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

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

PYHA The Haunted House (tUMULt) cd 13.98
Unbelievably grim and blown out Burzumic black metal buzz from a Korean eighth grader! Recordedover the course of a year or two and released when he was 14 years old! It's true. tUMULt has been trying to get this out for ages, and it's finally here. Black metal record of the week? The year more likely. Perhaps maybe EVER.
It took almost two years to track Pyha down, and then almost four more to sort out the eventual release of this grim depressive black masterpiece. Here's how it started:
Longtime aQ pal Steven Schultz (he of Puny Humans and Stalin Claus Superstar infamy) was studying in Korea and bought a bunch of records. None of them really impressed him that much, except for one mysterious disc, by a 'group' called Pyha, which in Korean means 'ruins'. He later discovered that Pyha was the work of one man, er, kid actually, a 14 year old eighth grade black metaller! Needless to say, WOW. Anyway, on returning, Steven passed the cd on to Andee who was BLOWN AWAY. Completely floored, so much so that he knew he had to release it. More people HAD to hear this. So the hunt was on. How to track down a 14 year old kid in Korea. Pre-internet it would have been impossible. But another aQ pal, Jason, was actually living part time in Korea, weirdly enough he's a minor television star there, and offered to try and track down Pyha. Which miraculously he did, and we then discovered that there were in fact 4 albums, all recorded when Pyha was between the ages of 14 and 17! All of which are amazing, and all of which should eventually be released on tUMULt.
But this is THE ONE. The essence of pure inspired ultra personal musical expression. Powerful and intense, blown out and buzz drenched, depressive and melancholic. Andee sent a cd-r of the record to a writer at Terrorizer, who was so impressed, he reviewed the sans-art home burned cd-r in that magazine and gave it a TEN. It's that fucking mind blowing. We mentioned in our recent review of the Wrath Of The Weak record that it was maybe the buzziest black metal record ever. Well, it has nothing on Pyha. Totally in the red, digital distortion, crumbling and furious. The vocals anguished wails and tortured howls, the drums simple programmed beats, weirdly clipped and processed, also wreathed in distortion, keyboards offering up more buzz and shimmer. Long stretches of creepy ambience, samples of speeches and warfare, of wailing weeping mothers and children, all woven into Pyha's buzzing black tapestry. Total bedroom lo-fi production, but completely idiosyncratic and inspired. No blast beats or furious thrashing, instead, the tracks are either midtempo, or no-tempo, with some tracks eschewing drums all together, just a wall of ultra distorted riffage all tangled up with demonic howls. But it's not just howling and screeching, the vocals sometimes emerge as a weird wailing croon, other times as a hushed whisper, while other times a mumbled moan. In fact, a few of the tracks almost sound like some weird black metal Sebadoh, super lo-fi and dripping with distortion, the vocals weary and worn, buried beneath swirling squalls of blacknoise. Others have a distinct shoegaze quality too, that is if you can imagine a shoegaze Abruptum, the drums loping and laid back, the guitars washed out and blurred, the vocals SO distorted they swallow up all the other sounds and become another layer of super saturated sound. Sometimes they even morph into fucked up harmonies, so loud and lo-fi they crackle and splinter, without losing any of their alien beauty. There are long stretches of ambience too. Crackling campfires, crickets, warm whirring synths way off in the distance, ghostly gurgled disembodied voices, whipping wind, all interwoven with tape hiss and buzzing synths, creepy noises, and all manner of sonic detritus.
Three of the tracks here are bonus tracks, recorded later, and manage to fit perfectly with the original disc. One is especially of not, as it's maybe the most melodic of the bunch, thick keyboards drift over a sea of pulsing cymbal sizzle, and barely audible guitar, the drums buried way down in the mix, the vocals growling and hissing and howling, the whole thing very dreamy and drifty and otherworldly. Until the end, when everything drops out leaving just shimmering synths, and the sounds of war, speeches, soldiers, sirens, weeping mothers, crying children, so intense and anguished and moving. Which brings us to the lyrical content. Pyha is staunchly anti-government, anti-war, anti-military, he's a pacifist and an anarchist, and has chosen black metal as the medium to express his message. The packaging is covered in images of Korean wartime atrocities, all of which is even more ironic and sad, when you learn that Pyha (now that he's old enough) is currently in the Korean Army, as military service there is compulsory.
The record closes with one of the most powerful tracks on the record. A seven+ minute blow out, as black as anything else on the disc, and definitely the fastest, as close to a blast as Pyha gets. But it's still loping and woozy. The drums and cymbals are recorded super hot and lay a gauzy layer of hiss over the proceedings, keyboards pick out a delicate minor key melody, hovering weightless like ghosts over the roiling blackened churn below. It almost sounds like Wold at times, as if there was some old 78 playing beneath the wash of black buzz. The track gets heavier and heavier, the vocals more and more demonic and monstrous, the intensity building and building, the main riff, remaining impossibly haunting and majestic as it sinks deeper and deeper into the sea of noise drenched blackness, leaving more and more of that mysterious underlying melody, to drift off and eventually fade away.
Rare is the record, black metal or otherwise, that evokes such intense emotion, that gives the listener chills. Beyond the blackness and the buzz, lies a record of impossible depth, full of emotion and passion. So much so, that it's easy to forget that it was conceived, composed and recorded entirely by a little middle school kid!
Gorgeously packaged in a 6 panel gatefold digipak. Brown and gold sepia toned, with metallic ink, the outside a tranquil Korean landscape, inside a garish gallery depicting the human cost of warfare.
After all that, it might seem like overkill, but this is, without a doubt, THE BLACK METAL RECORD OF THE YEAR. And for some of us, one of the best black metal records ever. What the fuck were you doing when you were 14 years old?!
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Four"
MPEG Stream: "Eight"
MPEG Stream: "Ten"

ROGUE MALE First Visit (Metal Mind) cd 21.00
So, as you probably aren't aware, Aquarius co-owners Andee and Allan have been thinkin' about doing a heavy metal reissue label for a while now. For obscure stuff they love from the '80s that's never ever been legitimately reissued on cd. They even each came up with a short list of things they'd want to try and put out on their (as yet hypothetical) label. Why are we telling you this? Well, on both their lists, you'd find this band, England's Rogue Male.
Now it turns out that they can take Rogue Male off the list - 'cause their album First Visit HAS just in fact been reissued! Yay! Metal Mind just saved Andee and Allan a lot of trouble, and thousands of dollars!
Rogue Male only made two albums, of which this, from 1985, is the first. It's speedy, fist-pumping metal with a definite, catchy rock n' roll edge to it. In combination with the singer's gruff, Lemmy-like voice, this garnered a lot of comparisons to the mighty Motorhead, especially with regard to this disc's lead-off track "Crazy Motorcycle".
But also, they were known for their "futuristic", "sci-fi" image, because of their Mad Max style stage gear and the cover of this album, which depicts what appears to be a Terminator cyborg with a mullet! For a few brief moments there in '85, Rogue Male were the heavy metal equivalent of William "Neuromancer" Gibson or something. Or thought they were. After all, the British heavy metal magazine of record Kerrang! named them "the next big thing", which unfortunately was probably the kiss of death (how many next big things ever are?). After just one more album (1986's Animal Man, also a good 'un and hopefully soon to be in stock here too) they called it quits.
Really, Rogue Male weren't as advanced as their whole "cyberpunk" image seems to suggest. They were maybe more punk than cyber, doing songs more streetwise than science-fictional, about such topics as motorcycles, sex, and unemployment. Though we suppose, if Mad Max is the model, then at least motorcycles and unemployment are indeed "futuristic".
Despite Rogue Male's lack of success back in the day, anyone into a gritty, melodic mix of heaviness and poppiness '80s style should enjoy this overlooked album, one that from start to finish is a simple headbanging pleasure! Definitely one of the best from the latter days of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, that reminds us not only of Motorhead but also some of the more "hot rockin'" Judas Priest tracks of the era, and also of Thin Lizzy just a bit as well. There's just such a raw charm to the urgent, chunky, repetitive riffing of a song like "Look Out" that we gotta love. It doesn't matter that Rogue Male weren't actually innovating anything, they still managed to have a distinct identity and make some basic, quality NWOBHM tunes that have stood the test of time and well deserve reissue.
This limited edition digipack cd includes two worthy bonus tracks, and a cd booklet with new liner notes (which unfortunately contain a couple of typos, misspelling the band's name as "Rouge Male", whoops) and a couple of pretty funny band photos. Recommended! Remember, we were gonna put this out if we could!
Why haven't Andee and Allan gotten their reissue label off the ground yet? Well aside from being way busy with Aquarius (and in Andee's case, tUMULt) they haven't had too much luck contacting the bands they were interested in, so far... and also (and most importantly) they can't seem to agree on a NAME for the label. Andee wants to call it Heavy Rescue Records. Allan's keen on Hair Sprain Records. Anybody have any better ideas? ...Or, know how to get a hold of any former members of a band called Lords Of The Crimson Alliance (from New York, circa '86)??
MPEG Stream: "Crazy Motorcycle"
MPEG Stream: "All Over You"
MPEG Stream: "Look Out"

