DRAKE, NICK Fruit Tree (Universal Island) 3cd+dvd 60.00
This all time beloved AQ tresure, out of print for ages, finally gets reissued, in time to give as a gift, to ANYONE you know who might not have this, because everyone should own these records. Some of the most breathtakingly lovely folk music EVER. Now with new artwork, and with the addition of the recent Nick Drake documentary A Skin Too Few. To make room for the dvd, they bumped the odds and sods collection Time Of No Reply, but is not such a loss, as much of that stuff has surfaced in one form or another in the recent spate of collections gathering up anything and everything Drake ever recorded.
But here, in addition ot the movie, you get everything you need, all three classic albums: Pink Moon, Bryter Layter and Five Leaves Left. Breatless, intimate, heartfelt, tragic, lovely, dreamy, wistful, heart breaking, personal, intense and mysterious folk music that sounds as otherworldly as it does timeless.
In a super nice box, with a new 100 page book. Absolutely essential.

HECKER, TIM Atlas One (Audraglint) 10" 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now we shouldn't have to go into too much detail about our undying love for the mysterious music of Tim Hecker. Just have a gander at the AQ website for much gushing over Hecker and his gorgeously gauzy sonic soundscapes. This new 10" is no different. One single epic, split into two movements, two sides, both dramatically different, but both absolutely beautiful.
Part one, side A, is the more intense of the two. Looped and processed guitars overlapping and all tangled up into gloriously softly roiling swirls of sound, melodies like snakes squirming and slithering and wrapping themselves around each other. Sitar like buzzing keening metallic high end, swooping backwards then drifting forward again. Here and there gentle lilting bits of finger picked guitar surface as do thick washes of distant crumble, everything deftly woven into a blurred slow moving dense and detailed sonic drift. At times it almost sounds like a symphony for tuning orchestras, a soft cacophony melted down into something, gauzy, dreamily indistinct and otherworldly.
The second half, which takes up all of side two, is much more glistening and effervescent, sparkling glimmery high end, little melodic trills fluttering and pulled apart, allowing the notes to drift and settle , the various elements gradually blurring into one another, the streaks and smears like slow burning comet tails of sound. Plucked guitars pepper the night sky like twinkling stars, all viewed through a cracked kaleidoscope, a washed out fog of hushed shimmer and slow moving blurs of indistinct beauty. Absolutely gorgeous.

MARBLEBOG Forestheart (Autopsy Kitchen) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Since we first heard the name Marblebog, we somehow just knew this obscure Hungarian horde would be a fast favorite, before we had even heard a note of music, and man were we right. The last record, 2004's Csendhajnal, now unfortunately out of print, was a huge hit at AQ, the perfect balance of swirling synthy ambience, and mournful melancholy Burzumic buzz, so we had been anxiously awaiting the reissue of 2005's Forestheart ever since, and now it's finally here.
This duo from Hungary mix traditional Hungarian folk, modern grim black buzz, and blissed out ambience into epic swaths of blurry blackness, woven from loping minor key guitars, simple mostly midtempo drumming, strangled croaked vocals, and while the parts might sound similar to black metal obsessives, it's not just the parts, it's how they're played, and recorded and arranged, the mood and the timbre, the sound and the feeling as much as the actual riffs.
And while the riffs are of course amazing, it's the feel more than anything that make Marblebog so special. Everything is dripping with such sadness and sorrow, not just minor key, but whole arrangements and progressions perfectly assembled to evoke strange feelings, heartbreak and woe, death and destruction, so mournful and melancholy, sweeping swells of buzzing sound, with incredible dynamics, and bits of melody that swoop in out of nowhere and are immediately swallowed up again.
The appropriately titled "Opening" is a brief stretch of swirling krautrocky synth, peppered with haunting animal like FX and creepy scrapes and groans, all drenched in reverb and delay, hovering beneath a pale moonlit sky. This intro opens up into the sort of title track "I Am The Forestheart", a glorious blast of melancholy blackness, with a main riff as catchy as it is dark and depressive. Part way through the band shift gear, and slow down into a strummed folky interlude, a jig like melody, Jew's harp, the sound of wind and rain, a haunting spare drift.
There are three more longish tracks, all channeling the same forest spirit, looped cyclical black buzz, suffused with hypnotic drones and unlikely little melodic flourishes, everything muted and murky and dreamlike, often breaking down into simple acoustic guitar drifts, before picking back up again. The harrowing over the top vocals of the first records are now much more settled into the background, more a part of the music, almost like another layer of buzzing drone, but still just as harrowing and anguished.
The final track is a 13+ minute ambient soundscape of shimmering synths, and mad scientist lab FX, burbling and gurgling beneath, dreamy washes of high end drift, strange muted percussion, some seriously Goblin like keyboard creep, and eventually some awesome lurching downtuned guitar, not so much crushing and heavy as creepy and thick, cyclical and hypnotic, a gorgeous lurching dream doom.
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Forestheart"
MPEG Stream: "A Tempest Never Calming Down"
MPEG Stream: "Closing"

WILDILDLIFE Six (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
We dug the first ep from SF transplants Wildlife, who just so happened to feature our very own Matt in mailorder on guitar and vocals. A blown out tripped out heavy as fuck space rock psychedelic freakout of the highest order. Since then, not only have the band changed their name, to the much weirder and somehow more appropriate Wildildlife but also honed their sound into something somehow more blown out, more tripped out, heavier, weirder, but more importantly, WAY catchier. Hooks and melodies that most bands would kill for, but Wildildlife play it like it's no big thing, burying that stuff under avalanches of processed guitars, throbbing howling bass pedals, metallic Iron Maiden like riffing, insane chaotic drumming, and a fierce white hot wall of sound.
We were pretty much sold from the first track. Beginning with some simple Adam Ant drumming, tribal and pounding, before the glistening reverbed Big Country guitars come in, all swathed in delay and drifting over the tangled rhythmic chaos below. The guitars build into a serious chordal frenzy, and then a strange haunting, and very eighties sounding hook, and that's when the vocals come in. Distorted but melodic, a dangerously catchy hook, that somehow reminds us of Gaye Bykers On Acid. Druggy and tripped out, with a cool guitar/vocal "laŠ lalalalalaaaaaaa" refrain that sticks in your head FOREVER. Wildildlife are usually described as Butthole Surfers meets Black Sabbath, which while flattering, and maybe to a certain extent accurate, hardly do justice to Wildildlife's cracked pop flecked noise rock heaviness.
Yeah, they're heavy, but there's no massive doom riffing or downtuned metallic pummel, and they are definitely trippy, but not in the same way as the Buttholes.
Take the second track, beginning with a wicked tangle of distorted guitar, when the drums kick in, and the band locks into an angular almost new wave melody, and those vocals return, sort of raspy and crooned, echoed by either a high wavery guitar or a falsetto vocal, and they repeat, mantra like, mesmerizing and hypnotic, relentless and seriously tripped out. The drums a constant rhythmic lock beneath the strange poppiness of the vocals and the guitar, before the whole thing splinters into a Hawkwind free rock noise jam, all super effected vocals, total drum mayhem, and thick washes of crumbling guitars and throbbing buzzing bass, eventually petering out into a gorgeous metallic slowcore dirge, everything still wrapped in thick layers of reverb and delay, a gorgeous mournful doomic sonic deathmarch. While some may hear the Buttholes, we're hearing stuff like the God Bullies, the Cows, Lubricated Goat for sure and still plenty of Gaye Bykers, although all even more souped up and super charged.
The two halves of the record are separated by the longest track, the 18+ minute "Magic Jordan", which begins as a washed out post rock dirge, all shimmery strummed guitars, echoey Jim Morrison vocals, and a simple stripped down rhythm, Eventually, the band erupts into a massive roiling bout of slow heaviness, that sounds like a way more psychedelic Harvey Milk, with killer angular riffs surfacing amidst the endless black sonic swirl, eventually giving way to 10 minutes of tripped out free folkiness, all warped backwards guitars, abstract percussion, fluttering melodies, haunting disembodied vocals, all sorts of random creaks and chimes and whir and hiss. Which is quickly followed by what is easily the catchiest track on the record. The relatively brief seven minute long "Feed", with its abstract delayed guitar harmonic feedback intro, giving way to probably the most Buttholes sounding bit on the record, a tense and intense bit of furious drumming, and throbbing bass beneath little flurries of metallic guitar leads, doused in FX and sent swirling over the abyss, while the vocals croon from WAY down in the mix, finishing off with a cool thick chunk of melancholy riffage, massive low end throbs playing out a gorgeous melody beneath the squiggly guitar chaos above.
The disc finishes off with a massive sonic one two punch, two fourteen minute tracks, the first, a super abstract slow motion noise doom lurch, with anguished vocals, sung from the bottom of a well, the guitars and drums offering up jagged little stabs, before locking into a relentless Swans like crush, nearly suffocating the vocals, until the band again lock into an impossible blissed out drone, where the guitar and bass mesh into a nearly M83 sounding wash of fuzzed out psychdrone, before reverting to full on glacial plod until the end.
While the final track, begins with a thick bit of bassy buzz, weaving a hard to define slow motion melody, the buzzing rich and thick and rife with overtones, metallic, electric and lush all at once, eventually joined by a downtuned guitar mirroring that same slow motion melody, eventually joined by dramatic almost gothic vocals, the drums dropping in like brass knuckled fists to the sternum, the band again almost slipping into some intense Swans like doom, before the riffing slips away leaving nearly six minutes of soaring guitar noise, and cymbal sizzle, eventually building to a super dramatic major key coda, all soaring chords and falsetto crooning, like some sort of alien metallic "Star Spangled Banner" (again reminding us a bit of Harvey Milk), before drifting off into a meandering morning after guitar bass post rock fade out.
Way recommended. Noisy and heavy and poppy and psychedelic and fucked up and catchy in a way few bands can pull of. And the one time we caught them live, we were hanging in a hammock, above the stage, IN A BUS, getting rammed repeatedly by the headstock of the guitar as the two axemen dueled wildly in the outrageous confines of the space below. Barring that sort of intimate and surprisingly painful interaction with Wildildlife, this record will definitely serve as an ideal introduction to their damaged and druggy fucked up metallic noise rock space pop, at least until you too can be battered and bruised by these guys in the flesh!
Recorded by Aaron from Mammatus, released on the always awesome Crucial Blast, and in some seriously amazing packaging, a super fancy mini gatefold sleeve, thick and full color, with an intense bejeweled turquoise skull on the cover, a fucked up masked dirt faced hatchet flag duel photo inside, as well as a full color booklet with liner notes and a bunch more freaky blurry creepy masked wild(ild)life photos...
MPEG Stream: "Things Will Grow"
MPEG Stream: "Tungsten Steel / Epilogue"
MPEG Stream: "Magic Jordan"

TELESCOPES, THE Another Whip (Trensmat) 7" + cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've long been fans of the Telescopes, a veritable UK institution. A long running blissed out space rock outfit as adept at crafting dreamy billowy drone rock epics as they are spewing huge gobs of caustic guitarnoise and wild psychedelic freakouts. This ultra limited 7", in Trensmat's ongoing series of eps, finds the band dabbling in the latter. Two tracks of crumbling slowly decaying space rock ambience, washed out guitars, streaks of glittering feedback, rumbling drones, coruscating white noise guitar buzz, blurred disembodied chordal bliss and crunch slabs of fuzzy distortion, all stretched out into mesmerizing sprawls of dreamlike psychedelic space drone. Heavy and dense, noisy and divine!
Includes a cd-r with the same tracks as the 7", but also with a 40 minute cd-rom film. A gorgeous and super abstract black and white video and live performance recorded in 2006, all stripes and striations, static and video white noise, shifting and slowly moving and changing shape, crumbling beauty, abstract decay and distortion, the visual analogue to the Telescopes blown out ambient skree.
Pressed on opaque cloudy blue vinyl. Packaged in a cool full color sleeve with a half cutaway on the back revealing the single and the cd. LIMITED!!! Of course. Less than 100 copies worldwide...

