name on a record no one has heard of and then just weeks later they become a band that everyone calls and asks about. Such is the case with San Francisco's The Sandwitches. We were just as clueless about them as everyone else when we first got their debut lp on Turn Up, but once we heard it we became hooked like so many other folks.
Once you hear their totally refreshing, unique and endearing living room lo-fi garage folk jams, it's pretty impossible to resist. This new 7" gives an awesome alternate version of the song "Back To The Sea" which was on the full length, this time out it's even more of a foot stomper, like The Shaggs doing a Bill Haley & His Comets cover. The B side "Beatle Screams" is a haunting slow burner with a nice pump organ groove running throughout conjuring up images of some kind of wonderfully haunted circus or a state fair gone way weird.
Lots of folks have heard these fine ladies via their amazing back up vocals on The Fresh & Only's records as well as from playing in bands like Pillars Of Silence and Brilliant Colors. But if they keep creating such amazing songs, The Sandwitches will become a household name, you know at least in the kind of houses we all tend to live in!

SCANTILY CLAD 2 (self-released) cd-r 8.98
The second cosmic synth-drone-rock missive from Scantily Clad, a duo of instrumental improvisers split between Northern and Southern California. We loved their first cd-r, an amalgam of lo-fi synth styles from soft lullabies to abrasive noise that showed a lot of promise. Well, that promise is made good on their follow-up, a richer, more focused, and self-assured outing than before. The sonic intensity is beefed up, the songs more composed, the instrumentation more varied, the dreaminess heightened ( especially on tracks like Vanilla, Baby"), and the nosier parts (like what sounds like chipmunks speaking in tongues on "Deep Witch") are even weirder. But it all fits together very well as a fully-realized piece of heavy instrumental spaciness. Even the packaging is cooler, with their clipart collages of mandalas and symbolic animals housed in a sturdy transparent plastic case. Fans of groups like Emeralds and Carlton Melton will find lots to dig here!
MPEG Stream: "Plain Galaxies"
MPEG Stream: "Vanilla, Baby"
MPEG Stream: "Mud Dreams"

SCHMIDT, IRMIN & THE INNER SPACE Kamasutra: Vollendung Der Kiebe (OST) (Crippled Dick Hot Wax) cd 17.98
Wow, it's definitely Christmas around here and how can we tell? Well, for one thing we got this amazing new soundtrack reissue that we never realized until now we have been looking for most of our adult life. It's on Crippled Dick Hot Wax, one of our fave reissue labels that we haven't heard from in years and had feared they disappeared for good. And it's another lost gem from the proto-Can universe of The Inner Space, the same early group incarnation that gave us the soundtrack to the unreleased surreal-politico film, Agilok and Blubbo!
One of our favorite Krautrock obscurities compilations from years and years ago was called Kraut Demons Kraut and two of the tracks were credited to The Can, but didn't sound like Can at all. These were pastoral and pretty with flutes and guitar, one featured very folky female vocals by Margareta Juvan called, "I'm Hiding My Nightingale", the other track was called "Kama Sutra" (billed here as "Indisches Panorama I"). We had always wondered where those recordings had come from, and how they related to Can. It wasn't until someone put this on in the store after we just got it in that it all came rushing back. Those songs were from a rare 1968 German erotic film by Kobi Jaegar called Kamasutra: Consumation Of Love and were arranged and performed by Irmin Schmidt & The Inner Space, whose then lineup of Jaki Leibeziet, Malcolm Mooney and Michael Karoli was essentially the same line-up of Can's debut full length, Monster Movie.
But much of this is different from the Can we know (though the Malcolm Mooney-sung "There Was A Man" points at what Can was to become, and Michael Karoli's simmering electric guitar lines are as signature as ever), it even sounds very different from the other Inner Space release, Agilok and Blubbo. That soundtrack was more exploratory, improvisational and experimental, while Kamasutra is much more focused and musically gorgeous. Lots of sitars, flutes, acoustic and electric guitars playing slow-burning compositions with loping repetitive rhythms. Occasionally rocking out a groove, but more often wandering through many pastoral raga-tinged extrapolations. This is the most psychedelically kosmiche recording we've ever heard from this outfit, which of course gives it our highest recommendation!
MPEG Stream: "Indisches Panorama I"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Hiding My Nightingale"
MPEG Stream: "Im Tempel"
MPEG Stream: "In Orient II"

SCHMIDT, IRMIN & THE INNER SPACE Kamasutra: Vollendung Der Kiebe (OST) (Crippled Dick Hot Wax) 2lp 22.00
Wow, it's definitely Christmas around here and how can we tell? Well, for one thing we got this amazing new soundtrack reissue that we never realized until now we have been looking for most of our adult life. It's on Crippled Dick Hot Wax, one of our fave reissue labels that we haven't heard from in years and had feared they disappeared for good. And it's another lost gem from the proto-Can universe of The Inner Space, the same early group incarnation that gave us the soundtrack to the unreleased surreal-politico film, Agilok and Blubbo!
One of our favorite Krautrock obscurities compilations from years and years ago was called Kraut Demons Kraut and two of the tracks were credited to The Can, but didn't sound like Can at all. These were pastoral and pretty with flutes and guitar, one featured very folky female vocals by Margareta Juvan called, "I'm Hiding My Nightingale", the other track was called "Kama Sutra" (billed here as "Indisches Panorama I"). We had always wondered where those recordings had come from, and how they related to Can. It wasn't until someone put this on in the store after we just got it in that it all came rushing back. Those songs were from a rare 1968 German erotic film by Kobi Jaegar called Kamasutra: Consumation Of Love and were arranged and performed by Irmin Schmidt & The Inner Space, whose then lineup of Jaki Leibeziet, Malcolm Mooney and Michael Karoli was essentially the same line-up of Can's debut full length, Monster Movie.
But much of this is different from the Can we know (though the Malcolm Mooney-sung "There Was A Man" points at what Can was to become, and Michael Karoli's simmering electric guitar lines are as signature as ever), it even sounds very different from the other Inner Space release, Agilok and Blubbo. That soundtrack was more exploratory, improvisational and experimental, while Kamasutra is much more focused and musically gorgeous. Lots of sitars, flutes, acoustic and electric guitars playing slow-burning compositions with loping repetitive rhythms. Occasionally rocking out a groove, but more often wandering through many pastoral raga-tinged extrapolations. This is the most psychedelically kosmiche recording we've ever heard from this outfit, which of course gives it our highest recommendation!
MPEG Stream: "Indisches Panorama I"
MPEG Stream: "I'm Hiding My Nightingale"
MPEG Stream: "Im Tempel"
MPEG Stream: "In Orient II"

SEGALL, TY & MIKAL CRONIN Reverse Shark Attack (Kill Shaman) lp 14.98
No doubt about it, Ty Segall is really one of our favorite garage rockers around. We're lucky enough to get to see him play all the time and the incredible sweat and energy of his live shows manages to seep its way into his recordings as pretty much every slab of wax he's released has delivered way raw fucked up garage rock at its absolute best!
Teamed up with his pal Mikal Cronin, the two take things to even more of a blasted and fractured state of garage mayhem with Reverse Shark Attack, tons of moments that remind us of the amazing thrashing garage pop scorch of the great Japanese band Acid Eater or some dream universe where Syd Barrett got to jam out Brainbombs covers. In fact they do an amazing cover of the Barrett era Pink Floyd gem "Take Up The Stethoscope And Walk" - it was so rad when we played this in the store for the first time and an enthusiastic customer screamed out "Who is doing some serious fucking justice to the spirit of Syd Barrett right now!?" and we totally understand where that impassioned and immediate reaction comes from! Segall continues to tap into the kind of music making that truly grabs a hold of your body to give you a totally enthralling pure and raw physical experience. We had heard an awesome 7" these two did together earlier in the year that sadly we weren't able to get our hands on, and it seems that Cronin really encourages Segall to go more into the outer limits of sound than on his own and we have to say we really love it! And we pretty much love any and all of what Ty does whether it's the amazing pop hooks he's capable of creating in his great songs on his proper solo albums or when he totally just goes way free and enters a total garage freak-out state that goes way beyond fuzz, like the tracks on Reverse Shark Attack. So rad!

SIMMONS, CARL Honeysuckle Tendrils (Sacred Bones) cd 11.98
We're huge fans of the Sacred Bones label. They're responsible for some of our favorite records lately, from space rock to cold wave to twisted garage pop. Gary War, Moon Duo, Blank Dogs, Zola Jesus, The Cultural Decay, 13th Chime, so we were definitely excited to check out this latest release, from a fella called Carl Simmons, and once again, SB has come up with something weird and cool and confounding.
Unlike the more gothic or cold wave or noisy leanings of much of the other stuff on the label, Simmons' record is a strange stripped down psychedelic folk missive, that sounds like it was broadcast from some other world, or other time.
Super spare and simple, mostly vocals and guitar, but fleshed out with layers of sound collage, and lots of effects. But unlike a lot of heavily effects laden music, Simmons manages to pile on the effects, without it becoming ABOUT the effects. Lots of reverb and multitracking results in a strange reedy, almost helium sounding main voice, often laid over Simmons' more natural gruff croon, the result is definitely magical, and mysterious, gorgeous druggy loner bedroom folk for sure, but infused with plenty of spaced out shimmer, and muted lysergic energy. If you can imagine a freaky, psychedelic, lost freak folk artifact, equal parts Sentridoh, Peter Grudzien and Ween (the latter mostly because of the processed helium vox), you might get a rough idea of what Honeysuckle Tendrils sounds like, but it's so much more than its influences or whatever references we can come up with. Recorded 10 years ago, and released in a micro edition of almost none, Honeysuckle Tendrils is definitely a lost gem, emotional, intimate, haunting, pretty and definitely a bit twisted.
Fantastic packaging as with all Sacred Bones stuff, cool hand screened arigato style cardstock sleeve, with multiple mini printed inserts.

SIX FINGER SATELLITE A Good Year For Hardness (Anchor Brain) lp 14.98
2009 has been quite a year for noise rock legends Six Finger Satellite. First, long lost recordings from 2001 surfaced as the album Half Control. Now, a few months later, the recently reformed band has returned with its first new studio record, and goddamn it's good to have them back. Sad to say though, but the general response (EXCLUDING this one, of course) seems to be overwhelmingly lukewarm, and even all out negative in some cases. Even around here, the first thing people mention is how this doesn't sound like the Six Finger Satellite of old. Perhaps there is some truth to that claim (though why should it necessarily matter?), but repeated listens really dispel it. It's just that current 6FS is a little less focused on experimental noisiness and more into full on rocking, something they've always done well. It's funny how A Good Year For Hardness is pretty damn bluesy. Maybe some folks just don't dig it, but the big 6FS fans around these parts are definitely pleased. After all, it's not like this shit sounds like typical white boy blues rock that you hear at the county fair. Far from it. This is coked out mutant blues being beamed in from outer space. Mean, depraved blues made by guys who are old enough to step into this territory without embarrassment or any desire to be seen as cool in the eyes of today's indie rockers, who they probably don't even acknowledge. This band has always been ridiculously tight, and the new lineup is no exception. The songs exude a grooving, almost classic rock vibe with warm bass, cool backbeats, and muscular riffage. But then there is singer J. Ryan's trademark vocals, all pissed off and pretty scary, every once in a while punctuated by crazy distorted James Brown-styled screams. And yes, the synths are there, they are just used a bit more sparingly, but to awesome effect. Rarely is the band "quirky" here, but every once in a while, the synths just make everything really weird and almost funny if they weren't within such disturbing songs. A lot of the songs venture into dark, brooding psychedelic territory, almost like some jagged post-punk Doors (some may disagree with this, but whatever). This is probably best demonstrated on closing number "Rise," driven by a warm bass throb and a steady beat with occasional bursts of heavily vibratoed guitar chords. Throughout it, the creepy synths pop up here and there as the barely controlled intensity of non-sceaming J. Ryan scares you just a little more. Awesome.
So far this sonuvabitch is available as an lp only, but the turntable deprived can rejoice over the inclusion of a free download card.