AUFGEHOBEN Khora (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Pop quiz! Or not so "pop" really. Whom have we ever compared to Anaal Nathrakh -and- This Heat -and- High Rise -and- Merzbow?? Why Aufgehoben of course. Their name sounds German (it means something along the lines of "nullified" or "voided" in that language). And early on, their music did have krautrocky, rhythmic underpinning. Underpinning brutal ultra distorted NOISE rock that is. And that noise has gotten only noisier and noisier, believe it or not (disbelieve at your peril).
Aufgehoben are in fact from England, and certainly fit in with the harsh n' heavy tradition of bands like Skullflower, God, Ramleh, and more recently, Shit And Shine, with whom they share the multiple drummers thing, though Aufgehoben manage to make do with just two of the species freaking out on their drum kits. They also utilize "bricks and metal" as well as the usual guitars and electronics.
But if you had to guess, from just listening to 'em, you'd probably pick Japan as their country of origin. Again, 'cause of the sheer noisiness of this, but also 'cause of how the album's last, longest track "Jederfursich..." (26:57) is an epic, repetitively pounding psych guitar blow out (blow up?) that would have the combined forces of both Boris and Merzbow running for cover... whereas the tracks that precede it aren't quite as "rock", though no less noisy, maybe more so, in the vein of Wolf Eyes, who too might reach for the earplugs when confronted with this.
Khora's first track "Ignorance Oblivion Contempt" is a vigorous splattering of utterly fried sounds, shrill shards of feedback and frantic trash-compacting percussion colliding and imploding and becoming one dense, writhing mass. That's followed by "Annex Organon", which features a more sparse sort of clatter, but you'd still better be careful about turning up the volume! Next, on "A Bastard Reasoning", we get over ten minutes of mayhem that begin with random meteor strikes of percussive, concussive distortion and then turn into a rumbling, tumbling skree-for-all. Damn.
The relative rockiness n' riffiness of the aforementioned fourth and final track, even if the riffs sound like they're played with explosives rather than on guitars, is just a slightly more controlled sort of chaos, building and building and building... kinda like a Cadaver In Drag track -being- dragged, behind a tank, down a rocky road.
No, Aufgehoben's brand of utterly destroyed instrumental improv has NOT been tamed at all on Khora, their 5th album, and 2nd for Holy Mountain, who quite rightly hail that ultimate track "Jederfursich..." as being "easily the most massive song of the year". Being obsessed with Les Rallizes Denudes and Keiji Haino, and putting out Blues Control and Wooden Shjips records, would lead you too to say things like that about Aufgehoben. Get this and see, we think you'll agree... This damage is definitely for fans of similar subversive sonic conspirators and AQ faves Shit And Shine.
MPEG Stream: "Ignorance Oblivion Contempt"
MPEG Stream: "Jederfursich..."

ALICE COOPER Easy Action (Rhino Encore) cd 13.98
Ok, we know what you're thinking (maybe). Alice Cooper? Aquarius Record(s) Of The Week? Two of 'em?? If you're not familiar with these albums, you might be wondering... and while we know that many loyal AQ customers are of course extremely knowledgeable about all sorts of cool music, just as much or more so than any of us who work here, we also wouldn't be surprised if more than a few of you had never been exposed to these first two Alice Cooper albums before. Which is why we HAVE to list them and make them Records Of The Week!! After being out of print for far too long, they've now been newly reissued on cd (in limited editions, see below for more about that), and we're excited to be able to tell you about 'em.
So, when most people think of Alice Cooper, what comes to mind? The big '70s shock rock act, up there with KISS, the guy who was the Marilyn Manson of the '70s, or maybe the regular on Hollywood Squares, or even the early '90s hairmetal Alice, of Wayne's World "we're not worthy" fame. Campy and kitschy and scholocky and alcoholic, with snakes and blood. All good things of course. But even if you are a fan of the Alice Cooper classics from the '70s, albums like Love It To Death, Killer and Billion Dollar Babies, the Alice Cooper Band's 1969 debut Pretties For You and its 1970 follow up Easy Action are often overlooked, and underrated. Originally released on Frank Zappa's Straight label (and whatever you might think of Frank Zappa, he had a good track record for releasing freaky music by other folks, Captain Beefheart ferinstance!) this early Alice Cooper stuff is NOT the heavy metal hard rock you might be expecting. That was a direction AC went in really only after moving from LA to Detroit and hooking up with producer Bob Ezrin. There's hints of heaviness, of course, but this is waaay more psychedelic and poppy and proggy. And weird. If you think you know what to expect, think again. You're in for a bizarre treat indeed. (Some Alice Cooper fans might not agree, but we hope most open minded AQ customers will!)
The front cover of Pretties For You has a painting that make it look like a Robert Wyatt record. And on the back cover, the band, posing in a gallery of strange modern sculptures, show off a visual style that makes 'em look something like a cross between Blue Cheer and Roxy Music. Intrigued? Throw the album on, and you're confronted with the first of this album's many non-sequiturs, the orchestral fanfare of "Titanic Overture", which segues into the why-be-normal, twisty-turny psych piece "10 Minutes Before The Worm" (actually only 1 minute, 40 seconds long). They weren't trying to ease anybody into their "thing" it seems. Better yet is track three, "Swing Low Sweet Cheerio", the album's first true pop gem, and still plenty weird. And that's what this is, a pop album, full of great pop songs, super Beatlesy, hummable stuff. But it's Beatlesy in a tripped out Sgt. Peppers way. And wait a second, Pretties For You? The Pretty Things' "SF Sorrow" might also have been an influence. There's a lot of quirky dynamics, theatrical art rock gestures, cryptic humor, wild psychedelic effects, screaming fuzz guitar, strange stops and starts... it can be off-putting at first, probably difficult listening for some, with as much in common with Amon Duul II or even Olivia Tremor Control as they do with Alice Cooper's later million-sellers. But, you like '60s garage psych right? Well early AC were really a Nuggetsy garage band (originally called The Earwigs, then The Spiders, and then The Nazz, finally settling on Alice Cooper following a legendary Ouija board session). Doing their thing on the Sunset Strip in LA, they gradually got nuttier and nuttier, more psychedelic and experimental. If AC hadn't gone on to such later success, we're certain this would be regarded by psych lovers as an obscure cult classic of late '60s freakdom, like 50 Foot Hose or West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band or something. Instead, it's the record that probably confuses average Alice Cooper fans, and isn't heard by anybody else, which we think is a shame...
Alice Cooper's swaggering second effort, Easy Action, is just a bit more straightforward, more of a "rock" album, proto-glam in fact, AC maybe trying to take on T-Rex? On it, with some wicked lyrics, Alice starts to develop his better known, "mentally ill" or "evil" sick humor persona, in a wittier way though than the cartoonishness that later took over in later years. His ever-so-slightly-raspy, steeped-in-decadence voice, of course, always had star power from the very beginning, but here he occasionally breaks out a snarl that never surfaced on Pretties, amidst more melodic crooning. And one of the tracks, the spasmodic tour de force "Still No Air", foreshadows Alice Cooper's later West Side Story obsession on School's Out.
And Easy Action proves to be still pretty darn trippy and weird, with plenty of progtastic twists, just like Pretties. Heck, "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye" is 7+ minutes of pretty much just sound FX laced freakishness. This album boasts several more glorious psychedelic pop gems like "Laughing At Me", the piano ballad "Beautiful Flyaway", and the very Beatlesy "Shoe Salesman", alongside the harder rockin' likes of "Return Of The Spiders"... Oooh so many good tunes. Compared to the debut, it's perhaps a more confident, slightly less confusional record, that set them up for major label success of their next album, another huge favorite of ours, Love It To Death, recorded with Ezrin after their relocation to Detroit - a move that made sense, considering they did have a lot in sonically common with The Amboy Dukes and even the MC5. You'll also hear parallels to very early Blue Oyster Cult and David Bowie... And (moreso on Pretties) an American version of Pink Floyd (Syd Barrett era mind you...) or even a more obtuse The Doors...
While Alice Cooper (both the man and the band) made a lot of classic music in their career(s), no other Alice Cooper records were ever quite as arty and bizarre, with the unique one foot in the psychedelic sixties mix of throbbing manic energy and melancholic moodiness that's found on Pretties For You and Easy Action. Are we going out on limb by making 'em Records Of The Week? Nope, what could be more AQ?? These have been favorites here for a long time, but rarely available. And Jim and Allan bonded over these back when they both first started working here years ago. Also, we know the guys in Harvey Milk will have to be stoked to find that their new album got ROTW honors alongside these two!
And by the way, we insist on filing these under A, not C. It's the Alice Cooper Band dammit. Alice himself didn't go solo 'til Welcome To My Nightmare in 1975. The original act, featuring guitarists Glen Buxton and Mike Bruce, bassist Denis Dunaway, and drummer Neil Smith, alongside the former Vincent Furnier on vocals and snake handling, deserves their due! One of the great American rock bands.
One final note: these reissues on this new Rhino "Encore" imprint are based around the (dumb) idea of doing releases that are only available for a limited time. It's like the way Disney puts out DVDs. So, all the more reason for us to shout from the rooftops about these two albums -- in six months, according to the label, these reissues will be out of print, again!! Argh. So get 'em while you can, if you don't already have them in your collection!! And buy a copy for a friend!
MPEG Stream: "Mr. & Misdeameanor"
MPEG Stream: "Refrigerator Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "Laughing At Me"