GLUTTONY Collapse Of The Roman Republic (Liber Primus) (Hekaloth / Cyclops) cd 15.98
Fans of the damaged and deranged, the truly warped and mindbending, the freaky, fucked up and plain baffling, by now should be well acquainted with the mysterious master of the guitar synth, and his bevy of bewildering outfits, two of which we've reviewed on past AQ lists, this being the third, in what we can only imagine is some sort of insane trilogy. Xynfonica came first. A "classical" record, completely composed and performed on the guitar synthesizer. A tripped out, outsider slab of post Peter And The Wolf classical deconstructed, atonal and so so so difficult, oh and did we mention that the other part of the equation was seemingly incongruous raspy evil metal vocals? A totally not-right combination, but for those of us who dig that sort of stuff, it was pretty unbeatable. Then there was the HUGE booklet of lyrics, complete with FOOTNOTES!!!
Then came Shevalreq, part two in the "trilogy", his 'world music' record, where the same atonal angular tones and notes, the howled raspy vocals, were this time wrapped around faux tablas and various other ethnic percussion instruments. If anything, it was even more fucked and amazing. Not to mention the over the top cover art, with miniature jousting knights on horseback ON TOP OF various dat machines and other studio gear. WTF?
So while we anxiously awaited part three, we were fairly sure nothing could top Shevalreq. But oh were we wrong.
The new one is called Gluttony, the name of the record: Collapse Of The Roman Republic, another epic tale of war and death and love and betrayal, this one being his quote unquote jazz record, and fuck if it's not the most amazingly fucked up record EVER. Now in addition to the metallic rasp, the stumbling angular melodies, are lots of synthesized horn stabs, crooning synthesizers, faux vibes and marimbas, synth oboes, synth bassoons, all peppered with some serious twisted tangles of Greg Ginn-esque guitar squall, usually draped over some woozy, smoky dive bar synthjazz. It still sort of sounds like Peter And The Wolf, but it also sounds like the score for some mystery noir z-movie thriller, ripe for some sort of Sam Spade voice over, but instead you get a voice over from some growling bile spewing demon, and the tracks lope on endlessly, the melodies, maniacally off kilter, the whole thing so brilliantly baffling it's almost impossible to listen to the whole thing, but we've come close. Very very close.
Absolutely recommended, but ONLY for those who can handle stuff like this. You know who you are.
MPEG Stream: "Marius Engages The Teutons"
MPEG Stream: "Teutonic Invasion"
MPEG Stream: "Marius Engages The Cimbri"
MPEG Stream: "The Rise Of Sulla"

FLESHPRESS Pillars (Kult Of Nihilow) 2lp 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We love our doom. The slower, the doomer, the more o's the better. But it's easy to get burned out. Much like the wave of guitars-against-amps drone outfits who seemed to come out of the woodwork on the heels of the sudden popularity of Earth, SUNNO))) and other dronelords, lately it seems like everyone and their brother has a "doom band". Lots of non-metal bands suddenly seem to be sprouting doomier appendages, side projects, home recorded one offs, in part, because it's a sound that's easy to emulate. Tune your guitar really low, play really slow, and that's it. You're a doom band. But as with any other musical movement, it's not what you do, it's how you do it, and the simpler something seems, the harder it is to actually do it in a way that stands out, that separates it from the hundreds of other bands doing the same thing.
So in the world of ultra doom, or many o'd doom, or whatever, it's obvious which bands are doing something special, Boris, SUNNO))), Moss, Bunkur, and of course Finland's Fleshpress. And as much as we love all of those bands, we have a special affinity for Fleshpress, not just because they're Finnish (although there is that), but that they throw all doomic convention to the wind, and do whatever the fuck they want. Even if it's distinctly not doomy. Play fast. No problem. Blast beats, near grindcore, sure. Play soft and pretty, explore post rock, absolutely. Which is what makes them such a refreshing doom outfit. Or conversely, makes them not a doom band at all, rather a weird band that incorporates doom into their all-over-the-map sound.
Either way, Fleshpress rule, they're heavy, weird, slow (when they want to be), fast and furious (when they don't), they deftly craft mysterious soundscapes, they can also unleash huge torrents of soul crushing megadoom. And they do all of that and more on Pillars. Every record, gets a little weirder, a littler more expansive, a little less traditionally doom, and Pillars is no exception.
The first track is almost like Fleshpress's far out sound encapsulated into a single track. Beginning with minutes of spare guitar strum, lots and lots of space, ambient whir, the guitar letting loose distorted riffs, and letting them drift into the darkness. The bass comes in, and does nothing but offers a spidery framework for the seemingly abstract riffs, then the drums come in, a single crash, every few seconds, there is no real rhythm to speak of yet, finally the band lurches into a doomy plod, somewhere between Monarch slow motion sludge and Harvey Milk glacial groove, complete with weird woozy melody and strange slippery riffage, harsh vocals, drifting fields of feedback, briefly we're trudging through a wasteland populated by like minded mavens of doom. Khanate, Burning Witch, MossŠ But soon, the doom recedesŠ leaving just soft billows of sound, when suddenly the band launch into some full on crusty metallic grooves, eventually finishing off with two minutes of grinding hyperspeed buzz. Pretty all over the place, but the parts are all so deftly arranged that it doesn't sound like a bunch of random bits thrown together, it sounds like small varied pieces of the far out whole. That track is quickly followed by 5 minutes of soft flutter and whir, a detuned guitar plucking out a stumbling rhythm, all around, bits of hiss and hum, the sound of rain and wind maybe, all washed out and soft focus.
Then it's the record's massive two song one two punch, two tracks, both about twenty minutes, back to back, the first, begins all grim black metal buzz, furious fuzzed out riffage and harsh hellish vocals, before slipping into a brief mathy groove and then shifting into a midtempo Burzumic black trudge, which of course partway through gives way to more massive and epic and wide open dooooooooom, plodding drums, crushing sludgy dynamics, and a fluttering guitar melody droning along underneath, eventually building to an epic minor key psychedelic crescendo. The second track, is more of a post rocky drift, with clean guitar and a shuffling rhythm, the vocals still howled and harsh, but the main riff, warm and fuzzy, and subtly propulsive, the tempo a bit warbly and seasick, very hypnotic and repetitive, eventually slowing down, but not into a crushing doom plod, but instead, a sprawling space rock sludge, the drums slow and insistent, the guitars building into squalls of psychedelic freakout, like the outro to a Hawkwind track, before the band launches into a super metallic mathy jam, the FX getting thicker and more dense, the band playing harder and faster, the last 5 minutes or so sounding more like the Heads or White Hills, a gorgeous outer space trip through throbbing bass lines, clouds of spacepsych guitar, and killer chaotic drumming.
The final two tracks both clock in at about nine minutes each, and again, demonstrate some totally other side of Fleshpress' doomworld. The first, is a loping post rock dirge, the guitars ringing out, the rhythm more like the Slintish blackness of Ved Buens Ende, a head nodding mathy groove peppered with vocal howls and an awesome epic buzz drenched coda. The final track is all drone, a murky subterranean trawl, all slow building sludgy swells, dense metallic shimmer, strange bits of industrial sonic detritus and some mysterious backwards percussion right at the end.
Seriously mind blowing. It almost does it a disservice to call Fleshpress a doom band anymore, although those are the folks who will be most inclined to love this. But fans of weird black metal and freaky outsider heaviness might also have found one of their records of the year.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "3"

BURIAL CHAMBER TRIO WVRM (Southern Lord) 10" 15.98
Second vinyl only offering from this low end subsonic super group, made up of Greg Anderson (SUNNO))), Southern Lord head honcho), Oren Ambarchi, and legendary black metal vocalist Attila Csihar (Mayhem, Tormentor, Aborym)Š
For this outing, Ambarchi and Anderson are credited with sub bass death throb, while Attila is responsible for undead voices. And that's pretty much what it sounds like, sub bass throbs with haunting undead vocals woven into the heaving roiling mass. There seem to be some guitars in there too, maybe some electronics, but it's hard to tell, it's all smeared into a single swirling blackened mass. When we first listened to it, we played it at 33 (which we're assuming now is NOT the right speed, so hard to tell sometimes), and we thought, wow, this is even slower and sludgier than ever, but once we figured out it was meant to be 45, the sound reverted back, closer to the sound of SUNNO))) or the older records of their forbears Earth. Slow motion riffage, glacial and thick, massive and blown out and super distorted, muffled and murky, a sluggish sprawl of caustic crumbling guitars, the vocals barely audible, a haunting raspy growl way down in the mix, often just sounding like another buzzing bassline, hum and fuzz, dense and intense, all melted down into a viscous black crawl. Occasionally, the random bits of riffage and low end rumble coalesce into truly gorgeous harmonies, lovely and chordal, like some blackened church organ, but for the most part, this is the sound of guitar tones allowed to ring out forever and beat against each other, the air filled with oscillating overtones and strange tonal colorations, all beneath a patina of thick black buzz.
Amazing cover art as well, a gross out gutted worm picture disc, with a transparent skull and bugs insert on one side, and another sick silkscreened artwork overlay on the thick plastic sleeve, all courtesy of Mr. Seldon Hunt.
Recorded live, in January of this year, in Holland. And of course, you had to know this part was coming:
LIMITED TO 3000 COPIES!! And if it's anything like the other Burial Chamber record, it will sell out FAST.

SNIVELLING SHITS, THE I Can't Come (Damaged Goods) cd 16.98
This one came out of nowhere and kicked our asses. And to be totally honest, as is often the case, we ordered it almost entirely because the band had an awesome name, heck, they're called the Snivelling Shits. Fingers crossed we threw it on, and what do you know? The sound was as snotty and snarly and snarky and catchy and punk as fuck as the name implied.
The 'Shits were a joke band, formed by music journalist Giovanni Dadamo in 1977, designed to take the piss, but they ended up whipping up a batch of songs as good as if not better than any other groups at the time. Some impossible blend of the Buzzcocks, the Undertones, the Modern Lovers, The Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Velvets. Propulsive drumming, looped hypnotic riffing, and Dadamo's high pitched invective over the top. Take "I Can't Come", a bawdy sex tale about bedroom misadventure, with an insanely long list of other luminaries who couldn't come, culminating in the classic "Jesus Of Nazareth, heeeeeee can't come!" delivered in a snotty nasal whine. The rest of the tracks are just as funny: "Only 13", "Terminal Stupid", "I Wanna Be Your Biro", the all in French "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" and the impossibly catchy "Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima". Every song here is a stone cold classic. Why these guys weren't huge it's hard to say. Might be because they didn't take it all that seriously, or the fact that they only ever recorded EIGHT tracks in their whole brief career, all collected here, along with some demos as well as the holiday chestnut "There Ain't No Sanity Claus" with the Damned (Dadamo also wrote a couple songs for those guys) and the previously released "isgodaman?" which was included on a comp under the pseudonym Arthur Comix because the record label didn't want the word Shits on their record cover.
Bottom line is this stuff is amazing. Hooky and haughty, frenetic and so bad ass. If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands or have been digging on the current crop of snotty punk rock: the Catheters, the Thermals, Times New Viking, and the like, this will DESTROY YOU!!
MPEG Stream: "I Can't Come"
MPEG Stream: "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi"
MPEG Stream: "Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima"