STARVING WEIRDOS WITH TOM CARTER & SHAWN DAVID MCMILLEN Live At The Accident! (Blackest Rainbow) lp 24.00
Latest missive from our favorite Humboldt County free rock / freak noise / avant whatever dream duo the Starving Weirdos, here teamed up with Tom Carter of Charalambides and Shawn David McMillen, for two sprawling sides of slow burning blissed out ur-drone space raga. Which sounds as good as you might imagine. Dark and dense, swirling and whirling and creeping ominously through billowing clouds of slow motion string buzz, fractured melodies splitting into prismatic shards, drifting dreamlike through a haze of outer space bong smoke building to a gloriously soft cacophony, streaks of feedback, and sheets of high end wrapped around a warm pulsing and churning sonic core, all before slipping into something much softer and folkier, a slow slithery expanse of soundscapery, that sounds like a super subdued Wolf Eyes. And that's just the A side.
The second half of Live At The Accident! starts off all abstract and contemplative, the drones pushed way off into the distance, while the foreground is peppered with random crunch and clatter, what sounds like field recordings, buzz and glitch and hiss, which slowly sinks into the blackened morass, locking into a sort of lugubrious post industrial drift, the whole of the side like some late night wander through a ruined factory town overtaken by the forest, a living thing wrapped around the husk of something long dead, mysterious and haunting and ominous, but also strangely lovely, weirdly delicate, slipping from noisy muted crunch, to hushed reverent whisper, eventually disappearing into a strangely looped field of crackle and hum. Nice!

THROBBING GRISTLE Gristleism (Chrome) (Throbbing Gristle) battery operated soundbox 30.00
First black, then red, now CHROME (ok, chrome colored plastic)! Ooh, shiny!
Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it.
The outside sleeve is shiny chrome, gorgeously embossed, or debossed, on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom lettering is debossed into the silver, with the word Gristleism printed in black. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny chrome, the credits, the tracklisting, debossed into the silver then inside that is a small printed insert, black ink on thick black paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the shiny reflective chrome finished plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it.
Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil.
The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstasy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please?
The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box.
Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and now chrome. And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...

UCHIHASHI, KAZUHISA & TATSUYA YOSHIDA Improvisations Vol.3 (Magaibutsu) cd + dvd 17.98
This intense Japanese improv duo, featuring Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida and Altered States/Ground Zero guitarist Uchihashi Kazuhisa, has previously released a double cd (their debut, now out of print), and then a triple cd, and now their third release takes the form of a cd AND a dvd. And if you've got those other two documents, you know you want this too. On the cd, there's 21 more tracks of spasmodic drums vs. guitar interplay, as really only these two could do. On the (NTSC, all-region, pro shot/edited) dvd, you get to see as well as hear 'em doing what they do best, a complex improv collage of utter out-guitar grind, angular stabs and squibs and squiggles, snatches of Yoshida's trademark vocal warble, sudden shifts and synch-ups, syncopated rhythmic assaults, effects-freaked amp output, you want it, you got it!
Sure, on both discs here there's interludes of shimmering soothingness, and some sorta placid parts, but make no mistake, for the most part Improvisations 3 is nothing other than heavy and hectic, with crunching electric guitar doing contortions amidst the ridiculous rhythmic pummel the drums are dealing out. And as usual, hard to believe it's improv, it's got the energy and spontaneity but also so many cool riffs and runs how could they made it all up on the spot, and so telepathically too?! If Yoshida sounds like he's got like eight arms, and Uchihashi about fourteen fingers, as a duo it's like they share one brain. One very insane brain.
MPEG Stream: "track 2"
MPEG Stream: "track 3"
MPEG Stream: "track 8"

V/A Alan Lomax In Haiti 1936-1937 - Recordings For The Library Of Congress (Harte Recordings) 10cd box / 2 x book / map 134.00
This long in the works collection finally sees the light of day. The long lost Haiti recordings, gathered by the legendary Alan Lomax, who made these recordings over the span of about a year, from 1936 until 1937, when he and his wife were documenting music and rituals for the Library Of Congress. Recorded direct to aluminum disc (a total of over 500 discs), these recordings had been unheard by the public, ever since. The original recordings have been painstakingly restored, and they sound fantastic, most of the noise stripped away, without losing any of the music, and if anything, according to the compilers, the music sounds even better now, and closer to the sounds Lomax was actually hearing when he originally recorded these.
It's a pretty overwhelming collection, that invites hours and hours of listening, which we think most folks will happily offer, once they get just a glimpse of the sounds within, from street musicians, to children's songs, far out jazz to dreamy vocal music, classical piano to angelic torch songs, voudou worship to big band, just check out the samples for a little taste, an incredible collection of sounds, which have gone almost completely unheard for the last 70 years!!
Anyone into field recordings, and world music, if you dig the Sublime Frequencies series, the Yaala Yaala series, the Ethiopiques series, this music is amazing, another long overdue glimpse of a people and place, and their music, and that music says so much about the time, the life in Haiti, the politics, and how the rest of the world felt about Haiti, you can hear the influences of various musics from all over the world, the music here is more than just music, it's a sonic exploration of a time and a place, and the sounds are so evocative, they almost transport the listener body and soul. Fantastic!!
The box is gorgeous too, a linen covered hard box, printed on the cover, with a faux Haitian stamp, as if Lomax had mailed this box to you personally for safekeeping. Inside the cover is a pocket containing a reproduction of Lomax's Haiti journal, filled with reproductions of his actual notes, observations, drawings, photos and diagrams. The liner notes are housed in a gorgeous hardcover book, all the songs and artists, photos, lyrics, everything. The cds themselves are housed in another little linen covered miniature hardcover book, with printed paper pockets inside, just like a miniature version of the sleeves that old 78s were stored in. Then there's a reproduction of Lomax's Haiti site map, complete with his scrawled notes, and finally, a few photos, as if whoever sent the box, decided to include some snapshots. And all the various books can be removed with the ribbons attached to the inside of the box. Stunning. There's also some film footage, and there's just so much more.
Needless to say, so so so recommended!!!
MPEG Stream: SURPRISE JAZZ "Mesi Papa Vincent"
MPEG Stream: ZORA NEALE HURSTON "Bama Bama"
MPEG Stream: LES ASSASSINS "Se Konnen, Yo Pa Konnen Ou"
MPEG Stream: STUDENTS OF L'ECOLE NORMAL "Deye Mon-la, ann prale we"
MPEG Stream: LOUIS FORVILICE & GROUP OF HAITIAN MEN "A la trois ans dans la prison"
MPEG Stream: SOSYETE DJOUBA "Viv o, m rele gouvene"

V/A Every Noise Has A Note (Trensmat) cd 14.98
No way around it, this is an amazing comp, culled from limited the singles Trensmat released over the last three years, just check out the lineup: Circle, White Hills, Telescopes, Bardo Pond, Cave, Heavy Winged, Astral Social Club, The Shining Path, Area C, Cheval Sombre, Mugstar, and Magnetize, probably couldn't assemble a more bad ass, or more aQ sounding comp if we tried! But, the bummer is, that this collects only ONE song from each single, which while keeping the 7"s special, and relevant, it is sort of a bummer, might have opted for a double disc with ALL the songs, plus a few of these tracks are taken from the series Trensmat did of bands covering Hawkwind, complete with killer Hawkwind style cover art, seems weird to pluck one or two at random, when that series was begging for a proper cd release with ALL the covers, but really, small complaints, once you dig into this comp, and niggling doubts will be quickly washed way by all the amazing tripped out sonics contained within. Some highlights include:
The Telescopes deliver a droning, buzzing raga-like dreamscape, flitting bird-like flutes that swirl and float over a blackened drift of guitar rumble and pulled apart riffs, until the drums kick in, and then it's like you've been launched into space, a full on drug drenched, FX heavy psychedelic space rock jam, with a thick bassy organ groove, wild flutes and effects EVERYWHERE. Dirge-y and groovy and dreamlike.
White Hills ditch much of their usual spaceiness for something a bit harder, and tackle Hawkwind's "Be Yourself" with crunchy chugging guitars, pounding drums, wild tangles of distortion drenched leads over the top, the band not so much covering the original, as transforming it into an endless psychedelic hard rock loop, the band churning and grinding out a steady stream of psychedelia over that endless main riff, before drifting off into a cloud of glittering soft psych shimmer.
Mugstar's track is a super synth heavy, weird sort of post punk noise rock, almost kind of mathy, a bit like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, which intensifies until it explodes into wild psychedelic squalls of acid fried synths and freaked out guitarnoise.
Circle's track finds them at their most stripped down, the drums and guitars locked into a constant loop, the bass following right along, so mesmerizing and seemingly endless, the vocals a barely there whisper, while off in the distance lurk all manner of random clatter and mysterious percussive events. Right in the middle there's an awesome stumbling atonal guitar 'solo' before the band slips right back into that same groove.
Bardo Pond add female vocals to their take on Hawkwind's "Lord Of Light", the vocals drifting ethereally, over a roiling black cloud of FX drenched guitars and some seriously pounding drums, even a bit of flute (we think), and maybe more than any of the others managing to meld the sound of the original with their own, plenty of wah wah guitar, loads of effects, most of the track spent drifting through space, cloaked in blown out super distorted psych guitar and shimmering outer space ambience. Surprisingly heavy and totally blissed out.
Cave contribute "Machines & Muscles" with its Circle-like guitar groove, some hand drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings and smears of soft effects in the background, the drums get a little more obtuse, a bit busier, but that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get ALL tripped out, distorted, effects drenched, swinging from speaker to speaker, dizzyingly tripped out, and then finally, the drums kick in proper, and we're in total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper, the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer.
Astral Social Club surprised us with their jam, total minimal house music, sort of. The main beat a stripped down pulse and squelch, with synthy basslines, and some haunting disembodied piano drifting over the top, making for a truly creepy mash up. Maybe one of our favorite Astral tracks ever!
The Shining Path's contribution is seriously rocking, the drums and bass locked into a motorik groove, while the guitar, super distorted and blown out, spits out riffs in sudden bursts, eventually coalescing into one constant stream of psychfuzz, pelted by fragments of super effected vocals, strange little squalls of FX, and then the bass gets all dubbed out, bouncing back and forth beneath the buzz and fuzz.
We could go on, but why bother, this collection is pretty fucking kick ass, here's hoping they decide to do a second volume that gathers up the rest of those 7"s tracks, but hell, for now, this is definitely hitting the spot.
MPEG Stream: ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB "Ginnel"
MPEG Stream: THE SHINING PATH "Lonely Hearts"
MPEG Stream: CAVE "Machines And Muscles"

V/A Noise vs. Subversive Computing (Computationally Infeasible) usb stick 21.00
We kind of always wondered why more people didn't do a release like this sooner. Not a cd or an lp or a tape, but a little mini usb drive, packed with sights and sounds, for this particular releases much more appropriate as it's a collaborative project, in which Noise / Experimental Artists go head to head with Subversive Technologists aka Computer Hackers. Ten from each group were asked to contribute a piece of work, which could be anything, music, sound art, images, text, a video, even software, anything that could be converted to binary! The musicians had the theme of "Subversive Computing" while the hackers had "Noise" as theirs. A pretty rad concept for sure, and the result is pretty cool. Most of the songs are in FLAC form, so you'll have to have the appropriate decoder installed. Most of the bands were new to us, although some familiar names popped up: Sarah's Charity, Francisco, Lopez, Family Battle Snake, the sounds are all over the map, from drone to glitch to 8-bit to, well, you get the drift, it's a strange comp, but definitely cool.
Then there's the subversive computing portion, which is super interesting, but for the Luddites it might be hard to figure out what to do, and / or what the various programs do. From hiding information in noise music, sample generating software (we think), producing transcripts of random audio, generating a rainbow of sound out of the colors of noise, bitmapped chaos, a poem about noise, a video depicting the visual representation of noise, software that uses hacking to create art, a project that creates awareness of the controversial and incomprehensible privacy policies on the net, and more!
Definitely need to spend some time at home, listening, and reading, and exploring, all of these digital goodies are housed in a cool, printed mini usb drive, with a strap, so you can wear it around your neck!
Noise freaks, weirdo sound obsessives, computer nerds, and everyone in between, should definitely check this out!!