ALICE COOPER Pretties For You (Rhino Encore) cd 13.98
Ok, we know what you're thinking (maybe). Alice Cooper? Aquarius Record(s) Of The Week? Two of 'em?? If you're not familiar with these albums, you might be wondering... and while we know that many loyal AQ customers are of course extremely knowledgeable about all sorts of cool music, just as much or more so than any of us who work here, we also wouldn't be surprised if more than a few of you had never been exposed to these first two Alice Cooper albums before. Which is why we HAVE to list them and make them Records Of The Week!! After being out of print for far too long, they've now been newly reissued on cd (in limited editions, see below for more about that), and we're excited to be able to tell you about 'em.
So, when most people think of Alice Cooper, what comes to mind? The big '70s shock rock act, up there with KISS, the guy who was the Marilyn Manson of the '70s, or maybe the regular on Hollywood Squares, or even the early '90s hairmetal Alice, of Wayne's World "we're not worthy" fame. Campy and kitschy and scholocky and alcoholic, with snakes and blood. All good things of course. But even if you are a fan of the Alice Cooper classics from the '70s, albums like Love It To Death, Killer and Billion Dollar Babies, the Alice Cooper Band's 1969 debut Pretties For You and its 1970 follow up Easy Action are often overlooked, and underrated. Originally released on Frank Zappa's Straight label (and whatever you might think of Frank Zappa, he had a good track record for releasing freaky music by other folks, Captain Beefheart ferinstance!) this early Alice Cooper stuff is NOT the heavy metal hard rock you might be expecting. That was a direction AC went in really only after moving from LA to Detroit and hooking up with producer Bob Ezrin. There's hints of heaviness, of course, but this is waaay more psychedelic and poppy and proggy. And weird. If you think you know what to expect, think again. You're in for a bizarre treat indeed. (Some Alice Cooper fans might not agree, but we hope most open minded AQ customers will!)
The front cover of Pretties For You has a painting that make it look like a Robert Wyatt record. And on the back cover, the band, posing in a gallery of strange modern sculptures, show off a visual style that makes 'em look something like a cross between Blue Cheer and Roxy Music. Intrigued? Throw the album on, and you're confronted with the first of this album's many non-sequiturs, the orchestral fanfare of "Titanic Overture", which segues into the why-be-normal, twisty-turny psych piece "10 Minutes Before The Worm" (actually only 1 minute, 40 seconds long). They weren't trying to ease anybody into their "thing" it seems. Better yet is track three, "Swing Low Sweet Cheerio", the album's first true pop gem, and still plenty weird. And that's what this is, a pop album, full of great pop songs, super Beatlesy, hummable stuff. But it's Beatlesy in a tripped out Sgt. Peppers way. And wait a second, Pretties For You? The Pretty Things' "SF Sorrow" might also have been an influence. There's a lot of quirky dynamics, theatrical art rock gestures, cryptic humor, wild psychedelic effects, screaming fuzz guitar, strange stops and starts... it can be off-putting at first, probably difficult listening for some, with as much in common with Amon Duul II or even Olivia Tremor Control as they do with Alice Cooper's later million-sellers. But, you like '60s garage psych right? Well early AC were really a Nuggetsy garage band (originally called The Earwigs, then The Spiders, and then The Nazz, finally settling on Alice Cooper following a legendary Ouija board session). Doing their thing on the Sunset Strip in LA, they gradually got nuttier and nuttier, more psychedelic and experimental. If AC hadn't gone on to such later success, we're certain this would be regarded by psych lovers as an obscure cult classic of late '60s freakdom, like 50 Foot Hose or West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band or something. Instead, it's the record that probably confuses average Alice Cooper fans, and isn't heard by anybody else, which we think is a shame...
Alice Cooper's swaggering second effort, Easy Action, is just a bit more straightforward, more of a "rock" album, proto-glam in fact, AC maybe trying to take on T-Rex? On it, with some wicked lyrics, Alice starts to develop his better known, "mentally ill" or "evil" sick humor persona, in a wittier way though than the cartoonishness that later took over in later years. His ever-so-slightly-raspy, steeped-in-decadence voice, of course, always had star power from the very beginning, but here he occasionally breaks out a snarl that never surfaced on Pretties, amidst more melodic crooning. And one of the tracks, the spasmodic tour de force "Still No Air", foreshadows Alice Cooper's later West Side Story obsession on School's Out.
And Easy Action proves to be still pretty darn trippy and weird, with plenty of progtastic twists, just like Pretties. Heck, "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye" is 7+ minutes of pretty much just sound FX laced freakishness. This album boasts several more glorious psychedelic pop gems like "Laughing At Me", the piano ballad "Beautiful Flyaway", and the very Beatlesy "Shoe Salesman", alongside the harder rockin' likes of "Return Of The Spiders"... Oooh so many good tunes. Compared to the debut, it's perhaps a more confident, slightly less confusional record, that set them up for major label success of their next album, another huge favorite of ours, Love It To Death, recorded with Ezrin after their relocation to Detroit - a move that made sense, considering they did have a lot in sonically common with The Amboy Dukes and even the MC5. You'll also hear parallels to very early Blue Oyster Cult and David Bowie... And (moreso on Pretties) an American version of Pink Floyd (Syd Barrett era mind you...) or even a more obtuse The Doors...
While Alice Cooper (both the man and the band) made a lot of classic music in their career(s), no other Alice Cooper records were ever quite as arty and bizarre, with the unique one foot in the psychedelic sixties mix of throbbing manic energy and melancholic moodiness that's found on Pretties For You and Easy Action. Are we going out on limb by making 'em Records Of The Week? Nope, what could be more AQ?? These have been favorites here for a long time, but rarely available. And Jim and Allan bonded over these back when they both first started working here years ago. Also, we know the guys in Harvey Milk will have to be stoked to find that their new album got ROTW honors alongside these two!
And by the way, we insist on filing these under A, not C. It's the Alice Cooper Band dammit. Alice himself didn't go solo 'til Welcome To My Nightmare in 1975. The original act, featuring guitarists Glen Buxton and Mike Bruce, bassist Denis Dunaway, and drummer Neil Smith, alongside the former Vincent Furnier on vocals and snake handling, deserves their due! One of the great American rock bands.
One final note: these reissues on this new Rhino "Encore" imprint are based around the (dumb) idea of doing releases that are only available for a limited time. It's like the way Disney puts out DVDs. So, all the more reason for us to shout from the rooftops about these two albums -- in six months, according to the label, these reissues will be out of print, again!! Argh. So get 'em while you can, if you don't already have them in your collection!! And buy a copy for a friend!
MPEG Stream: "Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio"
MPEG Stream: "Fields Of Regret"
MPEG Stream: "No Longer Umpire"

HAINO, KEIJI & YOSHIDA TATSUYA Uhrfasudhasdd (Tzadik) cd 16.98
And here's the Tzadik-issued part II to the latest collaboration between Japanese prog/psych legends Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha). Part I, Hauenfiomiume, came out on Yoshida's Magaibutsu label, and we highlighted it last list. The equally easy to say, remember, and spell Uhrfasudhasdd consists of 16 more tracks from the same sessions... also with crazy alphabet soup song titles. So, what we said about Hauenfiomiume pretty much applies here too. Compared to earlier Yoshida/Haino team-ups, it's more on the Ruinsy side, in part 'cause Yoshida computer-edited and mixed it, splicing and dicing their original improvs (?) into condensed, intense compositions, ranging from eerie ambience, to heavy progspazms. There's lots of quick cuts and giltched-out passages, making for manic spires of spiralling energy... For instance, on the track "Thuguigodssphiff", This Heatish percussion is punched in next to blasts of distortion and Magmoid vocal choruses. Maybe this is what a 'screwed and chopped' Koenjihyakkei would sound like! Except that most of this seems sped up, not slowed down. "Dhoidvophkjiff" could have been constructed from samples of Orthrelm and Brise-Glace.
It's the sort of insanity you expect from Yoshida in other words, everything from attention-deficit keyboard tinkling to fried synth soundz to rubbery bass riffage to howling guitar (well that's probably Haino's doing). The black-clad Haino's ability to conjure utter darkness bleeds through as well (check out the track 12, "Zhuddiposshk" for some harrowing, horrific atmospheres and creepy guttural vocal stylings, which crop up again on the ominous "Fiuijkdfgpokwom")... Basically if you're at all into either Haino or (maybe moreso) Yoshida, you'll enjoy this crazy cornucopia of their most extreme tendencies, multiplied by studio technology! Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Dhoidvophkjiff"
MPEG Stream: "Cchjdisoiugpodf"
MPEG Stream: "Oodiffipoawhull"