ALUK TODOLO Descension (Riot Season) lp 21.00
Finally, the first full length from these mysterious French post black metal krautrock alchemists. And if you think calling a band French post black metal krautrock alchemists might be overdoing it, you haven't heard Aluk Todolo.
An offshoot of black metal horde Diamatregon (who have one record on tUMULt, and another one coming soon), this trio, just guitar, bass and drums, are most definitely alchemists, working some sort of ancient magic, turning the simplest of rock band instrumentation, into something massive and mysterious, heavy and haunting, brutal and mesmerizing, repetitive and motorik. Crafting songs, that manage to be both pieces, in the classical sense, abstract and intellectual collections and arrangements of sound, subtle shadings, tonal color and timbre, harmony and dissonance, and SONGS, in the rock sense, fucking kick ass jams, that seem to go on forever, killer riffs, and relentless head nodding rhythms, like krautrock, only heavier and darker and way way blacker. Like black metal but without all the buzz and howl, stripped down to its very essence, to just mood and rhythm, ambience and propulsion.
In the review of the previous 7" we described the band's sound as: Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy.
And the full length essentially still sounds like that, but having loosed themselves from the shackles of the way too brief 7" format, the band can take all those elements, and lay them out, an epic massive post rock, krautrock, dronerock, experimental post black metal sprawl. These are the kinds of songs and sounds that need space, and time, need to lull the listener in, to entrance, ensorcel, the rhythms are stripped down and repetitive, looped and hypnotic, simple, but surprisingly and subtly complex at the same time. It's not hard to hear other hypno rockers in Aluk Todolo's sound, Circle, Salvatore and the like, but also space rock masters of repetition, Hawkwind, The Heads, and of course krautrock legends Can and Faust. Especially Can, with their focus on the power of the rhythm, no mater how seemingly simple or plain. But more than anything, it's legendary UK experimentalists This Heat whose, haunting mysterious rhythmic influence is all over Descension.
The opening track is the heaviest, a brutal slab of in the red distorted riffage, the actual riffs barely discernible, more like a heaving mass of crumbling distortion and space rock FX, but the rhythms that frame the whole record are already in place, pounding steadily beneath the buzz and skree. A head nodding pulse underpinning the swirling distorted clouds above. A bracing and white hot burst of blackdronekrautpsych that has the speakers rattling for all of its 8+ minutes.
But that track mostly serves as an intro to the complex and moody rhythmic sprawl that makes up the other three tracks. "Burial Ground" begins with what sounds like a slowed down This Heat rhythm track synched up to the free abstract drift of legendary seventies dronepsych collective Taj Mahal Travellers. The drums unwavering, but the background constantly in flux, swaths of black buzz, brief flurries of chaotic FX, distant low end swells, haunting fragmented melodies, a gorgeous spare kraut rock jam dropped into the abyss.
"Woodchurch" is a dense wall of high end buzz, all swirling distorted hum and keening feedback, tones all tangled up, a chordal wash of tuned vacuum cleaners, a sort of Sunroof! Style urdrone, but beneath it, the simplest of bass lines, distorted and downtuned, a heartbeat like throb, only a handful of notes, just enough to tie into the even simpler drum part, just kick drum and snare, a two step tattoo, as completely mesmerizing as it us utterly simple. The background buzz, swaying and pulsing, like some massive black sea, or clouds of insects ravaging a blighted sonic landscape.
The disc closes with "Disease" which opens with an ultra heavy slide guitar, unfurling a slow motion blues riff, caked in black buzz and thick distortion, the notes left to hang, ringing out until the tones slowly transform into feedback, immediately being swallowed up by the riff right behind it. It's like Robert Johnson playing SUNNO))), and then suddenly, the sound shifts, and the band reverts to its murky trawl, a thick throbbing bass line, another Can like rhythm, guitars warm and warbly, more like a layer of wet fuzz than distinct riffing, but occasionally, bits of that opening salvo return, offering up brief blasts of speaker destroying crunch, or brief bits of grinding buzz, a sudden start that almost, but doesn't quite wake you from your soporific reverie. Near the end, the distorted slide guitar returns, and drums drop out, and the track finishes with a thick coda of pealing guitar roar and shimmering chordal droneŠ
Intense and hypnotic and heavy and fucking genius. Ritualistic sounds, both black and brilliant, pulled from the void, a mysterious and sonic netherworld. Definite contender for record of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Obedience"
MPEG Stream: "Burial Ground"

OCEAN, THE Precambrian (Metal Blade) 2cd 14.98
Germany's THE Ocean, not to be confused with Ocean from the US, have always been a pretty impressive proposition, their soaring epic post Godspeed Neur-Isis style metallic grind, their phalanx of guitarists, their triple vocal attack, the fact that they're a sort of musical commune, but more importantly, the sound they make is MASSIVE, thick and churning and so so so so HEAVY. It boggles the mind how a band can sound this heavy, on record even, we fear for the brave souls that subject themselves to this sort of crushing brutality live.
A lot has changed in The Ocean camp since 2006's Aeolian. Where that record was moody and nuanced, majestic and cinematic, Precambrian is much more immediate, more furious and intense, the guitars downtuned and crunchy, even heavier than before, the vocals a metal howl, bordering on hardcore bark. The drums swinging wildly from monstrous pound to lightning fast blast beats. And the compositions, holy shit! Mathy and complex and convoluted, Much grindier than before, relentless and maniacal. But wait! That's only the first half of Precambrian. Ultra high concept, separated into two discs (or three lps), the first disc, if we're going by the cd (nicely designed as a 3" cd embedded in a 5" plastic disc) is short and sharp and fast and furious and is the first movement. But the second disc (the third and fourth lp) is much more of the Ocean we're used to. Beginning with some abstract clean guitar shimmering in an expanse of distant drones and mournful melodies, quickly shifting into some mathy post rock, all noodly melodies and jagged harmonies, some seriously dark riffing, even some clean vocals, piano, strings, this is epic shit, wound around gnarled bursts of furious intensity. The record is super strange, shifting from almost gypsy sounding folk, with moaning fiddles, and chime like melodies, to dens chunks of Neurosis style sludge, from expansive shoegaze-y bliss outs to full on Eyehategod howl and chug, tripped out almost-jazz to straight up chamber music, and back to punishing ultra heaviness.
Makes no sense to us that The Ocean guys are not as huge as Isis or Pelican or Neurosis. And if you dig any of those bands you owe it to yourself to get into these guys. The cd comes in a double jewel case, one normal 5" disc, one 3" disc in a 5" plastic disc, with multiple booklets, packed with lyrics and woodcut illustrations. Wow.
But if any record was one for the vinyl nerds it's THIS ONE. So over the top. A triple lp, gatefold, the whole thing black on black, with silver and white ink, spot varnish flourishes, diecut front and back with amoeboid shapes so the inner sleeves are visible, metallic ink on matte black inserts feature lyrics and illustrations, each lp a different color, orange, dark swirled red and swirled grey. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Holy shit!!! It weighs a ton, and is so beautiful and damn if it wouldn't be worth buying just for the packaging. Thankfully the record is definitely worthy of the packaging. WAY recommended. ESPECIALLY the limited vinyl!
MPEG Stream: "Hadean - The Long March Of The Yes-Man"
MPEG Stream: "Eoarchaean - The Great Void"
MPEG Stream: "Palaeoarchaean - Man And The Sea"

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Astro Catastrophies (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) 3xcd-r 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The opening track on Astro Catastrophies, this brand new triple disc set from Birchville Cat Motel, finds BCM tackling the RIFF, the static drone and blurred soundscape of past releases converted into a sort of druggy stoner rock, a hypnotic metallic krautrock. Think some minimal blissed out version of Kyuss, Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Gore, and Skullflower at their riffiest. In fact the sound here is similar to the transformation Skullflower went through when they released Exquisite Fucking Boredom. Harnessing all that free noise into churning spaced out riffage.
"Sublime Prince Of The Royal Secret" begins like any other BCM record, drifting black clouds of low end churn, leaning toward the more overt heaviness of BCM offshoot Black Boned Angel, but then the drums drop, and the riff unfurls, a huge sun baked, blown out, glacial crush, looped and mesmerizing, repeated and robotic, the drums pounding, a gorgeously heavy and hypnotic dirge. In the background though is an epic expanse of grinding murk, and glistening shimmer, keening coruscating sheets of bassy rrrroooaaar, haunting chimes, and howling feedback, building until the riff and the rhythms are swallowed up completely.
The rest of disc one follows a similar pattern, long drawn out smears of processed guitar, dense and roiling, muddy percussion and downtuned melodies, that seems as if they might drift on and on forever, before once again, the rhythm and the riff kick in, on "Driving Golden Dopamine", it's some unlikely splatter of clapping, that gives way to a strange stuttering Spacemen Three like riff over a motorik drum machine rhythm, and on "Divinity Soldiers", the washed out high end ur-drone becomes a chugging Hawkwind style doper up outer space exploration, relentless and intense, once again wreathed in glistening, glimmering shimmers of sound.
The other two discs are just as heavy, and riffy and kick ass, each track subverting the riff, turning it into some blissed out BCM cloud of sound, but rocking in a way Birchville never really did before. Andee had been bugging Kneale to record a record next time he was in SF, with him playing BIG LOUD drums, thinking it would be an amazing combo, a crushing rhythm section sunk into a dense black hole of buzz and drone, and damn if this doesn't come pretty close.
From stuttering single notes peppering a shuffling rhythm, the whole thing processed into machinelike loops, to almost My Bloody Valentine style blown out metallic bliss pop, to almost choral sounding streaks of glimmering high end sparkles over blurred guitars and fluttering melodies, to super chaotic kitchen sink clatter demarcated by a blooping bleeping drum machine, to the truly bizarre "Hells Silver Titans", that begins as a glorious chime flecked drone, but suddenly erupts into straight up AC/DC riffage (so much so that we're still not entirely convince It's not just a sample, and actually, after more listens we're convinced it absolutely is, a single riff, the clicking hi-hat, chopped and looped into a simple, head nodding jam, like Philip Glass composing with classic rock riffs, and finally, "Damn Infinity Hairtie", which closes the set with a slab of buzzing black noise, going from grim funereal low end, to amp destroying FX drenched stun guitar psychnoise freakout.
As with all Celebrate Psi Phenomenon releases, packaged in that immediately recognizable wall paper sleeve, with three printed inserts, one for each disc...
MPEG Stream: "Sublime Prince Of The Royal Secret"
MPEG Stream: "Driving Golden Dopamine"
MPEG Stream: "Divinity Soldiers"

MERRELL, BAKER AND JORDAN Nagual (aRCHIVE) cd 13.98
Not sure who Todd Merrell or Patrick Jordan are, but we sure as heck are familiar with the third part of this drone trio, the Baker in question is none other than Mr. Aidan Baker, he of Nadja, Arc, and a million or so releases under his own name.
This live set finds Baker handling guitar duties, but you'd never know it from the sound, augmented by short wave radios, electronics, and various bits of processing, the sound here is deep and dark, a crumbling and epic expanse of rumbling shimmering low end. Roiling clouds of murky melodic fragments, distant swells, throbbing low end pulses, barely audible bits of static and washed out glitch. Very cinematic, if you were watching a film that was almost entirely dark, with just barely visible shifts in the various shades of black and grey. Lovely though, minimal and haunting. Think Coleclough, Chalk, Lustmord, that sort of ambient darkness.
But the second track is an entirely different beast. Simple guitar strums, minimal melodies, the strings struck softly, the metallic buzz and clang ringing out into the ether, some sort of underwater slow motion Fahey, smeared and soft and dark and dreamy. The final half of the track, the guitar disappears completely, leaving streaks of feedback that sound like the cries of gulls, grinding slow motion slabs of shifting low end, whirling windlike whirs, almost like a manufactured nature recording.
The guitar returns for the third track, drifting gently, while the background noise builds into a slow motion wash of sound, the track culminating in a cloud of chimes and reverbed percussion, seasick swirls and struck steel strings, before slipping languidly into the final track, a lugubrious underwater crawl, all of the sounds muddy and indistinct, a sonar like ping buried way down in the mix, underneath it all a thick blanket of constant whirring drones, quite lovely.
Packaged in one of those cool, 6 panel, gatefold aRCHIVE sleeves, glossy paper, super striking image of forest and clouds, LIMITED TO 600 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Undertow"
MPEG Stream: "Half-Life"