V/A The BYG Deal (B-Music / Finders Keepers) cd 15.98
For a lot of us, buying comps and reissues and stuff put out by Finders Keepers / B-Music is pretty much a no-brainer. These folks know their stuff. They can DJ for us anytime! So mentioning that The BYG Deal is the latest from 'em might be all we need to say, though dropping some names like Brigitte Fontaine, Jean-Claude Vannier, Daevid Allen & Gong, Giorgio Gomelsky, Robert Wyatt, Vangelis, Ame Son, and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago couldn't hurt. Or perhaps a name like Inter-Groupie Psychotherapeutic Elastic Band - never heard of 'em before, no, but they've gotta be good, right!!? (And they are, their track "Floating" anyway being a blissful bit of la-la-la space psych ceremony).
What we have here is a collection of tracks released by France's BYG, a post '68 radical rock/jazz label that flourished 'til about 1974. We'd heard of 'em before mainly in conjunction with the famed BYG/Actuel series of African-American jazz releases, stuff by the Art Ensemble, Don Cherry, Sunny Murray, etc. But this disc demonstrates that BYG (which according to one graphic here stands for Beautiful Young Generation, though elsewhere we're told it's the initials of the three label owners) was as much about psychedelic pop rock and groovy "hairy funk" as it was about avant-garde free jazz... an awesome blend in our opinion, and blend they do, some of these tracks really hard to classify. Maybe it's the "Total Space Music" of which they speak. In any case, whatever discotheque played this stuff must have been REALLY hip and happenin'.
The music here is almost all super groovy, but often quite quirky too (take Gong's circusy nursery rhyme freakout "Hip Hypnotise You" for instance!), these various tracks loaded with flute, orgasmic female vocals, heavy psych guitar, and equally heavy prog organ (running wild alongside frenetically shuffling drums on Vangelis' "Stuffed Tomato", for example, among many standout spots here). From chanteuse Valerie Lagrange's ye-ye grooves to the poppy psychedelic stomp of Coeur Magique to Banana Moon's Beefheartian crunt, this is pretty far out and awesome.
Here's the complete lineup of artists appearing here: Alice (2 tracks), Francois Wertheimer, Brigitte Fontaine and Areski, Gong (3 tracks), Alan Jack, Couer Magique (2 tracks), Valerie Lagrange, Jacques Barsamian, Alpha Beta, Ame Son (2 tracks), Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Freedom, Vangelis, Paul Semana, Inter-Groupie Psychotherapeutic Elastic Band, Banana Moon, Joachim and Rolf Kuhn. Yep, the disc is crammed, 22 tracks, almost 80 minutes, and the thick cd booklet is equally full up with full color graphics and extensive liner notes, it's amazing the compilers could dig up so much info on this stuff, considering how obscure a lot of this is, but that's their biz!
There's a few tracks you could have run across elsewhere on other reissues, but most of 'em you haven't, that's for damn sure. For instance, the awesomely named track "Astral Abuse" from the rare 7" by Alpha Beta, a one-off Vangelis project. And there's plenty more from other collector's-only, never before on cd sources.
If you liked other B-music compilations like Andy Votel's Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, this ought to be right up your alley. Likewise if you enjoyed the two Pop Made In France comps we've listed, this is a bit like those (some of the same artists appear, in fact) but way weirder. And of course any fan of Jean-Pierre Massiera's strange productions is gonna find this of interest as well... in fact there's personnel connections to his Visitors project, and connections also to the likes of Magma and Aphrodite's Child for that matter.
Another keeper from Finders Keepers that's for sure, thankfully available domestically, complete with slipcover!
MPEG Stream: BRIGITTE FONTAINE AND ARESKI "Ca Va Faire Un Hit"
MPEG Stream: ALAN JACK CIVILIZATION "Ny Change Rien"
MPEG Stream: INTER-GROUPIE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC ELASTIC BAND "Floating"
MPEG Stream: JOACHIM AND ROLF KUHN "Bloody Rockers"

VAN WISSEM, JOZEF Ex Patris (Important) lp 22.00
A few of us were very lucky to catch Jozef Van Wissem's recent AQ instore where he played his new 13 Course Swan Neck Baroque Lute, a super long and intricately exquisite variation of the lute we've never seen before, that he wielded mightily, rocking out heavy metal guitar style, and also played whilst walking around the store like a medieval troubadour (check our blog for pictures!). While unfortunately it wasn't our best attended instore, Van Wissem played like it was, and we were graciously rewarded with an intimate and beautifully hypnotizing performance. NEXT time, don't miss him!
And that is what you will find with his latest (vinyl-only) release on Important, Ex Patris. On vinyl only (for now at least), Ex Patris (The Fathers) gives us four new tracks of gorgeous plucked string majesty. Building upon his repertoire of mirrored palindromic compositions, he focuses this release on layered and repeating melodies rather than sparse reductions of past releases. At times, we wonder if he might be using overdubs, something we haven't noticed before in his recordings or if it is just that his new lute offers more depth and range than the ones he used in the past. Hard to tell, but oh so easy to become seduced by its magnificent spell!

VILLAGE OF DEAD ROADS Desolation Will Destroy You (MeteorCity) cd 11.98
Brutal. Beautiful. Brut-iful? it's album number two from Erie, PA's heaviest hitters Village Of Dead Roads (who are one of the "Neur-Isis" crowd's best kept secrets). We dug their debut from a few years back quite a bit, and now on this sophomore release they've unleashed another advanced lesson in sludgecore sonics. Although actually this album is a bit less "experimental" than their first one, dropping the ambient sampling stuff and maybe getting a bit MORE metal, including some rather melodic metallic guitar soloing. There's lots of cool parts, every song with something interesting/artistic to offer musically. Every song also utterly destroying you with its heaviness and aggression, via punishing drums, churning riffs, and throat-shreddingly screamed vokills. Yet, they also manage to incorporate moments of melancholic moodiness inbetwixt the crushing parts, without wimping out or being too post-rock predictable. What we're trying to say, is it doesn't get boring, the way some albums in this genre do (though it may not always fit your mood, for instance if you're, like, happy, and want to remain so).
Heartily recommended to fans of other bands from that Neur-Isis axis! And anything from Eyehategod to Samothrace, Cavity to Cult Of Luna, Black Cobra to Snowblood... Not sure why they haven't become better known, they're as good or better than most, though this might be their final release anyway, not sure, apparently the Village's population is down to just the guitarist/vocalist and the drummer now, both of whom are also in a new (two-piece) band called Cotton Candy, a name which you won't be surprised to learn does NOT describe their sound at all...
MPEG Stream: "Our Cold War"
MPEG Stream: "Chemical Restraint"
MPEG Stream: "Halo Becomes A Noose"

VOLCANO SUNS All-Night Lotus Party (Merge) cd 13.98
Been meaning to review these for ages now, finally getting around to it, the first two records from this legendary Boston band, originally released on the legendary and now defunct Homestead Records label, and who are often compared to Husker Du and Mission Of Burma (the band that drummer / vocalist Peter Prescott played in before the Volcano Suns), the latter especially appropriate since Prescott's drumming was a big part of MoB's sound, as was his occasional singing, and it definitely sounds like some of Burma's songwriting stuck with him.
But Volcano Suns were much more of a pop band, meant to be more fun and a little bit more light hearted than Burma, the songs catchy, the riffs super memorable, but that doesn't keep much of the music from being brooding and intense and complex, super rhythmic, and hypnotic, with long instrumental passages butted up against super catchy choruses, like the Merge website says, these songs are so good, and so memorable, that they really do sound like greatest hits records. We hadn't listened to either of these in ages, but throwing them on recently, we remembered pretty much all of these songs, 20 years later! And they still sound pretty fresh considering how much indie rock has changed over the last two decades.
All-Night Lotus Party was the band's second record, originally released in 1986, and found the band getting a bit darker, and a little more aggressive, the guitars heavier, but without sacrificing any of the pop smarts that made the first record so awesome, and like that record, pretty much every song here is a could have/should have/would have been hit. Catchy as all get out, but super rocking and intense.
This is the first time either of these records has been available on cd. This reissue includes a ton of bonus tracks, B-sides, etc., including some really odd covers, including the Beatles' "Polythene Pam", the Amboy Dukes' "Journey To The Center Of The Mind" and Leonard Nimoy's "The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins"(!!)...
MPEG Stream: "White Elephant"
MPEG Stream: "Cans"
MPEG Stream: "Room With A View"

VOLCANO SUNS The Bright Orange Years (Merge) cd 13.98
Been meaning to review these for ages now, finally getting around to it, the first two records from this legendary Boston band, originally released on the legendary and now defunct Homestead Records label, and who are often compared to Husker Du and Mission Of Burma (the band that drummer / vocalist Peter Prescott played in before the Volcano Suns), the latter especially appropriate since Prescott's drumming was a big part of MoB's sound, as was his occasional singing, and it definitely sounds like some of Burma's songwriting stuck with him.
But Volcano Suns were much more of a pop band, meant to be more fun and a little bit more light hearted than Burma, the songs catchy, the riffs super memorable, but that doesn't keep much of the music from being brooding and intense and complex, super rhythmic, and hypnotic, with long instrumental passages butted up against super catchy choruses, like the Merge website says, these songs are so good, and so memorable, that they really do sound like greatest hits records. We hadn't listened to either of these in ages, but throwing them on recently, we remembered pretty much all of these songs, 20 years later! And they still sound pretty fresh considering how much indie rock has changed over the last two decades.
The Bright Orange Years was the Volcano Suns first record, and was originally released in 1985, very reminiscent of Mission Of Burma, a killer collection of classic indie rock, equal parts that classic Homestead sound, with a little SST thrown in for good measure, the songs range from jangly and hooky, to dense and rocking, to noisy and chaotic, but all of them super catchy. We loved this record back in the day, and we're loving it all over again now.
This is the first time either of these records has been available on cd. This reissue includes a ton of bonus tracks, B-sides, etc., including a pretty cool live cover of Prince's "1999" that transforms the original into a weirdly angular post punk jam...
MPEG Stream: "Jak"
MPEG Stream: "Descent Into Hell"
MPEG Stream: "Truth Is Stanger Than Fishing"

VOLTAIC OMEN / FIRE ISLAND, AK Dweller On The Threshold (Condor Breeze) cassette 4.50
Ahhhh, yes, more Voltaic Omen, the one man black metal weirdo from the Pacific Northwest, who has been blowing us away with recording after recording of fucked up and fractured lo-fi what-the-fuck blackness. And it just keeps getting better, and weirder!
This time around Mr. VO is teamed up with a noisemaker called Fire Island, AK, who we'll get to in a second, but first, VO begins proceedings with a super creepy stretch of processed ambience, all haunting minor key melodies, backwards cymbals, fractured loops, mumbly speaking in tongues vocals, it may be black metal, but it also sounds a bit like some of the super far out Teenage Filmstars stuff. Then all of a sudden, the track kicks in, and it sounds like it's being broadcast from a speaker atop a pole, down the street, murky and muddy and lo-fi, but with a strange clattery, almost Muslimgauze sounding rhythm laid over the top, before slowing down and tripping out, and transforming into some sort of doomic black ritual, slow pounding percussion, groaned vocals, distant tarpit riffing, haunting minor key melody, super hypnotic.
Fire Island, AK, who we'd never heard before, are way more of an experimental free noise outfit, exploring textures and tempos, patterns and layers, reverbed electronic squiggles wrap around bits of scrape and glitch, looped and repeating, gradually growing more dense and frantic, never quite attaining total Merzbowian overload, which is a good thing, even at its most impenetrable and chaotic, there still lurks some texture and rhythm, giving form and propulsion to could otherwise become pure noise. Cool stuff for sure. Buy this for the Voltaic Omen, stick around for the Fire Island. Definitely recommended.
Cool full color inserts, photocopied insert, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, each one stickered and hand numbered!!