MOSS Sub Templum (Candlelight) cd 13.98
It's been a while since we've had to employ multiple 'o's in a review. A bit of a death of doom it seems. Or at least the sort of doom that requires all those extra 'o's. A loyal customer of ours even whipped up this "doom chart" based on our usage of multiple 'o'd doom in reviews!
And if memory serves, Moss was one of the bands that routinely got described as doooom, or doooooooooom, and sometimes even doooooooooooooooooooooooom. So we were all ready to put finger to key and just let the 'o's roll out, one after the other after the other, until we felt we had conveyed the crushing doom of Moss. That is until we pressed play, and were treated to "Ritus", a five and a half minute soundscape of whirring synths and washed out ambience, of cymbal sizzle and proggy keyboard drones, of whispered voices and buzzing shimmer. Hmmm. The liner notes say it's inspired by Doris Norton, an electronic musician who's also a member of AQ faves Jacula!! An interesting start from one of the sludgiest, crustiest bands around. Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. Ahh. That's better. The second track returns us to that dank dark sloooooooooow place Moss call home. Twenty three minutes of downtuned crush, the tempo only slightly faster than the growth of actual moss. But even all gnarled and sludge-y, something has definitely changed. It's not nearly as filthy, and harsh, it's actually weirdly pretty. Almost like it's some more melodic metal record being spun manually with one finger at 3 or 4 rpm. The distortion is still dense, the long drawn out chords seeming to crumble, the drums spaced way out, but somehow still more buys than you're average ultradoom drummer, the vocals are still harsh and howling, but somehow, they too seem to be a bit more smooth, further down in the mix, like another layer of sound, the howls allowed to unfurl into another layer of buzz. It's strange, but we definitely dig. And we're not saying this is NOTHING like old Moss, or folks into Bunkur and Esoteric and the like won't love it, you will, the differences are subtle, and the sound is just a little bit, well, prettier, if you can imagine something bleak and black and harsh and hateful being pretty. Which we can!
The next track, a nine minute dirge, is a bit more raw and rough, most of that prettiness we were blathering on about above is GONE. Shrieking feedback, the drums even slower and more spare, the guitars even more distorted and the vocals throat shreddingly harsh, the tempo slightly accelerated, bordering on Eyehategod territory.
But it's all bout the closer, "Gate III: Devils From The Outer Dark". Clocking in at 35 minutes + and beginning with a churning sea of downtuned rumble and buzz, before the drums finally kick in, and f course by kick in we mean pound sporadically. This track is WAY more than a dirge. It makes the track before it sound like thrash metal. This is slooooooow and so so so so dooooooooooooooooooomy. The guitars thick and corrosive, the chords allowed to ring way out and fade away before the next one drops in to take its place, but weirdly enough, this one too sounds sort of pretty, not like the opening track, but still very dreamlike and mesmerizing. Long streaks of feedback spread out over wide open expanses of minimal thud and warm warped slow motion buzz, when the vocals drop out, it becomes something entirely different, finishing off with several minutes of thick low end drone, the guitars rumbling and wrapped into a thick nearly static pulse, something truly hypnotic and almost spacey, but without sacrificing a single one of those extra 'o's.
Definitely a progression, a band can only pound and plod for so long, but so subtle that the casual listener might not even notice. "Oh yeah, heavy, slow, dooooooom", but as with most music, deep listening reveals a whole lot more going on beneath the surface, and once your ears lock on to that stuff, even the sounds on the surface begin to sound different.
WAY RECOMMENDED for the doom-ed amongst you. And just cuz we knew you were waiting for it, Sub Templum could very well be doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom disc of the year!!
MPEG Stream: "Subterraen"
MPEG Stream: "Dragged To The Roots"

FOREST s/t (Phoenix) cd 17.98
This has been out of print for a while, but now has been re-reissued by another label. We're happy 'cause Forest is an all-time fave 'round here, as British acid folk rock albums go. Here's the review we wrote a few years back about the previous edition:
The time is definitely right for this ('though, *any* time would be right for this since it's such a great album). The whole acid-folk revival of which we're sure you're aware -- heck we've done our part to plug albums by Six Organs Of Admittance, Skygreen Leopards, Espers, P.G. Six, Tower Recordings, and the like -- of course owes a lot to the genuine old timey hippie British acoustic psychedelic folk scene back in the '60s and '70s. Originators like the Incredible String Band and Tyrannosaurus Rex and Fairport Convention... and Forest. Who were never a famous band, but definitely cult favorites. And AQ favorites. So we're happy that at long last this is back in stock. Actually when we reviewed this before, it was with Forest's second album Full Circle as a double cd two-fer. But now it's been re-re-issued as it's own cd (with Full Circle to follow later on), remastered at Abbey Road where it was originally recorded back in 1969, with the participation of former Forest-er Martin Welham. And no longer being packaged as two-fer means the wonderfully pagan cover art gets the whole front of the cd booklet instead of appearing thumbnail-sized!
Forest were a trio of hippie musicians (Martin, Dez, and Adrian) from the town of Walesby in Lincolnshire. All three of 'em are responsible for the quite excellent male vocals that help make their albums the amazing lost treasures they are, along with their strong songwriting, and their adept and varied instrumental backing (mostly acoustic, with guitars, harmonium, mandolin, pipes, cello, electric harpsichord, organ, percussion, etc.). Their vocal harmonies recall the folkish stuff on those great early Wishbone Ash albums. Their songs and lyrics are rural, pastoral, lovely -- with titles (we're gonna mention tracks from both of their albums here) like "A Glade Somewhere", "Rain Is On My Balcony", "Bluebell Dance", "Lovemaker's Ways" -- and darker too ("The Midnight Hanging Of A Runaway Serf", "Famine Song", "Graveyard"). But, while 'folky,' this is by no means trad folk; they are down with prog rock moves that remind us as much of Pink Floyd as the Incredible String Band. They can be sunshiney and twee a la Tyrannosaurus Rex, but also have a pagan, dark aspect as we said, coming pretty close to Comus territory at times (with the song "Fading Light", for one). Yep, 'folky' but not folk -- the ruined castles and fairy folk that inhabit the forests and fields of Forest's world exist, shadow-like, in the present day (well, Forest's England of thirty years ago), so it's not surprising when a song like "Hawk The Hawker" has kind of a Lou Reed/VU vibe, for instance. Their music is informed by the ancient British ballads, but you can tell that Martin, Dez, and Adrian were three young long hairs sleeping in a van, no matter how idyllic their songs sometimes sound.
This reissue boast new liner notes and photos, but also still includes John Peel's original liner notes from the first album -- they're quite silly, but accurate at least in his closing comment "It would be nice for the Forest if you purchased these results of their lives and labours -- but nicer still for you." Definitely one of those "this is SO good why didn't these guys get famous??!" listens. We look forward to bringing you the reissue of their other, equally essential album Full Circle (1970) when it too gets reissued, and we also hear that vinyl is in the works. Plus, we've heard from Martin Welham himself that not only are there plans for the release of some vintage live Forest recordings on another UK label hopefully sometime in the next year, he also has a *new* band called The Story who'll be putting out a record soon [2008 update: The Story has 2 records by now, and they're both great], and also doing a split LP with none other than Santa Cruz folksters Whysp this summer. So lots of excitement for Forest fans for sure -- get this and become one.
MPEG Stream: "A Glade Somewhere"
MPEG Stream: "Fading Light"
MPEG Stream: "Do You Want Some Smoke?"

V/A In-Kraut Vol.3 (Marina) cd 17.98
Achtung! Last chance to get with the In-Kraut, if you haven't already! This excellent series' third (and, sadly, final) volume offers up another twenty tracks of rare, super groovy dancefloor filling fodder from West Germany, circa 1967 to 1974, all of it pretty amazing and also amusing, in that it's generally waaay over the top and ultra-kitschy. In fact some of these tracks are so ridiculous, sooo deliberately go-go ga-ga "psychedelic" and "hip" and "groovy" that it's almost like they're parodies of these sort of swingin' sixties sounds, a la Austin Powers - who if he were German, would be getting down to exactly these sorts of swinging tunes.
If you're already an In-Kraut initiate you know what to expect: a mix of instrumentals and vocal numbers (speaking of vocal numbers, "Butterflies Never Cry" by Georgees is INSANE, utterly out of hand) done by big band-ish combos looking to wow the hipster denizens of Deutschland's discotheques back in the day. Which means this stuff is delightfully dated and far out at once, with fuzzy acid rock guitars slipped in alongside the funky beats, jazzy, zazzy horns, and lush orchestral maneuvers.
Other than the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra (whose "World Is Gone" is almost as disturbing as it is gleefully goofy and groovy) we don't really recognize too many of the artists here, except a few who also appeared on previous In-Kraut installments, most are totally unknown to us, yet awesome, which is a reason to buy a compilation like this. Some names: Daisy Clan, The Rainbow Orchestra, Inga, Ambros Seelos, Rolf Kuhn, Certain Lions & Tigers, Adam & Eve, Acid, Heinz Kiessling, The German Top Five, Memphis Black, Karl Schiller... and a bunch more. Just a few of the highlights include the Beatles composition "A Hard Day's Night" as performed by Katja Ebstein (which could have been a standout on that recent Easy Beatles collection), and a quite, uh, horny rendition of Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" done by Dieter Zimmermann (and band), in the tradition of the Deep Purple cover that appeared on vol. 2.
From pop-rock covers to original soundtrack themes, there's plenty of shuffling grooves and slinky instrumentals (Acid's "Hipguard" would thrill Christine 23 Onna) to make this the perfect lava-lamp / mirror-ball crossover collection. Ja, vol. 3 is as strong the first two, highly recommended. You can't listen to this and NOT be having fun!
And as usual with these In-Kraut comps, the cd booklet is packed with graphics and text pertaining to each track. It's quite clear that the compilers know their stuff!
MPEG Stream: DIETER ZIMMERMANN "Whole Lotta Love"
MPEG Stream: GEORGEES "Butterflies Never Cry"
MPEG Stream: ACID "Hipguard"