TRON (Bally / Midway) video arcade game 0.25
As many of you have noticed by now, the jam packed shelves of aQuarius records, have been shifted slightly to make room for two new additions. Two of our all time favorite video game machines. Rastan. And Tron. Both were a huge part of our teen and pre-teen lives, sneaking off to the arcade, watching the older kids master the games before we got up the nerve to slife our quarters up onto that ledge right below the screen signifying that we were up next.
While Rastan will always be a classic (we'll review it on the next list), and a favorite, especially the soundtrack, some of the most amazing 8bit music ever recorded, like a video game Goblin (rumor has it there is a cd of the Rastan music, if we can track it down you KNOW we'll get them for the store), my heart will always belong to Tron.
It helps of course that the game is tied into one of the greatest movies ever. Certainly the greatest video game movie ever (and yes, we're counting Joysticks), and that the music was composed by Wendy Carlos, some of which is reproduced in the game, but the fact that the movie was essentially a video game, made the transition from big screen to little screen all the more natural. When playing the game, it's not hard to imagine you're IN the movie. And come on, is there anything more iconic than those kick ass light cycles?!
The game itself is a vision, the side of the cabinet adorned with stills from the movies, all of the characters rendered in their computer blue stripes, the screen is surrounded by black lights, giving everything an eerie glow, behind the screen, is a window, through which you can view the MCP in the distance, the goal of the game, and of the film. For a video game, it's quite immersive, and that's much of the magic. Other than the follow up, Discs Of Tron, in which you actually step INTO the game, hard to think of another game of this era that so completely transports you to another world.
But the game! Four different missions, 12 different levels, even the most obsessive among us, have never gotten past the 3rd or 4th level, even back in the day. One mission is the light cycles, where you drive leaving a wall of light behind you with which you trap the other enemy cycles, forcing them to crash and burn. It starts out easy, but as there are more cycles and they are way faster than yours, it's really really tough.
Then there's the tank mission. A glowing maze through which your tank cruises, as you summarily finish off one, three, five tanks, each one requiring three hits to kill, with a magic portal in the middle of the screen transporting you to some random area of the screen. The third mission, is the MCP cone, filled with colored blocks, that move side to side, the whole cone moving down the screen, you have to shoot out all the blocks, or at the very least, clear a path to make it into the cone. And finally, the grid bug level, where you are surrounded on all sides by computerized spiders that constantly regenerate and split into more spiders. You have to reach the middle before the timer runs out. Once inside the I/O tower you are beamed up to safety. The funny thing about this level is that the grid bugs were in the movie for not more than 3 or 4 seconds.
And that's it. Those four screens, growing in difficulty, speed, complexity. A totally addictive gaming experience, and as mentioned above, it's thee experience as much as the game. So much so that on several occasions, we've caught folks not playing Tron, but having their pictures taken WITH Tron. That pretty much says it all.
Also, don't bother adding this to your cart, it's a video game after all, we just wanted some of our mailorder customers to enjoy our new mini arcade vicariously via the list...

V/A Box of Dub 2: Dubstep and Future Dub (Soul Jazz) 3lp 25.00
Much like volume one, which we raved about a while back, this latest installment of Soul Jazz's Box Of Dub collection of dubstep and 'future dub' is as much a straight dub record as it is a dubstep record. Maybe even more so. Hence the 'future dub' descriptor in the title. Could well have called it modern dub or something similar. The dub element, while sometimes totally twisted into new shapes, is more often left relatively pure, a slab of classic old school dub, just slightly modernized, maybe with a bit of extra bass, or some haunting effects, but not much else. The power, as always, is in the BASS.
And just like the first volume, this is an absolute killer. All the tracks here, whether they be shuffling classic dub or super creepy skeletal dubstep, are dark and slithery, with huge thick basslines, skittery dubbed out percussion, vocal fragments, warbly loops, hypnotic rhythms, all hovering somewhere between late night bliss out, and bumping slow motion dance floor destruction.
The tracks are all distinctly dub, but in all sorts of shapes and forms, from Ramadanman's swirling dizzy shuffle, with strange little sonic flares and vocal snippets over a looped bassline and some modern electro shimmer, to the straight up soulful dub of Pinch's "Step 2 It" featuring the smooth soul croon of Rudey Lee, but like most of the tracks here, peppered with fucked up FX, thick undulating basslines, and all sorts of random sonic weirdness. The Cult Of The 13th Hour track sounds like a Kode9 outtake, super minimal, lots of record crackle over a looped Eastern Melody and an ominous spoken word vocal line, growling and muttering over a revved up Portishead rhythm track. Cotti's "Tamil Dub" sounds like a dubstep Muslimgauze, with buzzing sitars, and a killer throbbing bassline stutter, creepy animal calls, and slowed down vocal samples. Digital Mystikz contribute two tracks, the first some classic sounding dub, channeling the modern British sound of On-U Sound and the Dub Chemists, the second a more dubstep number, but with clanky kitchen sink percussion and horns, sounding like a slowed down Specials. Pinch offer up more dark and dangerous dubstep with their second track "Chamber", a super spare slab of low end sprawl, the drums a hiccupping stutter, the bass surfacing in big roiling waves, everything murky and mysterious, and ultra minimal. The disc closes out with Skream's "Sublemonal", another nod to the old school, with a super reverbed horn refrain over an ultra stripped down barebones dub workout, the snare reverbed into the ether, the bass smooth and shimmery.
The more we listen to this, the less distinctly 'dubstep' it sounds, and the more it just sounds like some freaky outer space dub record, which is in no way a bad thing, just a bit surprising. Because of the dearth of decent dubstep and grime in the US, we're always hankering for more, so whenever a 'dubstep' record pops up, we're pretty excited and order it right away, but lest we forget, long before this new fangled dubstep, we loved us our dub, BIG TIME. So when someone takes a dub record and adds all sorts of buzzing bass, gets it all space-y and tripped out, low slung and speaker melting, haunting and ominous, pulsing and throbbing, we're pretty much sold.
MPEG Stream: RAMADANMAN "Every Next Day"
MPEG Stream: CULT OF THE 13TH HOUR "Wickedness"
MPEG Stream: KING SOLY "Tamil Dub"

V/A Box of Dub 2: Dubstep and Future Dub (Soul Jazz) 2cd 21.00
Much like volume one, which we raved about a while back, this latest installment of Soul Jazz's Box Of Dub collection of dubstep and 'future dub' is as much a straight dub record as it is a dubstep record. Maybe even more so. Hence the 'future dub' descriptor in the title. Could well have called it modern dub or something similar. The dub element, while sometimes totally twisted into new shapes, is more often left relatively pure, a slab of classic old school dub, just slightly modernized, maybe with a bit of extra bass, or some haunting effects, but not much else. The power, as always, is in the BASS.
And just like the first volume, this is an absolute killer. All the tracks here, whether they be shuffling classic dub or super creepy skeletal dubstep, are dark and slithery, with huge thick basslines, skittery dubbed out percussion, vocal fragments, warbly loops, hypnotic rhythms, all hovering somewhere between late night bliss out, and bumping slow motion dance floor destruction.
The tracks are all distinctly dub, but in all sorts of shapes and forms, from Ramadanman's swirling dizzy shuffle, with strange little sonic flares and vocal snippets over a looped bassline and some modern electro shimmer, to the straight up soulful dub of Pinch's "Step 2 It" featuring the smooth soul croon of Rudey Lee, but like most of the tracks here, peppered with fucked up FX, thick undulating basslines, and all sorts of random sonic weirdness. The Cult Of The 13th Hour track sounds like a Kode9 outtake, super minimal, lots of record crackle over a looped Eastern Melody and an ominous spoken word vocal line, growling and muttering over a revved up Portishead rhythm track. Cotti's "Tamil Dub" sounds like a dubstep Muslimgauze, with buzzing sitars, and a killer throbbing bassline stutter, creepy animal calls, and slowed down vocal samples. Digital Mystikz contribute two tracks, the first some classic sounding dub, channeling the modern British sound of On-U Sound and the Dub Chemists, the second a more dubstep number, but with clanky kitchen sink percussion and horns, sounding like a slowed down Specials. Pinch offer up more dark and dangerous dubstep with their second track "Chamber", a super spare slab of low end sprawl, the drums a hiccupping stutter, the bass surfacing in big roiling waves, everything murky and mysterious, and ultra minimal. The disc closes out with Skream's "Sublemonal", another nod to the old school, with a super reverbed horn refrain over an ultra stripped down barebones dub workout, the snare reverbed into the ether, the bass smooth and shimmery.
The more we listen to this, the less distinctly 'dubstep' it sounds, and the more it just sounds like some freaky outer space dub record, which is in no way a bad thing, just a bit surprising. Because of the dearth of decent dubstep and grime in the US, we're always hankering for more, so whenever a 'dubstep' record pops up, we're pretty excited and order it right away, but lest we forget, long before this new fangled dubstep, we loved us our dub, BIG TIME. So when someone takes a dub record and adds all sorts of buzzing bass, gets it all space-y and tripped out, low slung and speaker melting, haunting and ominous, pulsing and throbbing, we're pretty much sold.
MPEG Stream: RAMADANMAN "Every Next Day"
MPEG Stream: CULT OF THE 13TH HOUR "Wickedness"
MPEG Stream: KING SOLY "Tamil Dub"

AZURE EMOTE Chronicles Of An Aging Mammal (Epidemie) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "Complex 25"
MPEG Stream: "Justified God"
MPEG Stream: "Clarity Through Apathy"

SHALL NOT KILL / FANTASTIKOL HOLE / TEKKEN / MOON split (Ocinatas / Wee Wee / 213 / Burning Emptiness Inc. / Krusty Le Clown / Nhdiyst / Shifty / Parade / Noisey Bear) cd 9.98
We recently reviewed the kille rultra doom disc from Habsyll on tUMULt, and figured we oughta revisit the mighty Fantastikol Hole, who share a member with Habsyll, AND three other kick ass musical heavies, so let's go:
It seems like maybe we're becoming a little predictable sometimes, letting the name of a band, or some insane cover art get us all gaga over a record before we even hear the music. But while it's only a theory, it seems like in most cases, the music is just as good as the artwork. Or the band name. For years, we've applied that theory to our record shopping and have rarely been disappointed.
So here we are again. You obviously know where this is heading since we ARE reviewing this record, AND highlighting it, but a while back, it was just a name, Fantastikol Hole. How could we not be curious, if not utterly smitten. A band called Fantastikol Hole? C'mon. SO we tracked down every shred of recorded music from these guys and got just a little bit obsessed. But this is the first one we could track down enough of to list. Four bands, all amazing, all totally different, all French we think, a record so heavy and weird it took TEN labels to release it. And after all that talk of Fantastikol Hole, they only have three tracks here, but it's enough to get you as obsessed as we are.
So what exactly are Fantastikol Hole all about? Super aggro, mathy, convoulted experimental heavy rock weirdness. Stop start stuttery arrangements, huge slabs of Neurosis-y sludge, bits of shimmer and drone-y ambience, wild tangled squiggly leads, angular atonal riffage, howled distorted vocals, long stretches of crumbling doomy buzz, and that's just the first song of three. The second is even more manic, a sort of proggy grind, with tons of space, and weird stops, jagged riffing, swirling dizzying bursts of buzzing fury, programmed drums, explosions of impossibly convoluted synth swathed hypergrind, shortwave radio interference. The third track is only two minutes, but they spend it plodding along doomily, a huge downtuned riff, wrapped around a simple percussive thud, the vocals processed and super distorted, so genius. Complex and confusional and mathy and heavy as fuck. We need to carry more Fantastikol Hole. We will remedy that as soon as humanly possible.
But what about the other fantastikol bands here? Well, there's Shall Not Kill, who offer up three tracks of their own brand of heaviness, a groovy stoned, heavy as fuck plodding midtempo post punk sludgy doom, rife with harmonized lead guitars, yowled vocals, super psychedelic squalls of twisted tangled leads, busts of furious octopoidal drumming, some super fast Maiden style jams, some blissed out droney dirges, but always returning to some sort of cracked classic doom sound.
Up next is Tekken, who are fast and fucked up and furious, a white hot metallic hardcore, bordering on grind, with weird samples, blasts of incendiary buzz, pounding chaotic drumming and snarling punk as fuck howled vocals. The last track finds their grinding punk chopped up and flipped backwards, slathered in static, turning it into some weird fuzzed out, stuttering soundscape of skipping punk rock cds and shortwave interference.
And finally, comes the band Moon, whose three long tracks fall somewhere between ultra minimal dronemusic, and the slow motion sludge riffery of Old Earth or SUNNO))), nearly ambient the slow low rumbles eventually build into a lugubrious downtuned crawl, the buzz occasionally receding, and revealing a glimmering glistening shimmer beneath the rumble.
A pretty weird combination, but a tough one to beat. We've found ourselves digging for more stuff from all four of these bands, although our heart still belongs to Fantastikol Hole.
WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: SHALL NOT KILL "Resilience"
MPEG Stream: FANTASTIKOL HOLE "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: FANTASTIKOL HOLE "Untitled 2"
MPEG Stream: TEKKEN "Die Young = Stay Stupid"
MPEG Stream: MOON "Dead And Dreaming"