XENO & OAKLANDER Sentinelle (Wierd) cd 11.98
Situated somewhere near Cold Cave, Zola Jesus, and Blank Dogs, Xeno & Oaklander offer another fantastic distillation of dark-eyed synth-pop from a previous decade. A duo comprised of Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride, Xeno & Oaklander eschew digital technologies in favor of analogue synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines, applying these instruments to the ghostly rhythmic electronics of minimal wave bands such as Absolute Body Control or Snowy Red. Less obtuse references would be early Human League, Xymox, and Depeche Mode; but no matter where you want to pin the influences, X&O are looking back to the European stylings of romantic electronica that dates somewhere between 1982 and 1986. Like Cold Cave, Xeno & Oaklander have made an appearance at the No Fun Festival in 2009, probably being one of the acts that some of the stalwart noiseniks must have hated because of their comparatively pretty songs.
There is something golden and polished to the mechanoid sequences and electrical rhythms on Sentinelle, which stands as the 'proper' debut album for Xeno & Oaklander after a cd-r micro-edition and some choice tracks on Wierd's [sic] first two collections of analogue electronic music. Throughout the album, sad electronic melodies are tightly bound around repetitive phrases and spry post-disco drum programming, with the vocals alternating between both McBride and Wendelbo (the latter singing in English and French). The album has the feel that it could be a stand in as a soundtrack to the silent film Metropolis, with its accompanying aesthetics of art-deco modernism tinged with noir shadows and gleaming bursts of reflected light. Despite the obvious allusions to the past, Xeno & Oaklander seem to have wedged themselves between all of their influences and mustered something that they can claim as their own. Very well done!
MPEG Stream: "4th Wall"
MPEG Stream: "Toho Picture"
MPEG Stream: "Rendez-Vous d'Or"

YETI #8 magazine 11.95
It always seems a new installment of this long running and beloved music and arts magazine / journal shows up right when we're working on the New Arrivals list, so as badly as we just want to curl up in a big warm chair and get lost in it, we're forced to finish the list before we can dive in, which is torture, cuz Yeti, every issue, is jam packed with fascinating articles, killer art, and super interesting interviews. And of course there's the accompanying soundtrack cd, always overflowing with amazing sounds.
Number eight offers up these delights: an interview with the legendary Jim Dickinson, an interview with Explode Into Colors, a cool collection of old time real photo postcards and an accompanying essay, an interview with Eliane Radigue, a piece on Bishop Perry Tillis, photographs of an abandoned amusement park in Japan, rediscovering the Johnny Mathis / Chic collaboration (!), a piece on Harry Partch, with lots of instrument photos, artwork by Nicole Eriko Amagai Smith, an article about sound makers Flower Electronics and King Capitol Punishment, artwork by Andrew Neyer, an interview with Zola Jesus, and plenty more.
As always the ads are all jammed into their own section in the back, so you can ignore them if you like, although there are plenty of exciting things to discover / buy. And then the cd, featuring mostly new and exclusive music from Ty Segall, Little Claw, Brown Recluse, Tyvek, Mantles, Bishop Perry Tillis, Inca Ore, Woven Bones, The Splinters, Jim Dickinson, Pete Swanson, The Moles, Vaselines and more more more. As always, RECOMMENDED!

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ADERLATING The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of Repression (Shadowgraph) cd-r 10.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
A quick glance at this, the first release from the strangely named Aderlating, will reveal some very telling clues, the record is called The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of Repression, the cover features a terrified figure, clad only in a bit of cloth, cowering from the darkness, and on the other side some sort of ritual that involves a naked woman with burning candles inserted in her ass, laying on an altar in front of mysterious cloaked figures. The songs are titled things like "Cut Off My Penis In Praise Of Black Satan", "Rope, Pig's Blood, Dead Flesh And Two Candles", "Death Knell" and "Doodstorm", so even before we get to the caustic gritty blackened filth on the disc, we're feeling a pretty heavy Gnaw Their Tongues vibe, which makes perfect sense as Aderlating is in fact another project by Gnaw mastermind Mories.
It's a little unclear what differentiates this from a proper Gnaw Their Tongues release, there's plenty of harsh black noise, rumbling mysterious drones, buried riffage and mysterious chanting, creepy almost choral sounding voices, pounding percussion, harsh hissing feedback, crumbling distortion, buzzing black metal guitars smeared into blurred buzzscapes, howling harsh vocals buried in the mix, static, whir, glitch, all doused in effects and buried under layer after layer of distorted noise and noisy distorted. Hell, even sounds like we're describing a GTT record. Fuck it, anyone into Gnaw Their Tongues, you're gonna want this, it could essentially be the new GTT record, the only difference we can hear really, is that it's a little more harsh, a little less orchestral, where GTT employed all sort of almost cabaret like sounds, Aderlating is a much more furiously aggressive and abrasive beast, but even amidst all the white noise and grinding feedback drenched distortion, there lurks all sorts of sonic mystery, be it buried melodies, haunting disembodied voices or fucked up fragmented loops. Needless to say, we dig it. Heavy and harsh and droney and dark and just what we needed to tide us over until the next Gnaw Their Tongues record...
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! We got about a quarter of those but judging by past Gnaw Their Tongues releases, those won't be around for long...
MPEG Stream: "Death Knell"
MPEG Stream: "Rope, Pig's Blood, Dead Flesh And Two Candles"
MPEG Stream: "Doodstorm"

AGENTS OF ABHORRENCE Character Dissection (Numerical Thief) 3" cd-r 11.98
BACK ROOM FIND! Last copies...
Not sure what it is about the number 9 but it somehow figures heavily into the mythos of these mysterious grindlords from Australia. Their first release was a super limited 9". This latest disc, another blown out blast of pummeling technical grind, is 9 songs packed into 9 ultradense minutes. Hmmm. 9. 9. 9. Upside down is... 6. 6. 6. Ahem, anyway... As with all great grind, these guys pack more riffs and parts into 9 minutes than most bands can manage in an hour! 9 mini epics, each a dizzying squall of whirlwind riffs, shrieking vocals, chaotic drum splatter and a wall of low end that hits you like a block of concrete to the sternum. The guys in Whitehorse hipped us to these guys so you can get an idea of the sort of heaviness we're talking here. But where Whitehorse destroy with glacial malevolence, AoA annihilate with frenzied fury! Awesome.
Cool little 3" cd-r packaged in a deluxe oversized slim DVD case, with full color insert.
MPEG Stream: "Dead End"
MPEG Stream: "Heart(less)"
MPEG Stream: "Sleepwalker"

ASTRA The Weirding (Rise Above) 2lp 30.00
Now on nice thick (import) gatefold vinyl, like it belongs!
A while ago we found a cd-r by this mysterious heavy space rock band (they hail from San Diego as it turns out) and thought it was pretty cool. Probably should have tracked 'em down for the store, but never did, sorry. Thankfully however, Astra have popped up again, this time with a proper cd release on the English metal/doom/psych label Rise Above! (Issued domestically now by Metal Blade.)
Astra is for anyone into the sounds of prog rock yesteryear (i.e. a lot of AQ customers, and us!) especially of the more Floydian, spaced out variety loaded with Mellotron, Moog, Arp, and other tasty synthesizer wooshery. Some flute also makes an appearance which we always like. The eight epic tracks here very obviously hark back to bands like King Crimson and Yes (note the Roger Dean alike cover).
Astra's melodic vocals also sound quite authentically seventies, mellow and moody and sad, which feeds into the doomy feel you might expect from a Rise Above release, this is at least slightly doomy, in a very old school way, with the keyboards getting Uriah Heepish at times. And like we said, they're obviously fans of the band who arguably wrote the first ever metal and/or doom track, King Crimson, whose "21st Century Schizoid Man" predates even Black Sabbath. Speaking of metal, and keyboards, we might recommend this to those into the most recent, most proggy output of local avant metal fave Hammers Of Misfortune. And also to fans of other "young prog" acts we've listed, like England's Diagonal and Sweden's Gosta Berlings Saga. Everything old is new again, maybe it's not that "progressive" anymore in the truest sense of the word, but it's still a sound we like to hear, and bands like Astra and the others mentioned manage to keep the '70s prog spirit alive without seeming too cheesy or pretentiously ponytailed about it. It helps of course that it's on the heavy side, though not to the extent of our favorite San Diego heavy space prog act, Tarantula Hawk (whatever happened to them????).
MPEG Stream: "The Weirding"
MPEG Stream: "The River Under"

BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW Don't You Want To Be In A Cult (Mexican Summer) picture disc 21.00
Warehouse find (at a supplier of ours). The last few copies we're gonna see of this, we just got 5, so act quick...
Another tasty and colorful slab of vinyl from BMSR. No one delivers warm, warped and fuzzy melodic electronic jams better then these guys. We've fallen deeply in love with their sound over the last few years and they have yet to disappoint. This picture disc offers two great new instrumental tracks that showcase their slower and more warped and warbly side. Still filled with such delicious hooks but we love that these longer tracks allow them to space out and get a little more cosmic and psychedelic. It's still unmistakably BMSR, their signature sound all oozy and melty and drippy and druggy and divine...
The picture disc comes with a coupon for a free download, but you can't beat listening to this on your turntable and watching the colored wax spin around and around as you get lost in their catchy orbit. Very limited so jump on this while you can!

DECREPIT SPECTRE Coal Black Hearses (Paradigms) cd 12.98
This killer slab of grim gothy blasting blackness back in stock, perfectly coinciding with the review of the latest Code elsewhere on this week's list, read on...
Not sure how many of you remember the group Code, and their record Nouveau Gloaming, from maybe 3 or 4 years ago. A dizzying blend of blasting Norwegian style blackness a la Satyricon (circa Nemesis Divina) and Interpol, or at least some modern post Joy Division gothiness, and no small amount of Swans like doomic crush as well, oh and a bit of Khold like groove. That record destroyed us (and before you order it, we're not entirely sure it's even still available sad to say). We had been wondering though, quite recently in fact, what happened to Code, only to discover... a new Code record OUT NOW and reviewed elswhere on this week's list, and this little project right here: Decrepit Spectre. Featuring Code vocalist Kvohst, who also sings for Dodheimsgard, which should give you a clue as to what sort of blackened crooning to expect from Decrepit Spectre. The rest of the band is rounded out by some serious black metal muscle as well. Members of Ved Buens Ende, Manes and Seth among others.
We're happy to report that Decrepit Spectre basically sounds like Code mk. II, which is a very good thing indeed. A killer mix of frenzied blasting blackness, and moody brooding doom-ed gothiness. At its heaviest, sounding quite a bit like classic Satyricon, but maybe more than Code, DS is rife with those awesomely dramatic vocals, that definitely makes Coal Black Hearses sound like a black metal Interpol record, which as far as we're concerned is pretty much something we always fantasized about, or would have if it even seemed like a possibility. The arrangements are mathy and dense and complex, the riffs buzz and snarl, but there's also plenty of winding twisted guitar melodies, haunting harmonies, and the cool thing here is that even the loping gothy parts, are often underpinned by furious double kick drumming, and conversely, the flurries of vintage black buzz, are often wound around deep moaning sorrowful vocals. A strange combination, but one that still works, and still totally hits the spot for us. We were a bit bummed out by the later Dodheimsgard records, not sure what it was exactly, but THIS is exactly how we hoped those DHG discs would sound, super tech, post black metal, melodic and gloomy, mysterious and dramatic, but at the same time heavy as fuck, crushing and thrashing and pounding, with plenty of creeped out interludes, washed out woozy blackness, harsh hellish vox, insane relentless drumming and the occasional stretch of abstract psychedelic weirdness.
A bit of a bummer this is only 16 minutes long (just 3 tracks), but it definitely has us chomping at the bit for a full length.
Released on UK label Paradigms, who seemingly can do no wrong. A limited edition, but unclear just how limited.
MPEG Stream: "Graverider"
MPEG Stream: "Stranded Angels"