WOODEN SHJIPS s/t (Holy Mountain) cd 14.98
Can't believe how many of these we've sold! Now, sadly, all the limited edition copies with the extra bonus disc are gone, gone, gone. Uh... we guess if anyone was -waiting- for the version without the extra disc, well now it's available, here it is! Seriously, though, if you missed getting this before, one disc is better n' none. Way better since it's a fantastic album all its own self. Here's the review, edited for the absence of said bonus disc: From right here in our sunny San Francisco neighborhood, comes an eagerly anticipated new release of hypnotically searing garagey psych jams! And yes, if you haven't run into them before, it's Wooden ShJips with a J, that's not a typo, just a way we guess of making their moniker more psychedelic (and easier to Google, too). They've garnered a lot of deserved attention from folks into minimalistic psych throb, that's for sure, their now-out-of-print 10" and 7" vinyl records released last year making us -- and so many others, foremost among 'em Tom Lax of Siltbreeze/Siltblog fame, and Byron Coley at The Wire -- into drooling Wooden Shjips fanatics.
So, this new self-titled album follows on from their various singles and eps with five more fuzzy, super groovy, guitar/organ/bass/drums slowburners, somewhere between Comets On Fire and Circle, with a definite Doors-y vibe as well, in part due to the keys which give this an almost loungey relaxed feel at times, and in part due to the occasional laidback Morrison-ish vocals of guitarist Erik Johnson. Erik also makes us think of Neil Young as well, as his more "out" guitar solos -- some if 'em SCORCHING -- could be off of Young's feedback-filled Arc. Or a Les Rallizes Denudes record! Track four, "Blue Sky Bends", having the best Rallizes-ish drone-factor of the record. Overall, we'd say that these tracks, as a development from their earlier material, exhibits more and more of a throwback to the ballroom Frisco style of the sixties... now they just need to get a light show happening! But something tells us they'd be all about stark bright white strobes and dark black shadows only, maybe some b&w op art spirals, if their monochrome packaging aesthetic and the general heavy lidded mood of the music is anything to go by...
MPEG Stream: "We Ask You To Ride"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Sky Bends"

BRAINBOMBS Obey (Armageddon) cd 14.98
Finally back in print, one of the most gloriously sick and scuzzy, blown out slabs of misanthropic sludgey jazzy garage-y dirge rock EVER!!!
Don't let the jaunty little Lawrence Welk ditty that opens Obey lull you into any sort of peaceful state, you'd best be prepared for the hateful murderous mayhem that Obey has in store for you. Then again, that's probably precisely what the Brainbombs had in mind. A gentle voice luring you into a dark alley, a shiny trinket distracting you while the burlap sack goes over your head and you're dragged kicking and screaming into the woods, a sweet piece of candy draws you just close enough so you can be knocked unconscious, tied up, and stuffed in the trunk. Those of you familiar with the brutal musical world of Brainbombs will know exactly what we're going on about. The rest of you, be very very careful. They traffic in a sludgey, jazzy garage rock scuzz stomp, repeated riffs, simple pounding drums, a lurching leering fuzzed out psychedelic dirge underpinning tales of murder and mayhem, murder and rape, death and dismemberment. This is probably their most overtly harsh record. Mostly because unlike the rest of their releases you can actually hear what these Swedes are singing about. All delivered in a sort of fey, heavily accented English. As if the song titles weren't enough,"Kill Them All", "Die You Fuck", "Anal Desire", "Lipstick On My Dick", "Fuckmeat", the lyrics are misogynistic, misanthropic and just plain messed up. The sound is like Melvins meets Whitehouse filtered through the fuzzy garage stomp of the Stooges but with a maniacally repetitive looped quality, that cranks up the tension, while the vocalist slowly unravels and gets meaner and meaner, more and more insane. And let's not forget the occasional warbly warped trumpet (!). What can we say? We love Brainbombs.
MPEG Stream: "Die You Fuck"
MPEG Stream: "Anal Desire"
MPEG Stream: "Lipstick On My Dick"

SOGGY s/t (Memoire Neuve) lp 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now we can perhaps prove that old adage that one YouTube clip is worth a thousand words! Go watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49KyJQl-Og
Ok, you're back? Now just try to tell us you don't want to buy that band's record! After seeing that clip of Soggy kicking out the jams live on French TV in 1980 (thanks to our pal Brian Turner at WFMU for turning us on to it) we knew that if they had an album, we had to have it! A bit of research and we learned that indeed they did, newly reissued as a vinyl-only, limited edition. And now here it is, while they last. It's an expensive import, but it's also a deluxe gatefold package, with the super-thick LP in one pocket of the sleeve and a freakin' HUGE Soggy poster in the other (now when other records claim they come with a 'poster' they'd better step up!). And who cares how much it costs, didn't you just watch that video??!
For those for whom YouTube is somehow forbidden, we'll just say that Soggy (what a name!) were a French band circa 1980-82 who sound a lot like a more metallized version of The Stooges, obviously their biggest influence (end of side one here is cover "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). The skinny, shirtless singer is about as Iggy as you can get, with the added shake appeal of sporting a giant Rob Tyner (MC5) style Afro! Though they're about ten years after the Francais Metal de Proto scene we've obsessed over lately, they're more like Francais Metal de not-so-Proto, they'd fit right in, all heavy and punk and psychedelic. And they're even more obscure than those other French Stooge worshipers Angel Face, but just as badass. In fact, before they broke up the were supposedly slated to open a Judas Priest tour. What else do you need to know? Oh yeah, before they were Soggy, in the '70s some of these guys were in a band called the Hardfuckers!
All right, why are we still writing this? We don't need to, just watch that YouTube clip!! And yes, that song ("Waiting For The War") is included here. Act fast though 'cause this is limited to 500 copies and while we got a bunch we're sure they'll go quick.

CLARK-HUTCHINSON A=MH2 (Sunbeam) 2cd 25.00
Heavy progressive electric raga psychedelia here folks!! And it's soooooo good. All the songs here are long (there's five of 'em, between 7:16 and 13:09 in length) and you'll only wish they were longer. Described as "a two-man, all-British electric symphony orchestra", this album was originally released in 1969 on Decca and is utter nirvana for those into psych headswirlers. The lead electric guitar on here is incredible (and the bongo playing isn't bad, either!). While this duo came out of the '60s British blues rock scene, Mick Hutchinson's guitar playing displays tripped-out, classically trained chops and certainly also a strong sitar influence... percussionist Andy Clark plays guitar at times too, and between them they switch back and forth on a number of instruments.
The first track, "Improvisation On A Modal Scale" has got a heavy-riffing acid folk sound, sounding like early Wishbone Ash, sitting crosslegged off on an Indian ashram, or Comus if they ever plugged in and cranked it up. "Acapulco Gold" (hmm, the only song here not given a technical musical title is named after marijuana!) follows in a more acoustic, Spanish-guitar flavored mode. Lovely. Then "Impromptu in 'E' Minor" is another mellow number, yet darker, incorporating tribal percussive throb and jazz-inflected piano improvisation. "Textures In 3/4" also has a moody, jazzy vibe, with some saxophone coloration, and of course extended electric guitar improv, gorgeous and glorious. Very krautrocky, stuff that fans of Amon Duul II and Agitation Free would certainly love. And then Hutchinson's playing gets even more sitar-y on the epic "Improvisation On An Indian Scale", the track that wraps up this amazing album of Eastern-tinged, psychedelic instrumental interplay. He's endlessly spinning out slippery, sinuous melodies over a quietly galloping beat that brings to mind Spaghetti Western soundtracks. Wow. We'd been wanting to list this for a long time, but the previous cd edition on Repertoire has been out of print for years and years. Stoked are we that Sunbeam has reissued it again, on compact disc and vinyl, both versions coming with an entire bonus disc to boot!
That second disc, however, is full-on 12-bar blues rock, total chooglin' boogie stuff, with song titles like "Bad Loser" and "Someone's Been At My Woman". So... maybe for blues lovers only, that one. If you're really into Clapton/Cream and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. But it's just a bonus disc, the A=MH2 album on disc one is worth the price of the package alone. And the guitar playing on the blues disc is of course ace.
It always kinda seems like the British blues rock bands, the ones we really like anyway, we like 'em especially for the one album they did where they got away from the basic blues template (stuff they might have done really well) and weirded out, got all beardistic and beyond-blues improvisational and Eastern and freaky and proggy. Say, Steamhammer's Speech. Or the Groundhogs' Split. There's always one. In this case, it was Clark-Hutchinson's debut, A=MH2. But, beforehand they'd been way more bluesy, as that bonus disc here proves (it's material from their unreleased -first- first recording sessions in March of '69, laid down just a couple months prior to the two days in the studio they spent recording their actual debut).
EVERYONE we play A=MH2 for, or who hears it in the store, has been blown away. You know how the "ragadelic" acoustic folk guitar playing of folks today like Jack Rose and James Blackshaw is something we love? If you like that sort of thing too but want it a bit more druggily psych-rock, Clark-Hutchinson doing it electric way back when should satisfy! So very recommended (along with another obscure classic of the era, by T2, also reviewed this list).
MPEG Stream: "Improvisation On A Modal Scale"
MPEG Stream: "Impromptu in 'E' Minor"
MPEG Stream: "Improvisation On An Indian Scale"
MPEG Stream: "Crow Jane [from bonus disc]"