SHEVALREQ Tournament At Constantinople (Hekaloth / Cyclops) cd 15.98
We raved about a band called Xynfonica a few lists back. A baffling and ridiculous melding of 'classical music' with growled demonic death metal vocals. Some of us were blown away, others of us, well, were not. We discovered Xynfonica was created using nothing but a guitar synthesizer, and the man behind Xynfonica also had a record label, based entirely on this concept of musics made with guitar synthesizers, coupled with evil metal vocals, and had TWO OTHER RELEASES. One world music! And one jazz. Whatthefuck?! We knew we had to hear all of 'em!
So here we have the auspicious debut of Shevalreq. The world music installment of what seems to be a series of truly fucked up outsider musical weirdness. Starting with the cover, Shevalreq was already shaping up to be just as amazing as Xynfonica, the band name and album title in thick purple script, the cover a photo of the guitar synthesizer, and what appears to be a dat machine, and ON TOP OF THE synth and the dat machine are some miniature knights on horseback jousting!!! The back cover shows the same night posing next to the guitar pedals and still on top of the GIANT musical equipment. Inside are pages and pages of lyrics, again, an EPIC, this time concerned with some sort of ancient civilization, jousting, knights, murder, intrigue, castles and royalty, hard to say exactly, especially since it's impossible to understand the lyrics as they're delivered in that monstrous rasp.
And then there's the music. To be totally honest, it doesn't sound all that different than Xynfonica, lots of the tracks sound like a Youtube clip of a cat walking back and forth on a synthesizer keyboard. Coupled with the evil vocals, well, it's just totally bizarre, and to some of us absolute brilliance, but this one stands out as suddenly, the sounds will shift, and we're suddenly listening to tablas, or some Eastern sounding horns, and here and there, Monsieur Shevalreq even busts out little squalls of furious lead guitar. Wailing leads, soaring strings, plink plonky synths, growled invokations, rumbling fake cellos, all woven into a stumbling, damaged concept record about jousting and duels and kings and castles. What more do we need to say?
If you bought the Xynfonica, you almost absolutely need this, if you didn't, we still have some left, or you might as well start with this one. And next time, we'll review the JAZZ one?!?! We can hardly wait.
MPEG Stream: "Tournament Roster"
MPEG Stream: "Argalia's Challenge"
MPEG Stream: "The Jousting Contest"

MINORU SATO (M/S, SASW) + ASUNA Texture In Glass Tubes And Reed Organ (Spekk) cd 17.98
Wow, so many cool little labels all over the world. Each with it's own strange little niche. None stranger than Japan's Spekk label, who we first discovered when they released a compilation of out of print demos by local outfit the Alps (featuring our very own Scott). In the process of getting Alps cds, we also discovered they had released a cd from Jefre Cantu of Tarentel, as well as an amazing compilation of Small Melodies, featuring a handful of AQ faves composing gorgeous lullaby like tunes. They were also responsible for an old out of print disc from AQ fave William Basinski.
So we were more than a little excited to get wind of a new batch of Spekk releases, especially when we heard about this one, Textures In Glass Tubes And Reed Organ, by Minoru Sato and ASUNA. The liner notes are a little too dense for us to truly understand what was going on when this music was created, but the vibe we got, was similar to that of another AQ fave, Toshiya Tsunoda, who records the sympathetic vibrations running through huge objects, bridges, pieces of metal, docks, handrails, wind...
For the first track, five harmonic states were recorded separately, using a chord organ to cause sympathetic vibrations in glass tubes, or something like that. Regardless, the result is a dense, subtly shimmering near static drone. Five tones, each layered upon the other, woven into a reverberating tapestry of sound, a glistening dreamlike blur, very Niblock like in it's swirl of subtle overtones, the various tones beating and pulsing almost imperceptibly, 38 minutes of pure glimmering sun dappled soft static bliss.
The second track, utilizes an entirely different method for producing the sound, still with chord organ and glass tubes, explained in detail in the liner notes, but still a little dense for us to truly understand the method, it almost doesn't matter, this track too is a gorgeous slab of slow shifting minimalism, a muted hum, streaked with various subtle tonal variations, again the multiple layers of sound pulsing and rippling, giving the track some sort of invisible propulsion, the sound of light traveling through water, shimmering, shifting, sparkling, but sort of suspended and frozen in time, moving but so slowly it appears to just be vibrating in place, and just like the first track, total bliss out minimalist mesmer.
Packaged in a cool, sleek oversized digipak style folder, with photos of the instruments and extensive liner notes on the creation of the music within.
MPEG Stream: ASUNA "Superposing Five Harmonic States"
MPEG Stream: MINORU SATO (M/S, SASW) "Weaving Seven Resonances; with Raw Stereo Material"

PRURIENT / KEVIN DRUMM All Are Guests In The House Of The Lord (Hospital Productions) cd 13.98
Finally managed to get some of these back in. If you missed it last time, check it out, a huge aQ favorite for sure...
You might think that the results of a collaboration between Prurient and Kevin Drumm would be nothing but a seriously noisy and speaker destroying affair, but then you'd be underestimating these guys, and the extent to which they've pushed the noise music envelope.
The last few Prurient records have been less about caustic abrasion and more about dark soundscaping, more about drones and darkness less about shrieks and blinding fury, and well, Drumm has always been capable of a soft touch, and often tempers his brutality with gorgeous melodicism.
With that said, both of these guys are perfectly capable of whipping up serious squalls of crumbling chaos, and do so here and there on All Are Guests, but the key in noise music, at least for us, is dynamics, and these bursts and blasts of sonic fury that pepper the landscape are perfectly balanced by long stretches of subtle drones, field recordings, whirring atmospheric buzzscapes and creepy vocals.
The opening track sets the stage and is a strange one, a dark, lugubrious crawl, with slowed down ominous vocals, reminds us quite a bit of AQ faves Burial in fact! But with a bit more Whitehouse mixed in. A lurching low end slither underpinning haunting disembodied vocals, you can't help but expect some stuttery dubstep beat to drop, although it never does of course.
"On This Slab" is more a proper noise track, with howled distorted vocals, crunchy blown out electronics and glitched out malfunctioning buzz, but all chopped up and arranged into a strangely melodic noisescape, laced with little bits of melody, and dense grinding chunks of almost-melodic buzz, not to mention some spare tranquil stretches. The there's "There Died Venus", a washed out super distorted slab of crumbling blissdrone, gorgeous melodies buried beneath a roiling sea of ultra blown out crunch and buzz, strange rhythms surfacing amidst the constantly shifting layers of whirring sound, in the background a near constant upper register shimmer, wouldn't be all that out of place on a Tim Hecker disc. "Though The Apple Is Rotten" sounds almost like a straight field recording, the sounds of children playing, footsteps, wind random clatter, but in the background there's a lot of other sonic stuff going on, hard to tell if it's just tape hiss, or if the band has woven a delicate backdrop, either way, it's quite cool.
"In Long Rows" is a 10+ minute chunk of minimal dark ambience, think Lustmord, Coleclough, Chalk, but with a bit more grit, a bit more hiss, maybe slightly more lo-fi, and with a brief resurgence of those murky pitchshifted vocals from the first track.
Finally, the last track finishes things off with, well, not a bang, but a burst of grinding whirring, mechanical chaos, like several Wolf Eyes jamming at once, a rumbling rusty metal beast, busted gears and blown speakers, a giant unholy machine designed to do nothing but make this glorious noise, a deep resonant distorted voice, speaking beneath the din, buried below ground in some ancient hellish oratory, the sound seeping up through black cracks in the ancient soil. And even then, as the duo expel a cloud of noxious drone and buzz, they still manage to make it sound almost dreamlike and dangerously close to pretty.
MPEG Stream: "First Memory Of Pain"
MPEG Stream: "On This Slab"

RASTAN (Taito) video arcade game 0.25
Allan's always wanted his own Rastan machine, and finally, thanks to the magic of eBay, he got one, and for relatively cheap too, considering that he probably spent as much in quarters playing it in the arcade back in the day! As you've probably noticed, it's here in the store and up and running, along with Andee's prize Tron machine (reviewed last list). We thought we'd write a little bit about each machine in the usual AQ New Arrivals list style, just for kicks. No, you can't add this to your cart, but you can stop in and drop a quarter or two into it in person...
So, for those of you without the experience of wasting your adolescence and lunch money loitering in video arcades, and don't know the (vintage 1987) Rastan game, here's the rundown: the title character, Rastan, is your basic Conan the Barbarian style swords & sorcery adventurer running around, jumping and stabbing things and collecting treasure. If you're good enough, you'll advance from level to level (there's six levels of three screens each), beating each boss, exploring new and ever-more dangerous fantasy realms, and perhaps eventually finishing the game. Haven't made it to the end yet ourselves -- it would take a several hours of play and many many credits, even if we were skilled enough at the game.
What's so awesome about Rastan? Well the graphics are pretty cool, especially the backgrounds which are totally D&Dish and mystically evocative. There's wilderness scenes (from jungles to rocky barrens) and also castle and cavern interiors, complete with flaming pit traps and rolling bolders and Tarzan style rope swings. It's a two dimensional, moving left-to-right game, using what's called "parallax scrolling" to give an illusion of depth to the backgrounds. The monsters are pretty cool too -- four armed boomerang flingers and fire spitting hydra and (at higher levels) scary Medusa ladies whose green snakey hair extends to entrap you... But the most dangerous monsters have got to be the bats. Individually they don't seem that scary, but they're tough to hit, there are a lot of them and they'll come for you if you're taking too long getting from point A to point B. We've lost more lives to those pesky bats than anything else in the game... Another cool thing about the graphics is that they've left out a lot of the usual video game clutter -- there's no point values popping up on the screen when you slay something, it's more "realistic" than that... well sort of. The "life meter" is pretty cool too, your heart shown pumping at one end, louder and more desperately as you sustain hit after hit...
But the BEST thing about this game, by far, has got to be the theme music. It's brilliant. If we could get a cd soundtrack we'd be sooooooo stoked. Awesomely ominous '80s arcade electronica. We don't even know the name of the composer, but it's a bit like like John Carpenter making medieval metal music... sinister and suspenseful, especially when the music cresendos to warn of an impending bat swarm attack!
If you play the game be sure to ask Allan for some pointers: like, you gotta learn how to jump down with your sword or (other weapon) also pointing down to deal with certain obstacles/enemies... sword swipes combined with a jump seem much more powerful... you can go up ropes faster if you jump while you climb (as long as there's a wall next to the rope for you to "bounce" up)... and watch out for the vials of poison some monsters leave behind... but if you see the gold sheep's head, you want that, it'll restore your life meter to full... So come on by and try being a "brave adventurer who dared to challenge"!
MPEG Stream: "Rastan theme music"