EXORDIUM In Wrath Principle (Northern Heritage) cd 15.98
BACK IN STOCK!
There's something about Finnish black metal that just kills us. Always. Every time. Horna obviously, but also Clandestine Blaze, Vordr, Ride For Revenge, Circle Of Ouroborus, Behexen, Satanic Warmaster, Jumalhamara... and as you can tell by that list, none of those bands really sound like any of the others, but still, they all somehow manage to sound distinctly Finnish.
However, within that expansive Finnish BM sound there is most definitely a distinct subset, one that is particularly grim and frosty and buzzy and blasting, furious and frenetic, which is where Exordium comes in.
Their s/t cd from a while back got short shrift here for some reason, but we did flip for their tracks on the Crushing The Holy Trinity comp. It may have been the first time we had heard them, and we described their sound thusly: "Super white hot hyperdistorted buzz guitar, lightning fast blast beats, killer riffs, the whole thing blown out and recorded so hot the speakers can barely handle it!" Which pretty much still applies, if anything the sound has just gotten more refined, tighter, more polished, but without losing any of their grimnity. Think maybe a little old Satyricon, a bit of early Immortal, some Beherit for sure, but all wound up and revved up and supercharged, even introducing a bit of Khold like groove here and there.
Pure buzzing blackened Northern darkness just the way we like it.
MPEG Stream: "Nocturnal King"
MPEG Stream: "Waste Confession"

GATES OF SLUMBER, THE Hymns of Blood and Thunder (Rise Above) 2lp 34.00
Now also on (import) gatefold vinyl!!
Much as their biggest literary inspiration, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian, rose from mere vagabond thief and freebooter to command armies and then become King, Midwestern underground doom sensations Gates Of Slumber seem to be set unerringly upon the path of glory, treading the jeweled thrones of Earth under their sandaled feet. Bigger labels, more press, they do seem way more popular than when we first encountered their obscure, import-only debut some years back. And while their rise in popularity is well deserved and awesome (couldn't happen to a doomier bunch of guys), it's also a bit of a surprise... who knew that there was such a healthy demand for their brand of true doom? Well there is, and The Gates Of Slumber deliver, overtly influenced as always by old school heavy metal, and metal-related things like weird pulp fiction and Frank Frazetta fantasy artwork (the song "Death Dealer" here is actually ABOUT a Frank Frazetta painting as a matter of fact).
Perhaps the sheer sincerity of these guys won people over. Plus for a heavy band into barbarian muscle-metal, they're remarkably emotional and sensitive seeming, their music often quite melodic and full of gloomy atmosphere. Also, they rock. The one-two punch of opening tracks "Chaos Calling", followed by "Death Dealer", is a bit of a shocker. Were Gates Of Slumber ever this speedy before? They almost sound like High On Fire, or Early Man. A killer NWOBHM/thrash mash. But, then, "Beneath The Eyes Of Mars" slows things down and gets way doomier, more like we were expecting, throwing in some subtle Dr. Who synths to boot, and that's when anyone new to TGOS can begin to appreciate the moody side to this band.
Their long standing allegiance to Saint Vitus is most evident on the Lovecraftian epic "Descent Into Madness" (the longest track here), while elsewhere they get into prog and folk just a bit, no really, there's even some female vocals on the penultimate track "The Mist In The Mourning", shades of Hammers Of Misfortune.
Don't worry, though this album has its acoustic interludes, and all-instrumental tangents, and sad singing and sweet soloing, they sound plenty tough too, ferinstance "The Bringer Of War" is a brute. And you gotta love "Iron Hammer", reprised from an early out of print ep, it's of those songs paying tribute to their influences with lyrics entirely composed of the titles to their favorite classic metal songs and albums.
Further pumped up with solid, Sanford Parker production, this is HEAVY metal that cannot be denied. Maybe we will see 'em on a (metal) magazine cover yet - Decibel did just make this album of the month in their new issue, with a 9/10 rating! And we can certainly see fans of High On Fire and The Sword enjoying this just as much as those into the more underground likes of Reverend Bizarre and Electric Wizard.
MPEG Stream: "Chaos Calling"
MPEG Stream: "Beneath The Eyes Of Mars"
MPEG Stream: "Iron Hammer"

IRON MAN I Have Returned (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
Here 'tis, the long awaited (with our review longer awaited still, perhaps) fourth full-length opus from a veteran Maryland doom metal band who have finally gone a bit beyond the obvious Black Sabbath emulation that their name suggests. Ok, they still DO sound a lot like Black Sabbath: current vocalist Joe Donelley was frontman for a Sabbath tribute band (and looks a fair bit like Ozzy, in one of his more bloated phases), and of course guitarist Al Morris III is an accomplished riffmeister who's known as "the African-American Tony Iommi" not just 'cause he's a black man who plays an SG and wears fringed leather jackets.
We've previously reviewed a reissue of this band's 1994 album The Passage, and if you liked that one, you'll probably like this, despite the, uh, passage of so many years since that one. The vocalist on that record had more of a Dio thing going on, though, but as we said the singer in their lineup these days is definitely an Ozzy disciple, without doing an outright impersonation all the time, so he's kinda in the mode of Wino.
This new album definitely -sounds- good (and HEAVY), with nice thick, almost slick production, the guitars full and fuzzy. As doom goes, this is on the uptempo side, and it's darn catchy too! Too bad Ozzy didn't simply hire these guys to write/record his last few albums for him (including the vocals!), the title track here for instance would easily be a radio hit, if only it had Ozzy's name on it, far superior to whatever computer-generated product the Oz-man has crapped out lately. Ah well, Ozzy's not doin' it, so Iron Man has to, even without hope of hits.
Sabbath/Ozzy fans open to a modern take on that trad sound, and heck grunge fans looking for something a bit more metal, should welcome the return of Iron Man.
MPEG Stream: "Curse The Ages (Curse Me)"
MPEG Stream: "Blind-Sighted Forward Spiral"
MPEG Stream: "Fallen Angel"

JANSCH, BERT A Rare Conundrum (Drag City) lp + cd 17.98
Now available on vinyl!
One of three simultaneous reissues of the mid-seventies records Bert Jansch made for the Charisma label. Never before issued on cd, each one remastered under Jansch's personal supervision with extensive liner notes, bonus tracks and extras.
A Rare Conundrum from1977, sees Jansch returning to England and back to a more stripped down acoustic sound after the ambitious folly of Santa Barbara Honeymoon. Charisma at the time was focussed on the new Phil Collins-led Genesis era and gave Jansch lots of room to find a new band and record a new record. Focusing on more traditional, personal, and back-to-basics material ("Pretty Faro", "The Curragh of Kildare"), A Rare Conundrum feels like the most lost and overlooked of the three Charisma records. The backing band Jansch put together for the recording (including members of Dire Straights, Lindisfarne, and Dando Shaft) couldn't obligate themselves to touring, so the album didn't get promoted at all. That's no surprise since it's rather anachronistically out of step with where popular music was heading (punk being the driving musical force at the time), and Charisma's year long delay on its release sealed the record's fate as well as Jansch's stint on the label, which dropped him without notice a couple of years later. The bonus tracks include three song that were included on the European releases of the record under another title before Charisma officially released this record to US markets. A lovely record that is finally getting its much deserved due!
MPEG Stream: "One To A Hundred"
MPEG Stream: "Doctor, Doctor"
MPEG Stream: "Lost Love"

JANSCH, BERT L.A. Turnaround (Drag City) lp + cd 17.98
Now available on vinyl!
One of three simultaneous reissues of the mid-seventies records Bert Jansch made for the Charisma label. Never before issued on cd, each one remastered under Jansch's personal supervision with extensive liner notes, bonus tracks and extras.
L.A. Turnaround from 1974 came out of a free-fall period between Pentangle's long-time-coming break-up and a label shake-up at Reprise records that found Jansch looking for new digs. He signed to the "Famous Charisma Label" (home of Genesis, Van Der Graaf Generator and Lindisfarne) whose boss Tony Stratton Smith sought to reinvigorate Jansch's solo glory from what he considered the din of the Pentangle years. Legend has it that Jansch was invited to stay at Smith's Sussex country house where he arrived after an all-night bender with John Martyn. When he awoke the next morning, he was introduced to Mike Nesmith (of Monkees fame), O.J. "Red" Rhodes (a renowned slide guitar session player) and Klaus Voorman at breakfast. Noticing a mobile recording studio set up outside as well as a small film crew, Jansch quickly realized he was supposed to start recording right then with Nesmith brought in to produce. Half-recorded in Sussex and then finished in Los Angeles, L.A. Turnaround is the rarest and most sought after of the Charisma recordings, as well as the freshest, and is most linked to Jansch's Brit folk heyday, yet with a warm rootsy sheen evoked by Rhodes' stellar slide guitar. Jansch even reworks one of his most popular songs, "Needle of Death", with an earthy production that adds an edge the original lacked. The bonus tracks include many alternate version of songs plus "In The Bleak Midwinter", a Christmas single produced by Ralph McTell. Beautiful!
The LP comes with a cd featuring four bonus tracks and a mini documentary of the making of the album.
MPEG Stream: "Open Up The Watergate"
MPEG Stream: "Of Love and Lullaby"
MPEG Stream: "Cluck Old Hen"

JANSCH, BERT Santa Barbara Honeymoon (Drag City) lp + cd 17.98
Now available on vinyl!
One of three simultaneous reissues of the mid-seventies records Bert Jansch made for the Charisma label. Never before issued on cd, each one remastered under Jansch's personal supervision with extensive liner notes, bonus tracks and extras.
British Folk meets West Coast folk-rock on this 1975 follow-up to L.A. Turnaround. Recorded in L.A. with a full on back-up band on a solo record for the first time, Santa Barbara Honeymoon is one of Jansch's more curious efforts. Perhaps that was due to the change in production crew (Nesmith didn't return to produce), but also may be due to the unlikely inclusion of a Dixieland Jazz ensemble on "Dance Lady Dance" as well as steel drums on "Baby Blue" (not the Dylan song!). While this was a financial and critical disappointment at the time, the quality of the songs still shine through, especially in the stripped down versions performed live at the Montreaux festival, included here as bonus tracks. It's one of those records that is very much of its time, but still a worthy touchstone in the context of bands like Vetiver, Fleet Foxes, and Two Gallants who continue to mine those warm seventies sunshine sounds.
The vinyl comes with a cd that features six bonus tracks not on the album!
MPEG Stream: "Blues Run The Game"
MPEG Stream: "Dynamite"
MPEG Stream: "One for Jo (live)"

LAUDANUM Coronation (Life Is Abuse) lp 19.98
Now on Vinyl!
All you really need to know about these Oakland sludge/doom merchants is what is being played, and what bands the various members hail from. So, how about Graves At Sea, Brainoil and Pig Heart Transplant for a heavy low ended pedigree? And what exactly is employed to create this gloriously grim racket? "Overdriven string corrosion, ambient texture and documentation", "battering ram and subsonic transmissions", "low end frequency discharge, vocal disruption and auditory experimentation" and of course "battery acid, bellows and blasphemy". So yeah, you know where these crushers are coming from. Crushing, punishing doom infused sludge, laced with thick black drones and buzzing abject industrial ambience, all blurred into a massive heaving blackened brutal sonic beast.
Beginning with some sort of alien soundscape, until huge sheets of white noise take over, you're not sure if you hear the sounds of a guitar or maybe just overwhelming electronic wind-like sounds, all strange and buzzing and creepy.
Finally, weird little bits of abstract keyboard buzz and drift before the band kicks in. And WHAM, super heavy and sludgey, like black tar heroin, but also Eyehategod groovy; Khanate vokills that almost exude a black metal vibe. Lots of negative space to make things tense and uncomfortable. A second singer bellows in his best Neurosis voice, the perfect foil for the other more high pitched yowl, all tangled up with a cool, but weirdly sour guitar lick, giving the track a much more twisted vibe.
The record slips from crushing doom, to dense blackened rumble and back again, inserting angelic choral vocals, strange blurred electronics, super intense subsonic feedback, the bass thick and gritty and dirty, the sound here, when the band is rocking, is not at all that far removed from Burning Witch or Zoroaster, but the band pepper their sludgy crush with gorgeous black drone interludes, which makes this more of an EP, only one of epic doom-ic proportions, which renders it an EP that just so happens to stretch out to 50 minutes. Bad ass.
MPEG Stream: "Invoke"
MPEG Stream: "Wooden Horse"
MPEG Stream: "Apotheosis"

MOJO December 2009 magazine + cd 9.99
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters is on the cover, providing an exclusive interview about The Wall, on that album's 30th anniversary. The cover-mounted bonus cd is part one of a two-disc Wall covers collection (disc 2 next ish), the track-by-track rerecording of the entire thing by (on this disc) such diverse bands as Papercuts, Ulver, and Astra!
Ok, don't care about The Wall? Well there's also stuff about / interviews with U2, Woody Guthrie, Gene Simmons of KISS, Norah Jones, Mott The Hoople, The Specials, and more. Plus all the usual columns and reviews and whatnot.