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

JUMALHAMARA Slaughter The Messenger (Hammer-Of-Hate) cd ep 10.98
We've gotten to a really weird place in our music obsession, as evidenced by the fact that sometimes a recommendation against, is almost stronger than a recommendation FOR. Sounds weird but it's true. We have friends at other stores, who will tell us something is terrible, they hated it, but then will add "you might like it though." And the weird thing is, they're usually right (that we'll like it). We've developed such a taste for the bizarre, it's sometimes hard to tell if something is bad, or so fucked up it's genius.
However, one of those friends recommended against buying this very record, very vehemently in fact. Hard to recall, but it was something along the lines of it not being very metal and being all jangly and wussy. Fair enough. But they are from Finland, and they do have a song called "Discover The Pigtail"! Those two pieces of critical info were enough to overrule our friend's warning, and we're so glad they were.
This latest ep from Finnish black metal, psychedelic post rock horde Jumalhamara is AMAZING. Three songs, all on the long side, with a sound that is pretty difficult to pin down. It is easy to see why someone questing for serious black metal grimness might be disappointed. The record begins with the sound of children, laughing, playing, and what sounds like oinking pigs, a field recording of some village, until the band ROAR into action, pounding out a fierce blast of blackened buzz, grinding and intensely heavy, but it literally only lasts for about 10 seconds, then the band drifts off into some washed out hippy psych territory, all crooned reverbed vocals, lazy sun baked melodies, simple hand drums, slippery minimal bass, streaks of dubbed out distorted guitar, but for the most part, this is almost like some blackened Finnish Grateful Dead. Near the end there's even some fuzzy organ, the guitars get a bit heavier, the vocals moaning and chant-like, but it never really explodes, just gets thicker and more dense, while still seeming jammy and druggy. So awesome. Almost like a slightly heavier, way more fucked up black metal version of the recent Dead Man record.
"Discover The Pigtail" begins with glistening harmonics, which are soon joined by some strange off kilter drumming, tangled riffing and howled vocals, the cool thing about this track is that those harmonics never go away, so even as the band slithers and sprawls, spewing out a sort of buzzy blackness, the glistening shimmer totally shines through, diluting the heaviness, turning what might be something raw and heavy into something way more bizarre and trippy, at times it almost sounds like two records playing simultaneously, they drift in an out of sync, all very dizzying and gloriously tweaked.
The final track is the briefest of the bunch, and begins as a grinding gnarled and blackened doomic dirge, but not typically sludgy and murky, instead it's super dense and layered, the drums doing much more than pounding away, stumbling and skittering, beneath streaks of high end guitar, and chugging blown out riffage, the cymbals sizzling, the whole track recorded super hot and in the red, blasting and pounding and twisting until it fades out.
Definitely not really black metal, more like some sort of twisted doom-ed post rock avant psych, but still plenty heavy and really fucking great!
MPEG Stream: "The Swing"
MPEG Stream: "Discover The Pigtail"

OSMONDS, THE Crazy Horses / The Plan (7T's / Cherry Red) cd 17.98
Which is gonna be harder, to convince you to buy a cd just for one song, or to buy a cd by The Osmonds? What about both?? Let's find out...
Ok, we might have trouble arguing that it's worth buying a whole cd (one with two entire albums on it!) just for ONE song. And it definitely seems likely we'd have even more trouble when that cd is by The Osmonds. But, then again, the song in question is "Crazy Horses"! If you haven't heard it before, this will be a lot easier for us if you just listen to the sound sample below, before we continue...
If you -have- heard it, you know that it was a remarkably heavy hit from a squeaky-clean group of cute, mop-topped brothers (including of course youngest brother Donny) not normally known for being such rockers. Heavy enough to qualify as proto-metal in our book. And also a bit of a novelty, we'll admit. But doesn't it make you wonder if the rest of the album from which it comes, 1972's Crazy Horses, is also as kitschily kickass? Well... the whole album is a bit of a novelty it turns out. Nothin' on it quite as crazy as "Crazy Horses", but there ARE definitely some other cool tracks, including the garagey groover "Life Is Hard Enough Without Goodbyes" and the Beatlesque "What Could It Be". Elsewhere they dabble in everything from soul balladry to what sound like Broadway showtunes, but seriously, there's enough decent rock here to make "Crazy Horses" not seem like a total fluke.
Adding to the value for money (really), the Crazy Horses album is teamed up on this twofer cd reissue with The Osmonds' 1973 concept album (yep, a concept album!) The Plan, which tries to teach about the boys' Mormon faith with the aid of some definite fuzzed out acid rock moves (and brassy horn sections too), the most bizarre example of which would have to be the stompin', over the top track "The Last Days", which seemingly suggests signs of Biblical prophecy to be found in the contemporary sociocultural situation of the early '70s... Both Crazy Horses and The Plan are at their best total bubblegum psychedelia, pretty charming after all these years, reminding us of the Beach Boys, early Bee Gees, and ELO - not an unimpressive feat by any means.
Neither album has been available on cd forever (if ever?) and if you don't want to bother digging for the original LPs of 'em at a flea market, then we'd definitely recommend this cd reissue! For "Crazy Horses", of course, but also a lot of other surprising, surreal pop pleasures...
(PS you can also check out YouTube for some "Crazy Horses" action, complete with goofy dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyRiNZDb5EY)
MPEG Stream: "Crazy Horses"
MPEG Stream: "What Could It Be"
MPEG Stream: "Traffic In My Mind"
MPEG Stream: "Movie Man"

BLACK MAYONNAISE Unseen Collaborator (Resipiscent) cd-r 11.98
Ahhhh, how we love Black Mayonnaise. Not the foodstuff. Although to be fair, we've never really tried it. No we're talking about the weird blackened musical one man band who years ago graced us with the mindblowing and soul melting Ttssattsr album, and who has now returned with a brand new disc of self described "Warped Lunar Sludge-core", and if anything it's even noisier, heavier and more freaked out and fucked up.
Ttssattsr, as best as we could describe it, sounded like some fractured blend of Godflesh and SUNNO))), and while that element is still present, things seem to have gotten a lot more abstract, with many tracks eschewing rhythms altogether, or burying them under an avalanche of grinding throbbing churning blackened buzz.
The first track is one long static drone, thick and tangled layers of blurred out buzz all tangled up into one huge ropy mass, above it float monstrous froglike croaks, impossible low end gurgles, while beneath a skittery rhythm lurks, barely audible, more like a thready pulse, all dubbed out, a rickety rhythmic skeleton supporting the blackened hide of the Black Mayonnaise beast. While heavy and intense, it's also weirdly dreamy and blissed out, a sort of soft doom-drone.
But the next track takes care of that, the drums finally kick in, the croaking frog still belching out noxious clouds of vocals, the guitars and drums locked into a doom plod, everything wreathed in space-y FX, like a slow motion doom metal Hawkwind.
Track three is super reminiscent of the first BM record, a very Godflesh sounding dirge, the industrial drumming, the thick riffing, but all melty and murky with those awesome croaked grunted rumbles over the top.
Probably the biggest surprise is the Flaming Lips cover, that sounds nothing like the Lips AT ALL, instead, it's a caustic slab of furious fuzzed out distorted in-the-red buzz and relentless blast beats, as close to blacknoise as BM gets, there are all sorts of groaning creaking sounds, as well as squiggly streaks of hiss, but they are practically swallowed whole. There's also a Flipper cover, which seems and sounds much more Black Mayonnaise appropriate, a murky lurching trudge through a world of sonic black tar. Everything black and dripping, but shot through with lazer blast FX, and those creepy vocals again.
The thirteen minute closer is totally out of left field, a garbled synthscape, very abstract and freaky, plenty of whirring buzz, and bleeps and bloops, slippery squiggles, like intercepted alien radio broadcasts, a sputtering, squelchy glitchy not-quite ambience that does manage to actually get pretty hypnotic.
Gorgeously packaged in a silkscreened black-on-black cardstock sleeve, while inside there's a black-on-metallic-silver printed insert, BUT be warned, it is in fact a cd-r, not an actual cd, but really it hardly matters, you'll forget about everything but what the hell is happening to your ears, and our brain, and your soul the second you press play.
MPEG Stream: "Low Twelve"
MPEG Stream: "Threshold"
MPEG Stream: "Pilot"