SERVILE SECT Stratospheric Passenger (Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting) cd 8.98
From the same label that brought us the amazing Gog records, Sounds Of Battle And Souvenir Collecting, comes this bizarre, and hauntingly beautiful slab of alien black metal. Not sure what else to call it, it's definitely black metal, but it's weirdly blissy and electronic sounding, more like Alcest or Amesoeurs than old school grimnity, but even then, it's still weirder, like it must have been played by robots or insects, or some massive black metal machine assembled beneath the surface of some mysterious moon. You can almost picture some mechanical monstrosity, pieces of human flesh, various organs, somehow built into the machine's inner workings, everything grinding and sparking all in a Herculean effort to produce this glorious droning buzzing blackness. A cloud of black buzz that will eventually drift through space and time swallowing any planets in its path, and extinguishing all life it encounters. Heck, even the cover of the record is the view from some sort of alien lander, looking out and the cold dead ground of some red planet, as if any minute some huge horrible black beast will lurch into view over the horizon, dashing all of our ideas about said planet being uninhabited.
The sound of Servile Sect is epic, and majestic, the guitars glistening sheets of sound, the surface of that sound peppered with bits of electronic shimmer, causing the long drawn out riffery to reflect and refract, tiny little sonic events occurring every second, the surface alive and constantly squirming and changing color, but viewed from afar, it's simply a blown out undulating buzz. Those guitars are digitized and processed, spread into thick smears of warm glowing whir, the riffs barely discernible beneath the constant roar of Servile Sect's sonic swirl
The vocals add just more buzz to the mix, howling and wailing, but stretched into streaks of sonic violence, and drums, assuming there are any, are buried, festering beneath layer after layer of crushing guitar fuzz, emitting noxious rhythms that don't so much blast or pound as they do explode into tiny squalls of still more buzz.
Occasionally, the buzz abates, leaving the guitar to sway lazily, the notes ringing out, the guitars lurking in the distance, but it's never long before the lilting melody is engulfed by a colossal buzzing roar, and the band locks into another extended psychfuzzblackdrone.
Another out of left field immediate AQ black bliss classic.
Fans of the new wave of droned out dreamy metal, black and otherwise: Nadja, Angelic Process, Ameseours, Alcest, etc. will dig this, as will dronelords who like their drones heavy and loud and yeah, a bit metallic...
MPEG Stream: "Into The Bloom"
MPEG Stream: "Stratospheric"
MPEG Stream: "Suicide From Verona Rupes"

SKULLFLOWER IIIrd Gatekeeper (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
We lucked into a chunk of these a while back (the out of print original pressing that is), an all time industrial metal noise classic, quite possibly the best Skullflower record there is, some folks think. And we're inclined to agree. Although with a body of work like Bower and Co.'s, that's a pretty tough call. Well, those disappeared in a heartbeat, but lucky for ALL of us, even those of us who have bought this amazing disc multiple times, it's now been reissued, remastered, with all new artwork, liner notes, ready to finally be adored and revered by all lovers of heavy music, many who may not have been hip to the massive fucking might and heart stopping brutality of Skullflower when they first unleashed this disc way back in 1992. So dig in, and let this glorious avalanche of beautiful heaviness bury you beneath its utter intensity and frightful majesty.
Before Skullflower became a blissed out free drone, psychedelic raga outfit which would eventually morph into the ultra dreamy Sunroof!, they were trolling much darker, much harsher waters. When IIIrd Gatekeeper first came out way back in the beginning of the nineties, it fell right in alongside its sonic brethren, Swans, Godflesh, Pitchshifter, Terminal Cheesecake, Ramleh and all of those industrial dirge rockers. Originally released on Justin Broadrick's hEADdIRT label, IIIrd Gatekeeper as we mentioned above, is definitely one of Skullflower's finest moments (and quite possibly both Andee and Allan's favorite SF record EVER), a slow murky trudge through a blinding squall of psychedelic guitar freakout, dense swirls of which lurk behind a lurching slow motion bass dirge and pounding near industrial drumming. Each track picks a riff and pounds it into the ground, repeating and repeating until you can't help but be drawn in, while white hot streaks of guitar skree and low end rumble spin around the relentless plodding. SO much heavier and scarier than almost any other record EVER. A bit like a heavy metal Whitehouse, or a more psychedelic Swans. Or early Earth. A muddy, filthy, drug drenched metal club to the side of the head. So fucking awesome.
Awesome new packaging. Black gatefold printed inside and out with metallic silver ink, printed inner sleeve, and extensive liner notes and band history, including excerpts from rare interviews, from Skullflower historian and bad ass noisemaker in his own right Roy Felps.
MPEG Stream: "Can You Feel It?"
MPEG Stream: "Black Rabbit"
MPEG Stream: "Saturnalia"
MPEG Stream: "Rotten Sun"

ASTRO CAN CARAVAN 21st Century Drifting Episode (New Music Community / Siamese Sounds / Zerga) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
ATTENTION FINNISH MUSIC FREEKS. Record number two from this far out Finnish big band gypsy jazz ensemble. Our apologies to folks who were after the last record, Questral Places, which went out of print before we had a chance to get more in stock, but we've been bugging AQ pal Pentti, founder of the legendary Deep Turtle and head honcho of the Zerga label, to get us some copies of this newer release, 21st Century Drifting Episode. So we waited and waited, heard nothing for ages, and then one day, a big ol' box of these landed on our doorstep, and we're happy to report it's just as amazing as the other disc.
As we mentioned before, fans of Aavikko would do well to check these guys out, as they have a similar exotic flair, but instead of spy movies and Casios, they take their influence from gypsy folk music, big band jazz, and African music. In fact, if we had to describe this in a sentence, we might say Astro Can Caravan sound like a Finnish version of Ethiopiques 4, which is high praise indeed!
Sultry grooves, funky rhythms, lots and lots of horns, but also drums and synths, drums and percussion and spacey effects. The sound is a mysterious exotica, definitely reminiscent of the Ethiopian Grooves we love so much, but there's enough weird noodly synth and buzzing angular new wave elements to make this appeal to fans of Aavikko and other weird jazz groove whatthefuck. The band pepper their African style grooves with bursts of chaotic free jazz, slabs of buzzing synth abuse, but those moments are few and far between, instead, the band deftly cobble together their own unique sound, funky, and soulful, groovy and spiritual, wild and far out. Some tracks are rollicking and fiery, irresistible and the sort of thing that would send a dancefloor into an absolute frenzy. While others are dark and moody, slithery and slow burning.
If you dig any of the following: Coltrane, Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Taraf De Haidouks, Keukhot, Ethiopiques, Okros Ensemble, Aavikko, this band will completely kick your ass, or at least get it out of your seat and shaking.
Features a who's who of the Finnish Underground, including Pentti from Deep Turtle on guitar and mandolin. Produced, strangely enough, by Jussi Saivo of mysterious drone alchemists Tiermes. Packaged in a super striking digipak, and be forewarned, we did get a whole bunch of these, but once we run out it might take a little while to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Tungar Tudu"
MPEG Stream: "Mad Oracle"
MPEG Stream: "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium"
MPEG Stream: "Beef Jeans"

MONARCH Die Tonight (Throne) lp 16.98
Back in March we made the double cd Dead Men Tell No Tales, by France's Monarch, our Record of the Week. A crushingly heavy, breathtakingly beautiful slab of ultramegadooooooooom divinity. That record just so happened to combine two lp releases,
Speak Of The Sea, that we listed a long time ago, well before the cd came out, now sadly out of print, the 12" that is, and this one, Die Tonight, that in some strange rupture in the space time continuum arrived months after the cd version. But regardless, if you had been holding out, waiting for Speak Of The Sea's vinyl companion, wait no further. And heck, if you're new to the whole Monarch thing, by all means, this is as good a place as any to start.
Here's an altered version of the cd review, focusing just on the Die Tonight half:
Avid readers of the AQ list should need no introduction to French downtuned slow motion sludge doom trio Monarch. A band truly worthy of many multiples of 'o's (dooooooooooooooooooooom), whose plod and crawl is so slow it often veers near static drone territory, and who also manage to deftly mix in a bit of subtle loveliness into their harsh metallic trudge, AND whose peculiar sense of humor, and album art, and unlikely front woman, definitely make them stand out in an increasingly crowded field...
For those new to Monarch let's recap shall we?
Quite possibly the world's only female fronted deathdoomdronedirge outfit. An unholy mix of Khanate, Corrupted, Bunkur and Moss, but with a petite young French woman on lead vocals, usually clad in Converse hightops, a skirt and a sweater, hair in a pony tail, no tattoos or spikes or leather, but when she opens her mouth, out comes the foulest demonic shrieks and hellish gurgles you have EVER heard. Certainly from a woman, maybe from ANY one, man, woman or beast.
Then there are the record covers, always covered in grade school like doodles of cute big eyed skulls, puffy ghosts, burning churches, and hearts all over the place. They're like a Sanrio doom band. And not surprisingly are obsessed with Hello Kitty (their email address is sanriosabbath!!). But eyes closed, and these guys and gal can most definitely hold their own amongst the slow motion elite. With the added bonus of a singer who can actually sing and does occasionally, adding a definite creepy melodic moodiness to the music.
So what has us so smitten with Monarch? Besides the above that is? Well just lend an ear to Die Tonight, a heavier and slower (if that were even possible) partner to Speak Of The Sea. It's somehow also more blurred out, buzzy and dronelike, with bits of the music so blissed out, the drum hits and chaotic crashes are so far apart, you can almost forget you're listening to a doom band, wallowing in the glorious shimmering drones of the drawn out chords, before a howled shriek and a massive crunch knocks you near out of your seat. There's also more singing, with gorgeous drifting vocals that hover alongside long stretches of buzzing guitar making for haunting harmonies, giving the proceedings brief moments of surprising tranquility. And the vocals continue to twist and turn, from hushed and whispery, to girlish and sing songy to inhuman demonic screech, all the while, the band trudging along dronelike, weaving impossibly pretty soundscapes from downtuned crunch and skull cracking thud.
This is absolutely essential doom. If you like Esoteric, Boris, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Earth, Esoteric, Skepticism, Eyehategod, Marzuraan, Atavist, Catacombs, Khanate, Pale Horse, Monument Of Urns and you NEED this! And the drifting drone element is in full effect, so those who have yet to dabble in the doom pool, might check this out, the long drawn out shimmers and Niblock like layers of guitar rumble might hit the spot and have you digging deeper for more and more dooooom.
Gorgeously packaged in a off white matte sleeve, a simple illustration in black, and little cartoon stars in metallic silver. Also includes a big fold out poster of the record cover. And as always. EXTREMELY LIMITED. Once these are gone we probably can't get more.
MPEG Stream: "Winter Bride"