MORRISSEY Swords (Polydor) 2lp 29.00
NOW ON VINYL!!
Something happened to Morrissey when he moved to Los Angeles. It allowed him a new beginning of sorts. For the first time in his career he had dropped out of the limelight, he went almost seven years without releasing a record and for the first time since the beginning of The Smiths he really became a true underdog, and cult figure, gaining a revival of fans who maybe weren't around for the first, Smiths wave of Morrissey mania. When he finally returned with a new record, 2004's You Are The Quarry it really did feel like the triumphant second act to an already dramatic and amazing career. His two records since then have maintained that momentum and Swords collects many of the B-sides and non-album tracks from this era.
Many of us who are Morrissey fanatics had grabbed some of the import 7"s that some of these songs come from, which are arguably as strong as any of his album tracks. There's also tons on tracks, not even the most tenacious fans around here were ever able to get their hands on, and all of it has the urgent punch and full sound that his defined his music over the last few albums, which rank up there with some of his best stuff. So many others who once possessed such golden voices really lose it as they grow older, but it's remarkable how intact and spot on Morrissey's vocal delivery has remained. And his songwriting remains utterly clever, strong minded, emotional, political, self deprecating and moving. We really can't think of any of his peers from those early '80s days who have remained so vital in creating great music all these years later.
MPEG Stream: "It's Hard To Walk Tall When You're Small"
MPEG Stream: "If You Dont Like Me, Dont Look At Me"
MPEG Stream: "Shame Is The Name"

NURSE WITH WOUND Paranoia In Hi-Fi (United Dirter) cd 4.98
Here's a special sampler disc that was intended to sell for only 99 pence in the UK; but even with the horrible exchange rate and shipping costs, Paranoia In Hi-Fi is still a reasonable $4.98 on this side of the pond. BUT! There's a catch. You have to walk in the door of Aquarius and buy this disc in person! The idea that Nurse With Wound, Dirter Promotions, and Cargo Distribution collectively had, was to encourage the multitudes of Nurse With Wound fans and newcomers to get out into the independent shops and maybe purchase something else alongside this nicely priced cd... so no mailorder for this.
Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound has engineered this anthology as a teasing sampler into the wild and weird world of NWW, by collaging the tracks into a seamless mix and then splicing that collage into 79 separate tracks, making it downright foolish to rip this thing into mp3s. Yup, this is a mega-mix meant to be listened to from beginning to end. True to NWW form, it's a rollercoaster of dada cut-ups, splattered noise, horrifying ambience, post-krautrock jams, and psychedelically inclined musique concrete. We do hear bits from The Sylvie & Babs Hi-Fi Companion, Homotopy To Marie, the Stereolab collaboration, Alice The Goon, the hilarious NWW mash-up with James Chance, and the Inflatable Sideshow alter ego which appropriates Black Sabbath of all things. To all of these things, we here at Aquarius once again say "Thank you, Mr. Stapleton!"

PYRAMIDO Sand (Total Rust) cd 13.98
BACK IN STOCK!
Besides having an awesome logo, and killer creepy elephant cover art, these filthy Swedes have conjured up a seriously brutal, and weirdly groovy slab of sludge-y doom. Exploding out of a swirling storm of whipping winds that open the disc, these guys waste no time in getting down to it. IT being some gut punching, ear destroying heaviness. We were actually expecting something much less musical, much more abstract and slooooow, Moss, Bunkur, Khanate, that sort of thing, and while it does get downright glacial now and again, Pyramido mostly traffic in something much more groovy and stonery, think Electric Wizard, Church Of Misery, Cough, Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Green Machine...
In fact, Pyramido totally sound like they came straight out of New Orleans, that distinctly NOLA groove, but here that sounds is twisted up a bit, given a little blackness, a little crustiness, the songs stretched out a bit more, the groove not so much the focus as simply part of the sound, a sound that is a HUGE, churning, pounding, downtuned beastly thing. The guitars thick and corrosive, the drums a Cro-Magnon pound, vocals buried in the mix, always on the verge of cracking, a throat shredding howl, and within these blackly groovy, crust laden jams, lurk not only some serious hooks, but some fucking KILLER riffs, and although it doesn't make sense, music like this is often bereft of actual great riffage.
Slow, low, sludgy and brutal as fuck, by now it should be obvious if this is your cup of muck, it most definitely is ours...
MPEG Stream: "2 Years 8 Months 21 Days"
MPEG Stream: "Calculating Doom"

ROBERTS, ALASDAIR Wyrd Meme (Drag City) cd ep 12.98
Geez! Barely had we a chance to digest his last full length from earlier this year than Alasdair Roberts bestows another four tuneful tunes. He can't be stopped, and who'd want him to? Allow your ears within the gorgeous warming embrace of picked'n'plucked acoustic guitar, woozy droning harmonium and forlorn voice. On the surface, his Scottish folk numbers sound utterly traditional and slightly mystical, but delve a bit deeper and listen a bit longer and plenty of modern day sensibilities, details and instrumentation make their presence felt. Mind you, it's in the most tasteful and unassuming fashion. One thing though, the third track "The Royal Road At The World's End" is a bit of an oddity in this grouping, as well as in Roberts' body of work as a whole. It's unexpectedly energetic and fleshed out with a full band. It's a bit of a jolt, but dandy nevertheless. If you've never heard him, this is a fine place to start. Wyrd Meme truly is a wonderful standalone work, but it also makes a tasty appetizer for any and all of his previous full lengths. For the most part, hauntingly lovely!

ROBERTS, ALASDAIR Wyrd Meme (Drag City) 12" 12.98
Geez! Barely had we a chance to digest his last full length from earlier this year than Alasdair Roberts bestows another four tuneful tunes. He can't be stopped, and who'd want him to? Allow your ears within the gorgeous warming embrace of picked'n'plucked acoustic guitar, woozy droning harmonium and forlorn voice. On the surface, his Scottish folk numbers sound utterly traditional and slightly mystical, but delve a bit deeper and listen a bit longer and plenty of modern day sensibilities, details and instrumentation make their presence felt. Mind you, it's in the most tasteful and unassuming fashion. One thing though, the third track "The Royal Road At The World's End" is a bit of an oddity in this grouping, as well as in Roberts' body of work as a whole. It's unexpectedly energetic and fleshed out with a full band. It's a bit of a jolt, but dandy nevertheless. If you've never heard him, this is a fine place to start. Wyrd Meme truly is a wonderful standalone work, but it also makes a tasty appetizer for any and all of his previous full lengths. For the most part, hauntingly lovely!

SLAYER World Painted Blood (American) lp 25.00
C'mon, it's SLAYER!!! Does this even need a review? What if we said it was the heaviest and maybe best Slayer record in ages? There's never really been a -terrible- Slayer record really, there have been a few missteps, a stinker here and there definitely, and there was that one record that had rapping on it, oof, but for the most part Slayer have always ruled, and continue to reign supreme (and in blood!), and World Painted Blood definitely finds them sounding the best they have in a decade. The songs here are fierce and heavy and complex, catchy in that way only Slayer can pull off, wild squiggly leads, killer riffing, incredible drumming of course, and seriously some of the best Slayer songs in a while. The opening / main riff of "Psychopathy Red" sounds like it could have come straight off SOuth Of Heaven, the title track is another killer, total classic Slayer until about halfway through when the band slips into a crushing half time solo laced chug driven breakdown, "Snuff" explodes right out of the gate with a wild frenzied solo, which you rarely hear, the first 40 seconds are ALL SOLO, fuck yeah! "Beauty Through Order" is a chuggy dirge, with some insane drumming, a wicked hook (like "Dead Skin Mask"), and a weirdly proggy arrangement. We could go on, track by track, not a bad one in the bunch, which definitely hasn't happened in several Slayer records, and is well worth celebrating by blasting this as loud as you can and playing it over and over and over.
MPEG Stream: "World Painted Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Psychopathy Red"
MPEG Stream: "Snuff"

STROTTER INST. Live Act At Oblo (1000+1 Tilt) cd 12.98
BACK IN STOCK!
We've said it a million times, but it bears repeating, we love turntables, and scratchy records, and the sounds of both, we even (especially) love the sound of both with the music removed. Or at least most of the music removed. Fuzz and crackle and buzz and pop and warble and whir. All the sounds people try desperately to remove from their listening experience is exactly what we want piled on top of ours. In fact, all the crackle and surface noise that audio nerds discard, well, they should save it all up and bequeath it to us to sprinkle, dollop, pour, douse all of our music with. So it was really a no brainer that the debut cd from Strotter Inst. would be record of the week here at AQ (as it was just a few weeks ago). Strotter is the work of one man, Swiss turntablist / sound artist Christoph Hess, who takes old turntables, augments them with various wires and elastic bands, pieces of metal and all sorts of found objects, and then creates gorgeously Spartan symphonies of rhythm and texture using just the turntable and the stylus, no records at all. No music. The turntable becomes an instrument capable of more than just playing other peoples' music, it is a sound making device, an instrument as viable as any other. Although with a truly unique palette of sounds, reminiscent of some strange minimal electronica, albeit with a much more organic feel.
This disc captures a performance recorded live to minidisc at Oblo Cinema in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April of 2005. And is a gloriously hypnotic soundscape of glitchy beats, warm textural drones and strange low end strums, all locked into hypnotic loops, that slowly shift and drift in and out of sync as more turntables join the fray, or as the speeds of the turntables change, or as various implements shift. The set begins with a lush drone, difficult to imagine how it's produced, but it is warm and deep and quite organic sounding. Soon the sound of the reverberating bands are introduced, sounding a lot like some muted guitar, playing a simple low end figure, the notes coming faster and faster until the whole thing stumbles into a shambolic rhythm, a loping lurch, with occasional bursts of needle squelch, eventually settling into a dreamy motorik groove. The set seesaws back and forth between strange machinelike rhythms and stretches of drone and rumble. Right toward the end there is a burst of super distorted NOISE which slowly gives way to the final rhythmic groove, that slowly winds down, notes drifting off until all that is left is a single mechanical pulse. So nice.
Comes packaged in a cool cardstock sleeve with a little diecut circle perfectly above the hole in the center of the cd. More nods to the record and its design. The picture of Christoph Hess on the inside of the booklet looks like some old faded textbook photo of Einstein Or Edison, hunched over his machines, modified turntables in this case, a study of a quirky inventor, Strotter as the sound of antiquated machinery, of objects reassigned to new tasks, the tireless pursuit of technology recontextualization, only adding to the whole vibe of Hess' music being some recently unearthed or discovered scratchy, crackly sonic artifact.
MPEG Stream: "Live Act At Oblo"

VON IVA Girls On Film (Stickfigure Recordings) 12" 12.98
Have to admit, we were a bit disappointed to find out that these ladies didn't bust out a cover of Duran Duran's saucy early hit on their latest 12" of the same name. Instead we s'pose they're maybe giving a hearty nod to their recent activities (you might've spotted them in the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man?). They've honed their party and playing chops plenty from heaps of touring, and the trio packs quite a wallop... not to mention a soulful stomp and a tribal thump. This ep features six songs - three new ones and three from their 2007 full length Our Own Island!