CROM Hot Sumerian Nights (Underdogma) cd 14.98
Crom are funny guys. Their first record, The Cocaine Wars, featured one of the best album covers EVER, a Heavy Metal Magazine style painting of a hot babe in armor, riding a huge polar bear, across a vast tundra, covered in a thick layer of snow, that once the booklet was opened, was revealed to actually be mounds of cocaine being sniffed by a mighty Viking! The new record, features the band painted in the same style as the first record, all Vikings, wearing armor, swords at their side, one flipping the bird, trudging across another snowy expanse, that this time, once the booklet opens, becomes the fluffy bedspread of a sleeping Viking, warm and cozy beneath a polar bear skin, his arm around his sleeping wench. Needless to say we were sold before we even heard a note.
And musically, these guys are pretty goofy too, tons of short short tracks, as many skits and interludes and weird sonic experiments as there are proper songs. But the key to Crom is that A. They really are funny, and the skits, while often dumb or puerile or pointless, are in fact pretty hilarious, and B. The riffs KILL. To the point of being incredibly frustrating, as each song cuts off after only a minute or two, leaving the listener wanting more. Way more. But somehow, all of those metallic fragments, and all of the fucked up silly non-musical moments, are woven into one awesomely over the top, confusional genius mess.
The sound is part black metal, part classic metal, part grind, a little Fucking Champs, some death metal, a little doom, it's obviously the work of some seriously obsessive metalheads, with seriously short attention spans, but the songs when they kick in totally destroy, from furious thrashing blackness, to grinding churning chug, to what-the-fuck metallic free for all, to total classic old school majestic metal, often all in the same song, and then there's all the snippets from movies, the bits of dialogue, the weird whispered vocals chanting 'join us', the entire track made of the sniffle of cocaine sniffing (we assume), weird epic fade-in's that fade in to nothing, some seriously Melvins-y sludge, confusional collages of samples and downtuned riffage, but none of that shit would fly if the band weren't capable of rocking like mother fuckers, which they most certainly are.
And be sure and stick around for the hidden last track, crickets, burbling brook, some distant humming, some Orc-ish growling, monks chanting, incantations, a bunch of crazy Jesus samples, and then a furious blown out lo-fi blast of chaotic metallic grind, the whole thing finishing off with one of those little chunk of music from an after school special or one of those "one to grown on" TV spots.
Hot Sumerian Nights will probably frustrate the shit out of a lot of folks, but they could be quickly won over with a polar bear, a warrior babe, a wall of amps and lots and lots of blow...
MPEG Stream: "Wee Hours Of The Snowgoat"
MPEG Stream: "Thorgrimm's Lament"
MPEG Stream: "The Lurker Within"
MPEG Stream: "Grim Grey Gods"

CHILD READERS Music Heard Far Off (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98
Yay, 'tis time for another delightful dose of Jewelled Antler goodness... these dusty gems aren't strewn about the twiggy forest floor as much as they used to be (back in the day of Jewelled Antler's prolific cd-r production), so it's with even greater pleasure that we regard this latest from Jewelled Antler potentate Loren Chasse (Of, Ov, Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, The Knit Separates, etc.) and his compatriot, and Berlin-based expatriate, Jason Honea (The Shitty Listener, Teenage Panzerkorps, Chord Fort, The Knit Separates, Franciscan Hobbies).
The usual hazy Jewelled Antler soundworld of abstruse natural field-recordings, fragmented folky melodies, and the textural droning of acoustic instruments (and non-instruments) is utterly entered into here, with the gentle, lullaby-like vocals of Mr. Honea softly taking you by the hand to wander in wonderment through it all. The music glistens and shimmers and sighs like the soughing sound of wind in the trees, and Honea's voice does too... it's some sort of lo-fi, fairytale indie-rock, though not very rock - the angular outset of the track "A Loved Thing/Gull's Blood" being the most raucous, rock-like thing here, almost Swell Maps-ish, reminding us, as much of this does, of likeminded New Zealanders Pumice... mostly though, while replete with much buzzing noise and sudden shiftings, this certainly on the dreamier and driftier side of things! Imagine Martyn Bates magically transported into the musical context of a Charles Burchfield landscape painting, perhaps... yet with this duo's "weird dude energy" keeping things interesting and unexpected (for instance, "A Poem In One Song" features indistinct background groanings that we recognize as Loren being silly).
Jason's intimate, close-miced vocals provide distorted textures of their own to go with the rather abstract music-making, always melodic and soothing even if you never bother to puzzle out the imagery of his improvised, stream-of-conciousness lyrics, some of which probably have to do with his new experience of fatherhood!
There's a sweet sixteen audio tracks here, plus four MPG4 video clips as a bonus! A few guests drop in to join Chasse and Honea on some of the songs, including Rob Reger (Thuja), former AQer Christine Boepple (Ov, Skygreen Leopards, Whysp), and Mark Williams (Mirza, Father Beard). Meanwhile, the videos take you out in the field with the Child Readers, each one a perfect visual analog to the accompanying music (four non-album tracks), full of natural scenery and more of that "weird dude energy", Jewelled Antler style. For these alone this is probably a must-buy for any Jewelled Antler fan or follower - if it wasn't already - since this fourth Child Readers disc (after 2 cd-rs on JA and a cd on Mallard Lake, all seemingly years and years ago) is perhaps our new favorite. Sometimes it's hard for us to express how much we like these records, 'cause we're friends with these guys and we feel weird gushing to much, but this IS fantastic. So glad the Child Readers are still up to their (un)usual hijinks. Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Young Worlds-Try To Hear!"
MPEG Stream: "Son Of Man"
MPEG Stream: "Starlight Veering"

LENTO Earthen (Supernatural Cat) cd 19.98
When we got the Supernaturals Vol.1 cd that teamed up Italy's UFOmammut and Lento (or Lent0?) we knew who UFOmammut were. The snailkings of psychedelic heavy sludge stoner metal awesomeness, a perfect hybrid of Electric Wizard's drugged-out doom and Hawkwind's even spacier, uh, spaciness. Big fans of UFOmammut we already were. But who were this Lento?? Now we have that band's out-on-their-own debut, and now we know. Lento are Italy's all-instrumental answer to Isis. They're Italy's masters of sinister, atmospheric, super-heavy post rock chugga chugga. The seven tracks of Earthen are divided between full-on, blown-out, heavy-riffing clobber and more restrained, near-ambient dronology, usually dynamically within the same song, though there's several tracks given over entirely to the latter, as on "Emersion Of The Islands" a drone-piece with crackling sferic-like sounds... It's a majestic, metallic post-rock soundtrack to a trudging trip across the cratered surface of some airless planetoid, an epic slog under unknown stars, bathed in space radiation, amidst the ruined remains of ancient alien technology... Or at least that's what we're getting from all their drone and grit and feedback, crashing cymbals, and monolithic riffage. Though Earthen's theme, as expressed in the song titles and artwork, appears actually to be more "Subterrestrial" than extra-terrestrial.
First off & obviously we'd recommend this to fans of their pals UFOmammut... the rigid, mechanical Godflesh-like elements that we've detected in UFOmammut's music are more prominent here, with some isolationist Lustmord ambience thrown in as well. Certainly check out Lento if you're into Godflesh (and Justin Broadrick's Jesu too), Isis, Nadja, Dumb & The Ugly, Hyatari... and of course if you liked that Supernaturals Vol.1 disc. This, and UFOmammut's new one Idolum also reviewed this list, are both fine follow-ups to that.
Similar to that new UFOmammut, this "regular" edition of Earthen is packaged in one of those newfangled rounded-corner jewel cases. There is (or was) a special limited edition of Earthen, too, with arty inserts and all, but we got precisely one of those 'cause they cost so damn much. If you're interested, ask, we might still have it... $49! Otherwise, this $19.98 edition is recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Need"
MPEG Stream: "Subterrestrial"
MPEG Stream: "Earth"

WADA, YOSHI The Appointed Cloud (EM Records) cd 21.00
In reality, this was recorded live at the Great Hall of New York Hall of Science in New York, November 8th 1987. But listening to it, you could easily imagine it being part of some mysterious & portentous religious ritual, enacted high on the slopes of some vast Himalayan mountain by horn-blowing, drum-beating Tibetan monks... these monks perhaps being part of an aktion under the direction of dramatic drone artist Hermann Nitsch. Seriously. Well it's not Nitsch, it's Yoshi Wada, and there were no monks involved, but we're sure it was an impressive performance to witness in its own right. Certainly to hear, which thanks to EM Records, we all now can.
This is the sequel to EM's previous reissue, some months ago, of Yoshi Wada's first album, Lament For The Rise And Fall Of Elephantine Crocodile. While that 1982 LP may have more rare record collector cachet, and be more historically significant chronologically speaking, we have to say that this one is at least as amazing. As we explained in our review of Lament, Wada is a Japanese visual artist and sound sculptor who relocated to New York in the '60s, where he aligned himself with the Fluxus conceptual art movement and definitely got deep into dronology. (He now lives in San Francisco, and for more information on his career, check out the June '08 issue of The Wire, #292, which features an interview with Wada conducted by AQ's own Jim Haynes.)
The Appointed Cloud, a composition/sound installation "designed specifically for the acoustics of the cobalt blue cathedral of the Great Hall", utilized a massive Wada-designed soundmaking assemblage controlled by a computer interface, this unusual "pipe organ" constructed from compressed-air powered pipes, a suspended 20 foot long sheet of metal, and a steam pipe gong. In addition, Wada and the other musicians involved play timpani, tam tam, sirens, and a trio of keening bagpipes. All this in the majestic, modernistic stained-glass setting of the Great Hall.
As alluded to above, this is somewhat suggestive of Buddhist ritual, and reminds us of Nitsch's large-scale symphonics as well. Rather than give a minute by minute play by play of this piece's hour-long duration, we'd encourage you to experience it for yourself. Experience the thundering drum vibrations, the percussive rattle, the quiet gentle tones and hushed rustle that erupt into dense bagpiping drone squeals and resonating rumble... it's grand and gorgeous.
Physically this cd reish is up to EM's usual high standards, packaged in a gatefold sleeve with color photos, a reduced reproduction of the piece's graphic score, liner notes by Wada as well as the original program notes, in both English and Japanese. Soundwise, it's also up there with that first Wada disc among our favorite stuff that EM has yet released -- in other words, highly recommended!! Even moreso for those especially dronologically and/or 20th century classically inclined.
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 2"