BORIS / MERZBOW Rock Dream (Southern Lord) 2cd 15.98
Amongst AQ customers, another Boris/Merzbow collaboration is most certainly a rock dream. But folks who don't enjoy 'noise' in their 'rock', or don't necessarily want to hear Boris classics transformed, might just find this to be a rock nightmare. That said, Rock Dream is really pretty cool. With a surprisingly subtle Merzbow adding his own world of sound FX to Boris' blown out dronegroove heaviness.
On their first matchup, the brilliant Megatone, these two outfits meshed perfectly, offering up a dense and thick drone record, not so much heavy as intense, Merzbow adding a gritty grind to Boris low end rumble circa Flood. A record that was pretty and mysterious as well as being massive and crushing.
The lp only live document 04092001 was a less successful pairing. A live show with Boris playing their Stooges-y rock jams behind an impenetrable wall of Japanoise, cool and weird, heavy and fucked up, but definitely on the harsh side, at times sounding amazing, but at times, more like a super lo-fi damaged noise band.
Rock Dream sounds like the 04092001 refined, with Merzbow's Masami Akita taking a much more active role in these songs, instead of just spraying dense gouts of buzzing screeching sonic gore all over the place, or smearing drones and riffs with walls of crumbling sound, here his touch is deft, offering up delicate glimmering sparkles as often as skull crushing streaks of white hot noise. It's like a Boris greatest hits record, an epic live show, but with Merzbow's Masami Akita rounding out the trio to a quartet, and we have to say, they almost sound better than the originals. Beginning with the 35 minute "Feedbacker". A long slow build, with Akita adding texture, and strange little sonic events to the proceedings, waterfall like hiss, clouds of tinkling chiming high end, smears of fuzzed out whir, never interfering, always complimenting the song, and when the band explode into full on planet caving heaviness, Akita somehow manages to make it sound even heavier, taking Boris's extended space jams and adding a million more layers, the outro to every Hawkwind song and a roiling swirl of malfunctioning Acid Mothers Temple effects, the track culminating in a kick ass drum splatter, alien FX, amp destroying feedback freejam. In fact, most of the songs sound like some strange mix of Boris groove, and Acid Mothers Temple freakout. Which is most definitely good thing. "Rainbow" here sounds like a female fronted Wooden Shjips jamming with Wolf Eyes, "Evil Stack" (a previously unreleased track as far as we can tell!) is a blinding supernova of freaked out effects and damaged drum chaos, and "Black Out" is a dirgey doom trudge, through thick clouds of crumbling, grinding buzz and keening psychnoise guitars. And that's just disc one.
Disc two starts off with the furious garagepsychbuzz blast of "Pink", Akita just adding an extra layer of buzzy hiss. The hiss just gets louder on "Woman On The Screen", at points threatening to take over completely. Disc two is definitely the more ROCK of the two, at least the first half, furious and freaked out rollicking and totally rocking, just sounding slightly noisier. But once we get to "The Evilone Which Sobs", it's back to ultra heaviness, a loping grooving dirge, the guitars wailing, the drums pounding, this time the Merzbow component taking the driver's seat, a gorgeous chaotic swirl of corrosive noise, swirling and whirling, never quite obscuring the jam behind it, but making the background rock sound that much more mysterious. There's a bit more RAWK, with "Just Abandoned Myself", a super rocking, hyper distorted, garage psych blowout, again with Akita's wall of sound adding all sorts of new texture and extra heaviness. Finally, Rock Dreams finishes up with the almost arena rock sounding "Farewell", epic power chords, majestic vocals, triumphant melody, all wound up in a glimmering field of brilliant buzz and crumbling shimmer.
This version, released on Southern Lord is limited to 5000 copies, each disc numbered. Awesome miniature gatefold lp style packaging, with cool die cut front cover so you can see the printed full color inner sleeve inside, designed by none other than Stephen O'Malley...
There is a Japanese version, much more expensive, with super deluxe packaging, very much like the artwork for the Japanese version of Jesu's Conqueror record, the multi paneled digipak with the clear plastic printed slipcover. BUT, the music is exactly the same, so unless you need the fancy Japanese packaging (which some of us do), you won't miss out on any of the music if you pick up this domestic version. If you do want the Japanese version, just email us and we'll order you one...
MPEG Stream: "Feedbacker"
MPEG Stream: "Evil Stack"
MPEG Stream: "Pink"

ROCKFORD KABINE Italian Music: 31 Invalid Movie Themes (Combination) cd 16.98
We knew nothing at all about this disc when it arrived. Not even sure how we ended up listening to it, but we're so so glad we did. The thing is, we get tons of stuff to listen to. Some all time AQ favorites began life as a random record that showed up in the mail, so we try to listen to everything, or as close to everything as we can. But there's so much, that just listening to random stuff that gets mailed in could be its own full time job (and before you all email wanting that job, trust us, it's not all it's cracked up to be). Inevitably stuff slips through the cracks, or we finally manage to listen to a cd months, sometimes years after it shows up.
But this one caught our eye straight away, with a super creepy cover depicting a dead woman, covered in blood, in a wide expanse of blackness, above her a head, with a hole in the forehead, and a rainbow shooting through the head onto the dead woman, all done sort of oil painting style. Immediately we thought, "Wow, that sort of looks like some Argento movie". Then we saw the title, 31 Invalid Movie Themes ­ Italian Music. Hmm. By a group called Orchestra Di Rockford Kabine. Okay, so maybe, we thought, a soundtrack to some giallo we'd never heard of. The first track seemed to confirm that, a snippet of dialogue from some Italian movie, dialogue, some buzzing creepy sci-fi synth, a panicked woman, screaming, some sort of struggleŠ
Then suddenly, we're in some sort of groovy sixties funk jam, all shuffling percussion, wah wah guitar, throbbing bass grooves, and then out of nowhere, a strangely convoluted interlude, very brief, but sort of stuttery, and then back to the groove. So now we're dying to know what movie this is from. Then the next track is some sort of stripped down electro groove, a jazzy piano vamp, lots and lots of record crackle, this couldn't be from the sixtiesŠ
And it isn't. It ends up it's a German duo called Rockford Kabine, not a person at all, not a composer, an electronic/sampling outfit who describe their sound as "acid smurf" (huh?) and whose modus operandi is crafting little cinematic pop nuggets. Like DJ Shadow doing Morricone. The various tracks are super brief, but super groovy and catchy, some are dark and ominous and ultra creepy, some are playful and exotic. Some sound like they belong in a spaghetti Western, others like they belong in a classic Italian horror film, one track even uses the sound of a pinball machine as the rhythm. Plus the whole disc is peppered with bits of dialogue from movies making it seem even more possible that these could all be little fragments from lost movie scores.
The sounds are all over the place, but manage to sound like they all belong, if not in the same film, at least in the same collection. From the aforementioned opening groover, to the smoky synth flecked mood music of "Al Signor Lorenzo N." complete with a creepy children's choir, to the exploitation cop show funk jam of "Di-Stanza", to the super distorted buzzy sixties psychedelia of "IX", to the Tom Waits via Amon Tobin stuttery junkyard percussion of "Insensato", to the muted meandering twangy western sizzle of "Italo Calvino", to the stripped down, but somehow still spooky rhythmic workout of "Zombi 3000", to the very DJ Shadow-ish creepy crawl of "Profondo Rosso" and it goes on and on. Every track is a strange little gem. Mysterious and cinematic. Each could easily be the theme from some lost film, or just a kick ass little segment from some DJ's set.
31 tracks, averaging a little more than a minute each, these tracks may not actually be from real movies, but repeated listening will have you wishing they were, or just creating the movies in your head as you listen. Fucking awesome.
MPEG Stream: "La Caccia"
MPEG Stream: "Al Signor Lorenzo N."
MPEG Stream: "IX"
MPEG Stream: "Insensato"
MPEG Stream: "Italo Calvino"
MPEG Stream: "Zombi 3000"
MPEG Stream: "Profondo Rosso"

ROCKFORD KABINE Italian Music: 31 Invalid Movie Themes (Combination) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We knew nothing at all about this disc when it arrived. Not even sure how we ended up listening to it, but we're so so glad we did. The thing is, we get tons of stuff to listen to. Some all time AQ favorites began life as a random record that showed up in the mail, so we try to listen to everything, or as close to everything as we can. But there's so much, that just listening to random stuff that gets mailed in could be its own full time job (and before you all email wanting that job, trust us, it's not all it's cracked up to be). Inevitably stuff slips through the cracks, or we finally manage to listen to a cd months, sometimes years after it shows up.
But this one caught our eye straight away, with a super creepy cover depicting a dead woman, covered in blood, in a wide expanse of blackness, above her a head, with a hole in the forehead, and a rainbow shooting through the head onto the dead woman, all done sort of oil painting style. Immediately we thought, "Wow, that sort of looks like some Argento movie". Then we saw the title, 31 Invalid Movie Themes ­ Italian Music. Hmm. By a group called Orchestra Di Rockford Kabine. Okay, so maybe, we thought, a soundtrack to some giallo we'd never heard of. The first track seemed to confirm that, a snippet of dialogue from some Italian movie, dialogue, some buzzing creepy sci-fi synth, a panicked woman, screaming, some sort of struggleŠ
Then suddenly, we're in some sort of groovy sixties funk jam, all shuffling percussion, wah wah guitar, throbbing bass grooves, and then out of nowhere, a strangely convoluted interlude, very brief, but sort of stuttery, and then back to the groove. So now we're dying to know what movie this is from. Then the next track is some sort of stripped down electro groove, a jazzy piano vamp, lots and lots of record crackle, this couldn't be from the sixtiesŠ
And it isn't. It ends up it's a German duo called Rockford Kabine, not a person at all, not a composer, an electronic/sampling outfit who describe their sound as "acid smurf" (huh?) and whose modus operandi is crafting little cinematic pop nuggets. Like DJ Shadow doing Morricone. The various tracks are super brief, but super groovy and catchy, some are dark and ominous and ultra creepy, some are playful and exotic. Some sound like they belong in a spaghetti Western, others like they belong in a classic Italian horror film, one track even uses the sound of a pinball machine as the rhythm. Plus the whole disc is peppered with bits of dialogue from movies making it seem even more possible that these could all be little fragments from lost movie scores.
The sounds are all over the place, but manage to sound like they all belong, if not in the same film, at least in the same collection. From the aforementioned opening groover, to the smoky synth flecked mood music of "Al Signor Lorenzo N." complete with a creepy children's choir, to the exploitation cop show funk jam of "Di-Stanza", to the super distorted buzzy sixties psychedelia of "IX", to the Tom Waits via Amon Tobin stuttery junkyard percussion of "Insensato", to the muted meandering twangy western sizzle of "Italo Calvino", to the stripped down, but somehow still spooky rhythmic workout of "Zombi 3000", to the very DJ Shadow-ish creepy crawl of "Profondo Rosso" and it goes on and on. Every track is a strange little gem. Mysterious and cinematic. Each could easily be the theme from some lost film, or just a kick ass little segment from some DJ's set.
31 tracks, averaging a little more than a minute each, these tracks may not actually be from real movies, but repeated listening will have you wishing they were, or just creating the movies in your head as you listen. Fucking awesome.
MPEG Stream: "La Caccia"
MPEG Stream: "Al Signor Lorenzo N."
MPEG Stream: "IX"
MPEG Stream: "Insensato"
MPEG Stream: "Italo Calvino"
MPEG Stream: "Zombi 3000"
MPEG Stream: "Profondo Rosso"

V/A Melodii Tuvi: Throat Songs And Folk Tunes From Tuva (Dust To Digital) cd 15.98
There is no more powerful form of vocalizing than Tuvan throat singing. Tibetan chants, opera, death metal grunts, they all pale in comparison to the gorgeous multi-toned 'whistle singing' that throat singers use to create two distinct tones at once, throat singing is one of the few truly mysterious singing styles, and one that still remains difficult to understand, with no real scientific explanation as to how it is actually done, merely educated guesses. The style has been popularized worldwide by the group Huun-Huur-Tu, who have been performing and recording for almost 20 years, in fact recently they performed here in SF. And speaking to the above mentioned power and mystery, we happen to know that in attendance were several local extreme metal musicians, who for years had been trying to learn to throat sing! We've even mentioned in a review or two how amazing a metal band with a throat singing vocalist would be. Maybe some day...
These recordings from 1969, originally only released in the Soviet Union, are only now being released worldwide for the first time. And like most of the Tuvan music we've heard, it's totally mesmerizing, utterly unique, and so beautiful. There are several distinct styles, but most involve the vocalist producing two tones at once, a low raspy buzz, and a high pitched whistle, the buzz acting as a background for the whistle like melodies. The sound is so completely unique, unlike anything you've ever heard, unless you've heard Tuvan throat singing before. Typically, the singes voices tend to sound a bit like Popeye, a raspy croak, that slips seamlessly into that haunting multi-toned whistle/buzz. Sometimes the sound is warm and shimmery, the two notes, the tones perfectly meshed, other times, the vocals are a long drawn out froglike croak, the whistle not in counterpoint as much as the two tone s being produced simultaneously, often as a harmony to an instrumental melody. And the instruments are quite unique too, lots of buzzing strings, Tuvan instruments, of one, two, three or more strings, much like a fiddle, or cello, various woodwinds and of course the Jew's Harp, which is the perfect accompaniment to throat singing.
The instrumental passages here convey the same sort of spirit even sans vocals, moody and melancholic, longing and wistful, the strings buzz and shimmer, long drawn out tones making up slowly unfolding melodies.
The final two tracks are perhaps the most unique. One features solo Jew's Harp, but with the player incorporating a throat singing style, turning the harp's unique sound into an even more unique, twisted melodic vocalized buzz. And the final track, is one of the few examples we've heard of female singing from the region, and while the woman here does not throat sing per se, her voice is lovely, and the melody haunting, the plucked strings perfectly intertwined with the emotive vocalizing. So lovely.
In fact this whole record is fantastic. Anyone who already loves the music of Tuva will want to add this to their collection, and anyone who is hearing this stuff for the first time, will, like most of us, probably become obsessed and need to track down everything they can. It's that powerful.
Includes a massive booklet with new liner notes, photos and an essay on throat singing.
MPEG Stream: OORJAK HUNASHTAAR-OOL "Reka Alash"
MPEG Stream: OORJAK HUNASHTAAR-OOL "Bayan-Kol"
MPEG Stream: SAT MANTSAKAY "TuvinSkiye Narodniye Napevy"
MPEG Stream: KARA-SAI AK-OOL "Uzun-Khoyug"