WAVERLY HILLS The Nurse (Faunasabbatha) cd-r 10.98
ANOTHER BACK ROOM FIND! Last copies ever...
In a world full of tiny labels, it takes a lot to stand out, whether it's some amazing and mysterious sounds or super unique and hand made packaging. And if anything RuralFaune as shined in both respects, a crazy collection of some of the weirdest noisemakers in the world, and some seriously amazing, and in many cases, fragrant, packaging. Hand printed, painted, folded, pasted, held together with string or wire, often filled with branches or flowers, scraps of paper, seeds or bits of plant matter, many of them very strong smelling, all of them amazing.
Well, Bruno, the man behind RuralFaune, was really getting into heavy music, and decided that maybe RuralFaune was not the place for such musics, so he started FaunSabbatha, a new label dedicated to heavy, creepy, dark music, metal, metallic, or just plain evil. Four new releases, each one outrageously limited, gorgeously hand packaged, and gone before you know it.
Any band that thanks funeral doom horde Rigor Sardonicous is alright by us. Especially if RS are one of the only four entities thanked. One being the label, the other being one of the other bands featured amidst this recent spate of Faunasabbatha releases, Sorc'Henn.
So what comes of an unhealthy love/obsession with Rigor Sardonicous, how about a creepy, ultra sick, noise drenched slow motion doom crawl? Downtuned, and lurching, stumbling and heavyheavyheavy. After a brief intro, all mournful windblown twang, a spidery latticework of spare, sorrowful melodies, plucked out over a whirling expanse of emptiness, comes the filthy, crusty, noisy multiple o'd doom. But sonically, Waverly Hills don't so much resemble funereal doom, as they do, modern noise rock, or Japanese ultra psych. The guitars are caustic coruscating streaks of blurred buzz, unleashed in heaving waves, while much of the band's time is spent crawling doomlike through a field of sonic broken glass, the guitars spend most of their time erupting in squalls of near white noise that sound like Keiji Haino fronting the Dead C. Thick clouds of whirling buzz, deconstructed riffage, super abstract percussion, the vocals a subsonic rumble, a blurred low end gurgle (except when it's a haunting ghostlike falsetto!) underpinning the soaring and drifting slabs of buzz overhead. Imagine doom metal being pulled apart, the notes and chords and riffs being rent asunder, the resulting squall still dark and doomy, by way more tripped out and damaged.
So yeah, you doooooooomlords will definitely dig this, especially if you lean toward stuff like Moss and Khanate and Bunkur and of course Rigor Sardonicous, but it might be even more appealing if your cup of tea is abstract psychedelic noise a la Sunroof!, Total, Dead C, White Heaven, etc...
LIMITED TO 74 COPIES, hand numbered on a tattered, torn piece of cloth, with the Faunasabbatha logo stamped on there as well, in a paper sleeve held shut wit a piece of metal wire.
MPEG Stream: "The White Plague"
MPEG Stream: "In The Hallways"

WAX POETICS Issue #38 magazine 9.99
Curtis Mayfield lookin' superfly on the cover. Inside, a bunch of stuff on blaxploitation films. Also, David Holmes, Iceberg Slim, animator Ralph Bakshi, Library Music, and tons more interesting funky stuff. It would seem this is Wax Poetics' special cinema issue or somethin'. As always, great to read and just to look at, lots of vintage album cover art in full color in here to drool over. Right on.

WIRE, THE #311 January 2010 magazine 9.98
2009 REWIND! The Wire's annual end of year issue, with their big list of Record Of The Year (do you have 'em all? One of this week's AQ Records Of The Week comes in at #2, guess which one), and various writers' and musicians' reflections on the year that was.
Plus: Monolake, Janek Schaefer, Josephine Foster, and plenty more. As always, maybe especially this issue, essential reading for the musically obsessed (you probably!).

WOODEN SHJIPS Contact (Mexican Summer) 12" 21.00
Miraculously, one of our suppliers found us a few of these, just a handful (7), we grabbed 'em all, act quick if you still need one!!
The first sighting on anything Wooden Shjips related is usually all it takes to induce mass hysteria around these parts. Apparently, you, our loyal customers, feel the same, because man, we have sold a fuckload of Shjips records. We just can't get enough, and these guys deliver without fail every time. And now, right after their amazing Dos record, comes yet another offering, a two song 12" single featuring a Serge Gainsbourg composition, originally written for and performed by Brigitte Bardot, and a new version of "I Hear The Vibrations", which first appeared on the group's insanely limited Vampire Blues tour 7".
It's doubtful that anyone expected Wooden Shjips to go all French pop on us here. They don't. Instead, "Contact" sounds like the Wooden Shjips we all know and love, with warm bass grooves holding the foundation over a cool, midtempo drum beat with a nice tambourine accent. Bursts of filtered fuzz and wah guitar bubble and whoosh about as the organ pulses rhythmically, and the vocals, sung in French, add the perfect amount of mystery to this hazy rocker.
As awesome as "Contact" is, it's the flipside that really has everyone here going crazy. Why? Because "I Hear The Vibrations" is simply one of the coolest Wooden Ships songs to date, that's why. The song somehow manages to be both mellow and cosmically heavy, not in a typical "heavy" way, just... huge. It's a lumbering behemoth of hazed out stoner majesty that would go on forever if we had our way. To anyone - "anyone" being pretty much the majority of the human race - who hasn't heard this one yet, you'll just have to trust us. It's fucking essential. The few of you who actually got a hold of the 7" will also find a reason to snap up this son-a-bitch, because the version presented here (the "E-Z Version" according to the credits) is definitely the way to go. To quote the Mexican Summer website, it is " slower, grander, heavier, and dreamier, and takes full advantage of the 12" format for better fidelity and a truly blissful listening experience." Yep, pretty much. It's everything that was great about the song to begin with, but MORE of it in every conceivable way. Sooooooooooo so awesome.
But, like most things of this nature, and like everything on Mexican Summer, this is super limited, with only a scant 550 copies to be distributed throughout the globe (though we're told there will be second, equally limited pressing done soon). It also comes with a download card, but really, the best way to listen to this is stoned in your room with the lights on low and the stereo cranked all the way, not on your iPod on a crowded bus. The record itself, pressed on asskicking white vinyl, comes housed in a cool disco sleeve that was printed on a variety of colors. We just hope everybody likes green.
Once again, we can't recommend this band highly enough. When you listen, you'll realize that Wooden Shjips have done all the thinking for you and given you exactly what you wanted. Did we mention this was limited? Ready. Set. GO!!!!

XASTHUR All Reflections Drained (Hydra Head) 2cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
Originally released on cassette, then on vinyl, now finally available on cd, including a bonus disc of unreleased tracks and sonic experiments. Packaged in a cool dvd style digibook. Here's what we had to say about the album proper, skip to the end for more on the bonus disc...
FINALLY, a new record from Xasthur, aka Malefic, a one man doom-ed depressive black metal machine, whose last release, Defective Epitaph was a huge hit around these parts, due in no small part to the shift from drum machine to actual drums, no programmed beats, actual kit bashing rhythms courtesy of Malefic himself, and the result was pretty stellar, creating a sound even more raw and murky and lo-fi than past efforts, but no less bleak or introspective or amazing. So now comes All Reflections Drained, and it's very much a continuation of Defective Epitaph, from moment one, the sound boomy and reverb drenched, echoey and WAY lo-fi, loping doomy guitars, stumbling midtempo drums, and then WOAH, the sound shifts, and the drums double time it under a layer of thick low end dramatic piano, creating some strange Skepticismy drift, over the relentlessly buzzing blackness below. The mix is REALLY weird, fractured and gloriously fucked up, the sounds shifting and merging into one another, the songs too, woozy and warped and seasick sounding and a bit waltzy, the drum sound super raw and distant and for the most part buried in the mix, minus some flurries of kick drum that practically explode. The guitars are washed out and melancholic, lumbering doomily through hazy clouds of muted buzz and soft focus hiss, lots of creeped out ambience, and dark soundscaping, way less of a focus on vocals, in fact several songs in, and we barely noticed any, minus some far off clean crooning and some rumbled mutterings, the usual blackened harsh rasps seemingly lost in the swirling off kilter mix.
If anything this record is a logical extension of the direction Malefic had been taking the sound of Xasthur, like a Defective Epitaph part two maybe, but somehow quite a bit doomier, and WAY weirder, more spaced out and experimental, with a serious focus on dark brooding non-metal parts, hints of slowcore and drone abound, some parts are downright orchestral, and the sound is definitely even murkier and mysterious than ever, dripping with buzz and tape hiss, blown out low end (that sounds like a tuba or something similar) and thick crumbling distortion, but fear not troo grim hordes, it's still plenty depressive and dolorous, minor key and epic, miserable and moody, gorgeously buzzy and bafflingly brilliant.
It's unclear exactly what the material on the bonus disc actually is, or where it came from. The booklet only offers these cryptic words: "This is simply a bonus disc. Nothing more. It has very little to do with the album 'All Reflections Drained.' Experimenting in between the chapters... that's what these songs are. Sme are literally exclusive. Some are not." Okay then. To our ears, it sounds like the perfect addendum to All Reflections Drained. Still murky and muddy and buzzy and blurry and doomy, a few of the tracks are weridly crunchy and gritty, one has what sounds like strings, making it sound like some weird black metal Sigur Ros or something, but then of course quickly crumbles back into filthy blackness. There's some cool acoustic ambience, very cinematic and soundtracky (this stuff would make a KILLER soundtrack for some avant horror thriller!), there's a bit of practice space pound, all stumbling lurching minimalism, some seriously creeped out guitarscapery, and more of that blackened post rock that has been creeping into more and more Xasthur jams. It almost plays like a proper disc 2, as in, not a bonus disc of odds and ends, and more a second half of All Refelctions Drained, and there are at least a couple of songs here that sound as good as if not better than anything on the first disc. Which means, everyone who bought the tape, or the 2lp, are probably gonna have to buy this too...
MPEG Stream: "Dirge Forsaken"
MPEG Stream: "Maze Of Oppression"
MPEG Stream: "Concealed Barren Thoughts (Bonus)"

XLR8R #130 Nov/Dec 2009 magazine 4.99
On the cover, Bristol dubstepper Joker, one of XLR8R's 2009 faves, along with The Field, Martyn, Hudson Mohawke, and Holy Ghost! Inside, also: Nite Jewel, Fuck Buttons, DJ Koze, A Place To Bury Strangers, HEALTH, and more.







----*
----* DVD's :
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GALLHAMMER Ruin Of A Church (Peaceville) dvd 17.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
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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----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed :
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If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart!