FALL OF THE IDOLS The Seance (I Hate Records) cd 16.98
Another plush, ploddering platter for all you doominoids out there... it's the furthering of Fall Of The Idols from Finland, members in good standing of the "Circle Of True Doom" founded by Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P.). A sophomore set consisting of seven downer dirges, slow and slumbersome, lumberingly lethargic - and also quite lovely, if classy, classic doom is yr thing. The Seance is a fine followup to Womb Of The Earth, their previous effort on I Hate Records. As before, the cleanly-sung, sometimes sort of chantlike vocals are a large part of this band's gloomy glory, emboldened by massive, majestic marble riffage and anthemic melody. So deep it is to weep. Imagine a mix betwixt Pentagram and Katatonia, that's the sorrowfully Sabbathy spirit this seance has channelled. The relatively uptempo trudge of track three, "At The Birth Of The Human Shadow", makes it stand out as the rocker of this batch, with the other songs all even more of a smoothly slo-mo, gothic grind taken to an exhausted, exalted extreme. Well done.
MPEG Stream: "Nosophoros"
MPEG Stream: "The Conqueror Worm"

GROUP DOUEH Guitar Music From The Western Sahara (Sublime Frequencies) cd 16.98
Finally! Available on cd! One of our favorite installments in the Sublime Frequencies series, originally released only on vinyl, and super limited, so it went out of print and remained that way ever since. Until now!
This installment is one of the few Sublime Frequencies with a focus on a single group, rather than an anthology of regional folk and pop or collaged radio broadcasts.
Struck by an ecstatically squealing lo-fi blast of electric guitar from a song heard on Moroccan radio, Sub Freq's main man, Alan Bishop went on a quest for the regional origins of that particular electric sound. Canvassing numerous cassette dealers, he was only able to identify the music as Sahwari and to pinpoint the region as the Western Sahara, a disputed territory nestled on the Atlantic Coast of North Africa between Morocco and Mauritania where frequent political struggles have caused a massive displacement of the region's indigenous people. A few months later, Bishop's colleague, Hisham Mayet, armed with Bishop's recording traveled back to Morocco to continue the search, ending up in the last outpost of the Western Sahara, Daklha, where through the help of the Sahwari shopkeepers was finally led to the creator of the strange music himself, Baamar Salmou, or as he is known in Sahwari, Doueh. Born in 1964. Doueh learned guitar on a homemade instrument fashioned from pieces of wood and steel strings. In 1981, influenced by Mauritanian music as well as Spanish cassettes imported from Europe and America of Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, he formed Group Doueh, fast becoming one of the definitive groups in the region, playing in festivals all over Northern Africa and even in France and Portugal. His wife Halima later joined as a vocalist and percussionist and in later incarnations, Doueh's son Jamal joined on keyboards. The tracks on this release are all taken from Doueh's personal archive except for two recordings made by Mayet, early last year. This is definitely some of the strangest and twisted ethnic music we've heard in awhile with its buzzing lo-fi circular guitar hooks and exuberant vocalizing and infectious rhythms, reminding us of aspects of Konono No.1's DIY tinkering, Tartit's desert trance-jams and a bit of the Shaggs self-taught charm (not so much in sound, but how a lot of the guitar parts follow the vocals). It's no wonder Alan Bishop was so struck by Doueh' guitar tone, since it reminds us a bit of that employed by Bishop's own band the Sun City Girls. This is so awesome and highly recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Eid For Dakhla"
MPEG Stream: "Eid El Arsh"
MPEG Stream: "Tirara"

JEX THOTH s/t (I Hate Records) cd 16.98
Here we go again. Maybe you remember our review a year or so ago of an ep by a psychedelic doom band from Wisconsin called Totem, related to "New Weird America" folkies Wooden Wand? We thought it was great, EXCEPT for one, possibly deal-breaking catch: the female lead singer's soaring vocals, which put it in the love 'em or hate 'em category, with most of us at AQ unfortunately forced to select the latter option, or at least do our best to live with 'em since we liked the music.
Well, as if to challenge us, Totem have changed their name to Jex Thoth (after the "stage name" of that selfsame singer!), and are back with their debut full-length album, again released by the doom metal purveyors at Sweden's I Hate Records, who previously have brought us music from Burning Saviours, The Puritan, Fall Of The Idols, Lord Vicar, Gates Of Slumber, and lots of other awesome heaviness.
That we have to have any reservations about this album at all is too bad, 'cause on the face of it, you probably couldn't deliberately design anything more likely to appeal to us at AQ, really! Not only is it psychedelic pagan DIY doom metal, to begin with, but check it out: Jex Thoth's guitar player Silas Paine is actually Jewelled Antler linchpin Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Blithe Sons, etc. etc.). Also in the band, another AQ friend, Clay Ruby (Davenport, Burial Hex). The cover art is by our Finnish pal Albert Witchfinder from doomlords Reverend Bizarre. And the album itself is dedicated to the memory of Cayce Lindner, from Flying Canyon, whom we too miss very much.
Also, Jex Thoth's "thanks list" is very much up our alley: they give props to Circle, Slough Feg, Silvester Anfang, Bobb Trimble, and Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, among others. And why are they thanking Bobb Trimble, whom hopefully you know as the '80s psych singer-songwriter outsider genius whose at-long-last reissued albums we made Records Of The Week last year? Because they do a cover of his apocalyptic song "When The Raven Calls" from Iron Curtain Innocence on here!! Yep, a Bobb Trimble cover! Brilliant. (And actually, we'll admit, a good choice for Jex Thoth's vocal style.)
So... plenty of indications that this is going to be something we'd LOVE. The music here is great, kind of an acid-folky New Weird Doom, all about ye olde '70s Sabbathy guitar riffage and Purplish organ jamming, fuzzed out and dirgey and druggy, full of spaced out fx, droning synth, lumbering distorted wah-wah riffs. It's not always so heavy, sometimes more of a melancholic moodiness, as much trippily atmospheric freek-folk psych and prog as it is doom (especially on the epic four-part "Equinox Suite"), their style of "metal" not solid steel or iron, but softer precious metals unearthed from an ancient treasure trove, like gold, silver and mythic mithril. We WANT to love this, and it shouldn't be hard... except for Jex Thoth's singing (again), which for most of us is just too high in the mix, too dramatic in a "thespian" sort of way, too sleek and clean and earnest, drawing out each word, each syllable with forced emotion... we're reminded of Grace Slick, with a side of Geddy Lee. But such things are subjective, your mileage may vary, and certainly Jex Thoth (the band) consider Jex Thoth (the vocalist) to be their major focal point, for better or worse. Her vocals ARE distinctive, and do give this band quite a unique vibe all right. And maybe they'll grow on us, actually they already have on Allan here, he'll admit, who while he still cringes a bit at some of her delivery, finds this working for him more often than not. So although we can't give this an unqualified recommendation, we're gonna highlight it anyway, and you can listen to the sound clips and see what you think. (We DO know some peeps who love her singing, actually, so maybe it's just us.) After all, in a lot of ways, this is the Jewelled Antler meets Jacula doom trip we've always dreamed of! A "New Weird Witchcraft" isn't far off the mark either. Acid folk classic doom, we approve of that!
Oh, and if you are already a Totem/Jex Thoth fan, you might be interested to know that we also have just a couple copies left of Jex Thoth's limited edition split 7" with '80s UK doom legends Pagan Altar (!), featuring the track "Stone Evil" from this album, we weren't able to get enough to list, but you might get lucky if you ask us quick, they're $12.98.
MPEG Stream: "Nothing Left To Die"
MPEG Stream: "Equinox Suite: The Poison Pit"
MPEG Stream: "Stone Evil"

KIKURI (HAINO, KEIJI & MASAMI AKITA) Pulverized Purple (Victo) cd 15.98
Oh boy. It had to happen. And it did, at 2007's Festival International de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Quebec. Kikuri is the heavyweight team up of two folks who cast long shadows in the realm of Japanese underground music: Japanoise master Merzbow (for he is Masami Akita) and that totemic Tokyo psych veteran, Keiji Haino, longtime leader of the free rock band Fushitsusha. There they are in the photo on the inside of the cd booklet, Haino and Akita both standing stoically in a leafy green forest... hey has Haino's hair turned grey, a la J. Mascis (with bangs)?? It's about time (not for the grey, for the team up). Haino has collaborated recently with Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins (including another highlight on this week's list!), and KK Null of Zeni Geva, and some years back with all of Boris, but this one's definitely as earthshaking (literally) as any of those, if not moreso.
So, think this might be dark, dense, and noisy? You're right! Putting this on is like telling your stereo, wake up, time to die!!! The first four of five tracks on this disc are all extreme, crinkled, screaming, disssstorrtted NOISE. It's interestingly varied, and very Merzbovian - although the cryptic, wordy song titles which are definitely the work of poetic soul Keiji Haino... such as: "Give Me Back That Colour You Stole From My Guts" (track 3) and "That Place Into Which You Fell Was Lined With A Cushion Of Pain And Is No Proof Of You Continuing Existence" (track 4). Yep, these initial four tracks of brutal catharsis, all but one of them over 10 minutes long, are quite excellent if you're a Merzbow fan, though those who know Haino will definitely be able to hear his input too, beyond the titles. The track "By Mischance That Soul I Devoured Was A Transparent, Vertical Blues" features bursts of his trademark tortured vocals amidst the throbbing hissing static that could be