AMAZING, THE "Code II" (Mexican Summer) 12" 16.98
ANIMAL HOSPITAL "Memory" (Barge) lp 21.00
ANTI-POP CONSORTIUM "Fluorescent Black" (Big Dada) cd/2lp 15.98/23.00
ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL (VH1 Films) dvd 28.00
BLACK BREATH "Razor to Oblivion" (Southern Lord) cd 12.98
BLAKROC "s/t" (Blakroc LLC) cd 14.98
BRAINSTORM "Smile A While" (Lion Productions) cd 14.98
CAMPFIRES "Stormy Late Fall" (Mexican Summer) 7" 4.50
CAPTAIN BEYOND "Captain Beyond & Sufficiently Breathless" (Raven) cd 22.00
CASPA "Everybody's Talking, Nobody's Listening!" (Fabric) cd 11.98
CLIPSE "Til The Casket Drops" (Sony) cd 14.98
DARK STAR "s/t" (Krescendo Records) cd 15.98
DEADNOTES "Orange Trumpet" (Soft Abuse) lp 14.98
DEATH ROW "Alive In Death" (Black Widow) 2cd 22.00
DESIRE "If I Can't Hold You Tonight" (Italians Do It Better) 12" 9.98
EARTH AND FIRE "s/t" (Esoteric) cd 23.00
ESPVALL, HELENA & MASAKI BATOH "Overloaded Ark" (Drag City) cd/lp 14.98/21.00
FESTERED "Flesh Perversion" (Razorback) cd 10.98
FLAMIN GROOVIES "Flamingo" (Karma Sutra / Buddah) lp 16.98
FLAMIN GROOVIES "Teenage Head" (Karma Sutra / Buddah) lp 16.98
FLY GIRLZ, THE "Da' Brats From Da' Ville" (True Panther Sounds) cd/lp 14.98/16.98
GODS GIFT "Pathology: Manchester 1979-84" (Messthetics) cd 12.98
GOLDEN RING, THE "Iranian Styled 60's Garage & Other Exotic Sounds" (Persianna) cd 25.00
GR & FULL-BLOWN EXPANSION "s/t" (World Sound) cd 23.00
HAINO, KEIJI & KAWABATA MAKOTO & TOSHIDA TATSUYA "Ichi To Ichi Ga Kasanatte Shinaumade" (Magaubutsu) dvd 14.98
HERMAN'S ROCKET (JEAN-PIERRA MASSIERA) "Space Woman" (Mucho Gusto) lp 21.00
HIGGS, DANIEL A.I.U. "Hymnprovisations For Banjo By The (A.I.U.) With Piano & Raindrops" (Ideal Recordings) lp 14.98
HUDSON MOHAWKE "Butter" (Warp) cd 16.98
KELLY, R "Untitled" (Jive Aces) cd 15.98
LANDSCAPE "From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars .... To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus" (Cherry Red) cd 16.98
LEECHES OF LORE "s/t" (MeteorCity) cd 11.98
LEONE, DOMINIQUE "Abstract Expression" (Important) cd 14.98
LET THE NIGHT ROAR "s/t" (MeteorCity) cd 11.98
LITMUS "Aurora" (Metal Blade / Rise Above) cd 14.98
MASTER'S APPRENTICES "s/t" (Aztec Music) 2cd 29.00
MI AMI "Cut Men / Out At Night" (Thrill Jockey) 12" 12.98
MOONDOG "A New Sound Of An Old Instrument" (Kopf / Roof Music) cd 17.98
MOONDOG "In Europe" (Kopf / Roof Music) cd 17.98
NIGHTSTALKER "Superfreak" (MeteorCity) cd 11.98
NOTHING, CHARLIE "The Psychedelic Saxophone" (No Label) lp 17.98
PARSONS, DAVID "Jyoti" (Celestial Harmonies) cd 15.98
PAYNE, FREDA "Payne & Pleasure" (Reel Music) cd 14.98
PEARL HARBOR "Something About the Chaparrals" (Mexican Summer) 12" 16.98
POP, IGGY "Lust For Life" (4 Men With Beards) lp 16.98
RADIAN "Chimeric" (Thrill Jockey) cd/lp 15.98/15.98
RATTO, MIKA "Polkupyoralla Vuokkopenkereelle" (Ektro) cd 14.98
REACTOR "The Real World" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
REID, STEVE "Odyssey Of The Oblong Square" (Universal Sound) cd 17.98
REVELATION "...Yet So Far" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
REVELATION "For The Sake Of No One" (Shadow Kingdom) cd 13.98
RITA J "Artist Workshop" (All Natural Inc.) cd 13.98
ROCKCELONA "La Bruja" (Estereo Fonico Country) cd 21.00
SACRED STEEL "Carnage Victory" (Massacre) cd+dvd 17.98
SAINT VITUS "Heavier Than Thou" (SST) 2lp 14.98
SCROTUM POLES "Auchmithie Forever" (Dulc-I-Tone) lp 15.98
SEVENTH DAWN, THE "Sunrise" (Bella Terra / Riverman) cd 17.98
SHRINEBUILDER "s/t" (Neurot) 2lp 22.00
SILK FLOWERS "As Above So Below" (Captured Tracks) lp 13.98
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE / JOSEPH MATTSON "Empty The Sun" (Drag City) cd + book/lp + book 15.00/17.98
SPARKS "Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman" (Lil' Beethoven) 2lp 34.00
SPIRAL STAIRS "The Real Feel" (Matador) cd/lp 13.98/16.98
SUN RA AND HIS ARKESTRA "Rocket Ship Rock" (Norton) cd/lp 14.98/14.98
SUN RA AND HIS MYTH SCIENCE SOLAR ARKESTRA "The Antique Blacks" (Art Yard) cd 21.00
TODD "Big Ripper" (Riot Season) cd 16.98
V/A "All Tomorrow's Parties" (Warp Films) dvd 35.00
V/A "Anatolia Rocks: A Musical Trip Through Turkey 1968-83" (Wolrd Wide Productions) lp 25.00
V/A "D-Funk: Funk, Disco & Boogie Grooves From Germany 1972-2002" (Marina) cd 17.98
V/A "International Skwee Vol.2" (Harmonia) lp 28.00
V/A "Messthetics #107" (Hyped To Death) cd 14.98
V/A "Mutant Disco Volume 3: Garage Sale" (Ze) cd 16.98
V/A "Ouled Bambara" (Twos & Fews / Drag City) cd + dvd 17.98
V/A "Warp 20: Unheard" (Warp) cd 16.98
VENUS GANG (JEAN-PIERRE MASSIERA) "Galactic Soul" (Mucho Gusto) lp 21.00
VERMILLION SANDS "Miss My Gun" (Sacred Bones) lp 14.98
VOIVOD "Infini" (Relapse) cd 14.98
WAITS, TOM "Glitter and Doom Live" (Anti) 2cd 16.98
WHILE HEAVEN WEPT "Vast Oceans Lachrymose" (Cruz Del Sur) cd 16.98
WHITE BUZZ "Book Of Whyte" (MeteorCity) cd 11.98
WOODSMAN "Collages" (Mexican Summer) lp 17.98
WORLD HERITAGE, THE "Invitation To World Heritage" (Magaibutsu) dvd + cd 17.98
YELLOW SWANS (DOVE YELLOW SWANS) "Live During War Crimes #3" (Release the Bats) cd 17.98
YVES / SON / ACE "Parade Of Thought / Can't Sleep" (Night People) lp 14.98

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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    $5.00 USPS Priority Mail
3+ items    $7.50 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 $7.50. 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 $5.00 for shipping. These packages are NOT insured or trackable, sorry. So if you desire those safeguards, please request UPS delivery at the $7.50 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 at the $7.50 rate. 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 ("First Class International"). 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" category and see the price for "First Class International". 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" category and see the price for "Priority Mail International". 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound. 1 lp is usually a little over 1.5 pounds.)


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" category and see the price for "Priority Mail International", which is the way insured packages are sent. 1-3 cds is usually 1 pound. 1 lp is usually a little over 1.5 pounds.)

For example: for a one-pound package worth $18 going to England, shipping without insurance is about $11.00. But with insurance, the shipping / insurance total is over $26.00!

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 :
-------------------------------- We accept the following credit cards: Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex. We will not charge your credit card until your order is ready to ship.

Money orders are accepted, but only in $USD. International customers please note that they must be international postal money orders purchased at a post office. Additional processing fees may apply. 

If you wish to pay by money order, you must confirm the order with us through email or phone BEFORE you send any payment. It's best to just use the secure order form on the website, and when checking out mark money order as your payment choice. We will then process your order and respond with all the crucial payment info.

We also accept payment by Paypal. If you opt for this payment method, we will send you a paypal total and payment instructions as soon as we've confirmed your order with you. Please do not send payment until you have received human contact from our mailorder department.

Unfortunately, we cannot take personal checks for mailorder, sorry!


QUESTION?
-------------------------------- Email the mailorder department: mailorder@aquariusrecords.org
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SOME SELECTED UPCOMING RELEASES

----} on the way/or soon
Bill Orcutt "A New Way" lp
v/a "Light: On The South Side" book+2lp on Numero
King Khan & BBQ Show "Invisible Girl" cd/lp on In The Red
Felix "You Are The One I Pick" cd on Kranky
Papercuts "Where Are The Waves" cd on Gnomonsong
The Roots "How I Got Over" cd
Max Richter "Memory House" cd
Philip Cohran & The Artistic Heritage Ensemble "The Spanish Suite" cd
Horisont "Tva Sidor Av Horisonten" cd/lp on Crusher
Legend "The Anthology" 2cd reissue on Rockadrome

----} January 5th
Buzzov*en "Violence From The Vault" cdep/12" on Relapse
Moebius "Tonspuren" cd reissue on Bureau-B

----} January 19th
Whourkr "Concrete" cd on Crucial Blast
Bill Fay "Still Some Light" 2cd on Coptic Cat
Good For Cows "Audumla" cd on Mimcry

----} January 26th
Beach House "Teen Dream" cd+dvd/2lp+dvd on Sub Pop
Four Tet "There Is Love In You" lp/cd  on Domino
 
----} also in January
Night Control "Life Control" cd on Kill Shaman

----} February 2nd
Skullflower "Strange Keys To Untune God's Firmament" 2cd on Neurot
U.S. Girls "Go Grey" lp on Siltbreeze
Vibracathedral Orchestra "Joka Baya" lp on VHF
Vibracathedral Orchestra "The Secret Base" lp on VHF
Vibracathedral Orchestra "Smoke Song" lp on VHF

----} also upcoming sooner or later or sooner or later or something
Celestiial "Where Life Springs Eternal" cd on Bindrune
Blood Of The Black Owl "A Banishing Ritual" cd on Bindrune
Crispy Ambulance "Plateau Phase" cd reissue on LTM
Vampire Weekend "Contra" cd
Ocean "Pantheon Of The Lesser" 2lp version on Important
Grumbling Fur (Guapo + Jussi from Circle) cd
Combat Astronomy "Earth Divided by Zero" cd
Rosetta "Wake/Lift" vinyl version
Anton Batagov "Passionate Desire To Be An Angel" cd on Long Arms Records
Japancakes "If I Could See Dallas"
Sean Smith "Eternal" cd on Ultra Hard Gel
Jazzfinger "The Sun's Golden Blood" cd on Beta-Lactam Ring
v/a "Noise Room" cd on Soniq
Country Teasers / Ezee Tiger split lp on Holy Mountain
Erase Errata TBA cd on Kill Rock Stars
Xiu Xiu TBA cd on Kill Rock Stars
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists TBA cd/lp on Touch And Go
Rodan TBA cd/lp on Quarterstick
Deftones "Eros" cd on Warner Bros.
Swell Maps "International Rescue" clear vinyl LP reissue on Alive
Black Lips "We Didn't Know..." green vinyl LP on Bomp!
Loss "Despond" cd on Profound Lore
Trans Am "What Day Is Tonight" cd on Thrill Jockey
Boduf Songs "Strait Gait" cd/lp on Latitudes
M. Holterbach + Julia Eckhardt cd on Helen Scarsdale
AFCGT "s/t" lp on Sub Pop


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Lots of love from your devoted AQ staff

Andee Cup Jim AllanIrwinScottNickSallyJonandAndrew