STARVING WEIRDOS Sudden Fear (Cut Hands) dvd-r 14.98
Latest from AQ faves The Starving Weirdos, the first we've heard since the beginning of the year (which is practically unheard of in the current way too prolific cd-r scene), and it's not just a new batch of killer blissed out SW dronemusic, it's also a film the band "chopped and screwed" and presented at the third annual Experimental Film & Music Night in Humboldt, and this dvd contains the film and the music composed to accompany it.
The film itself is Sudden Fear, from 1952 starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance, but the band re-edited it and re-arranged it, hard to say how much was changed, we haven't ever seen the actual film, but from this version it looks pretty freaked out and fucked up. Although it could be the Starving Weirdos' extra creepy score too, a cacophonous Hermann Nitsch like drone, thick and abrasive, but haunting and ominous. The film playing out, at different speeds, the screen split, images super imposed over one another, the music, appropriately dark and terrifying.
This is definitely the darkest and most menacing we've heard the Starving Weirdos, and it really suits them. Strings sing and squeal, feedback moans and groans, bits of percussion surface and are carried a way by thick swells of low end whir, it's like Bernard Hermann meets Nitsch covering Goblin. Scary as hell and so so good!
Packaged in a mini dvd style plastic case, with a black and white insert cover, and pasted on liner notes on the inside.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

V/A Life Is A Problem (Mississippi) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another fantastic compilation from aQ faves Mississippi Records that went out of print way too fast, gets repressed and is available again for a limited time!
We're pretty smitten with Mississippi Records. Not only are they a cool little record store in Portland Oregon, like AQ and OM and a handful of others, helping the neighborhood record store stay alive, they are also an amazing label, releasing remarkable vinyl only compilations, as well as a handful of limited releases from underground musicians. Elsewhere on this week's list we relist the re-pressed I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore 1927-1948 comp. Packed with lost old time blues (now sadly out of print), and soon we'll have the equally amazing Lipa Kodi Ya City Council collection re-pressed and back in stock, which featured tons of rare African music, from high life to ju ju to pop to choral music...
This is another classic Mississippi release available again, Life Is A Problem, which collects some totally mindblowing gospel rarities. A few we had heard of, like Utah Smith and Bishop Perry Tillis, but so many we had never heard or heard of before, and it's all fantastic. And so varied. Some tracks are classic gospel, all voices and handclaps, others are wild psychedelic freakouts, with slippery slide guitars and rambunctious percussion, still others are super soulful, some are sermons set to music, testifying over groovy guitars and warbly organs. The sound quality varies wildly too, from the crackly hiss of old 78s, the fiery and furious sound of blown out analog tapes, some are washed out and ethereal, others immediate and intense. But again, they're all fantastic, and wild and varied enough that even folks who aren't always into gospel, might dig this stuff for what it is, super creative, original, out there, personal and super inspired music, that transcends genre for sure.
Like all Mississippi releases, super nice handmade packaging. This one includes a printed insert featuring liner notes on each of the performers on the comp from Yeti Magazine's Mike McGonigal (the first pressing had a bonus 7", but this one is just the lp proper, but that's more than enough!).
Obviously VERY recommended.

ELECTRIC WIZARD Witchcult Today (Candlelight) cd 13.98
Ok, someone needs to give these guys a medal. First off, there's a song here called "Satanic Rites Of Drugula". Drugula?? That's brilliant. Dave Wyndorf is kicking himself for not having thought of that first!
England's Electric Wizard, the reigning kings (and queen, with Liz Buckingham of 13 and Sourvein on guitar) of utter spaced-out heaviosity (think Black Sabbath + Hawkwind + Eyehategod) also deserve a medal 'cause they are still caning harder and making great albums worthy of their legacy (2000's Dopethrone is an all-time AQ fave of psychedelic sludge stoner genius). It's like they themselves have morphed into the ancient ones from whence all these drugged-out, doooooom metal vibes come.
On their sixth album Witchcult Today, which opens with the sluggish title track, they keep doin' what they do best. Guitarist/vocalist Jus Oborn's wasted wail drifts up from beneath the band's monolithic, mesmeric riffage, as they enact such "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions" as, well, that one, and the other seven tracks here. As blown out and sludgey as it gets (which is VERY) they have an uncanny knack for keeping it catchy and poppy too when they desire. Songs like "Torquemada 71" and the one about Drugula will get stuck in your head, only to slowly drip out like the viscous black tar they are... while "Dunwich" has got to be the grooviest -and- heaviest H.P. Lovecraft-inspired song of the year. As usual, the whole album is getting heavy airplay here in Aquarius, where we're ALL fans even those of us who don't smoke pot, do drugs, or usually listen to stoner metal... we've just been bitten by Drugula is all.
MPEG Stream: "Witchcult Today"
MPEG Stream: "Satanic Rites Of Drugula"
MPEG Stream: "Saturnine"

WRATH OF THE WEAK s/t (Bastardized) cd 7.98
This band was originally touted to us as being THE buzziest black metal band. So obviously we were intrigued, and you know, that wasn't all that far from the truth.
This one man band from Buffalo, is indeed a master of the buzz, and the cool thing is, while this is indeed buzzing blown out black metal, it seems like he's coming at it from a non black metal background, which might be why this sounds so unique. Barring a few breakdowns, and various stretches of propulsive riffing, most of the record is indeed an intense wall of buzz, so thick and fuzzed out, it's almost impossible to discern anything else going on. Drums, vocals, they sort of blur into the overall buzz, turning this record into the ultimate blackbuzzdronedisc. Incredibly hypnotic and mesmerizing, so much so that when the band locks into a riff, and locks into a buzz drenched cyclical loop, it's easy to get totally lost, the various notes shift and blend into each other, almost like some Niblock piece composed with buzzing black metal riffs. Heavy on the drone, and the repetition, a few times writing this review I even found myself totally entranced and almost drifting off. Can't think of a much better recommendation than that.
The record has song titles like "The Snowstorm" and "The Thunderstorm", and that's pretty much what this sounds like, like some intense black clouded metal storm, relentless and furious. But be sure and stick around for the final 24 minute track "Cuniculean Rampage", which begins as another blurry buzzy blast, but near the end, the riff is locked and looped and suddenly it's less a black metal record and more some strange experimental droned out noisescape, all loops and skipping stuttering digital glitches, but still weirdly heavy. A brief blast of Autechre-ized blackness. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "The Snowstorm"
MPEG Stream: "Journey Of Many Days"
MPEG Stream: "The Thunderstorm"

V/A Entering The Levitation: A Tribute To Skepticism (Foreshadow) 2cd 18.98
In honor of the first new Skepticism record in 5 years, we figured we oughta relist this tribute to Skepticism, easily one of the best tribute albums we've heard in ages, some of the covers are just as good if not better (okay, maybe not better, but damn close) than the originals! Some of our favorite doom bands take on their masters, as well as a whole mess of new bands we hadn't heard until this here collection...
The world may be full of doom and gloom, and your shelves may be bursting at the seams will all manner of slow motion sludge and funereal dirges, but there was a time, when true doom wasn't so easy to come by, the world wasn't prepared for slow motion misery and abject musical miserablism, but we were, and we hunted and searched, and thus we discovered Finland's Skepticism. The heaviest, most beautiful, most perplexingly atmospheric music we had yet encountered. It was so washed out and dreamy it was barely metal. So slow and pretty it almost sounded choral. We described the music of Skepticism as sounding like sitting in a church, while a doom metal band practiced in the basement, the huge thudding crush, barely audible through the floor, the sounds intertwining with the warm whir of the church organ, some strangely spiritual sonic confluence, that was as magical as it was mysterious.
And it wasn't just us. The sound of Skepticism spoke to all sorts of people, metalheads, doomlords, drone freeks, weirdo music obsessives, and it made perfect sense, as it was all those things, metal, doom, drone, weird. Add to that, lovely, haunting, creepy, ominous and absolutely fucking brilliant.
So here we have a double disc tribute to the masters of slow motion doomed beauty, from a handful of bands, as with most comps, many we'd never heard of, a few we were already big fans of. And also with tributes, how do you pay tribute to a music that is already so perfect? Do you try to sound as much like it as possible, or change it into something else entirely? Somehow, all of the bands here have managed a little bit of both, enough that this is a gorgeous and epic funereal doom record all the way through. Pretty enough to appeal to folks who just like their music dark and dreamy, but heavy enough to mesmerize the blackest hearted of metalheads.
Right out of the gate, Nest (who we'd never heard of) offer up a 14 minute version of a track off the first Skepticism, and do their own sort of blissed out reverential dronedoom version which might be our favorite track on the comp. Stretches of lilting acoustic guitars over rumbling drones, separated by shimmering keyboards and slow plodding muted riffs, so soft it's barely metal at all, more a sort of droning slowcore. Much like the original, but even more soft and shimmery.
The rest of disc one, offer up more traditional doom versions of Skepticism classics, but each twisted and tweaked enough to be a good fresh listen. The final track on disc one, "The Organium" by Oktor, might be the weirdest, a sort of industrialized, mechanical stumbling doom lurch, with sung / spoken deep crooned vocals. Weird but super cool.
The highlight of disc two is of course Rigor Sardonicous, who we of course LOVE, and who do a killer version of "Chorale", beginning with backwards guitars, which eventually morph into a massive downtuned dirge, with that mournful melody buried in the mix, and the strangely loud cymbals we love so much (see some of our other RS reviews about that). The other groups on the second disc definitely take their liberties, Calmsite, turn their track into almost death metal, Aarni give Skepticism a folky makeover, and It Will Come, start out slow and sludgy, but then slip into some sort of drifting post rock slowcore. It's all pretty awesome. How bad could it be starting with Skepticism songs after all?! But either way, this is an awesome collection of intense and beautiful, slow sad heavy dooooooooom, that most definitely does Skepticism proud.
MPEG Stream: RIGOR SARDONICOUS "Chorale"
MPEG Stream: MONOLITHE "Edges"
MPEG Stream: SHROUD OF BEREAVEMENT "Forge"

XASTHUR Defective Epitaph (Daymare) 2cd 29.00
With music, as far as we're concerned, when it comes right down to it, it's all about the vocals and the drums. Sure bands have kick ass guitarists and amazing bass players, but the thing about singers and drummers, if they suck, they can drag down a band that is perfect in every other way, and if they are amazing, they can rescue an otherwise forgettable group. So many times, we've seen bands play live, only to have the drummer hit super soft, or play to slow or too fast or too sloppy, and remove any sort of energy or power the band would otherwise exude. Singers are worse. How often have you heard a band, and thought "Shit, this band is amazing" until the vocals come in and no matter how great the band was before, a shit vocalist makes all that moot.
In black metal, the vocals aren't as make or break, sure some folks prefer the classic demonic rasp, others the monstrous growl, still others the hysterical shriek, but for the most part, most BM vocalists fall somewhere between all three, and rare is the black metalhead who absolutely can't stand one of thoseŠ
Drums are a different matter. Black metal is all about the drums. As much as the buzzing riffage, it's the drums that define the sound, whether it's a the plodding beat of a midtempo Burzumic dirge or the blazing blast beats behind a burst of furious grimness. The strange thing is, at least around these parts, we have to redefine 'bad drummer' when we're talking about black metal. One man black metal bands are du rigeur these days, but its not uncommon to notice in the liner notes, that while that one man did everything else, some other person played the drums. That's because the guitar, the bass, those are related, synths and vocals are much easier to figure out or fake, but the drums, that black house of cards could easily tumble to the ground with terrible drumming as the foundation. But there are exceptions, and kudos to those one man bands who decide to tackle the drums themselves. In some cases it makes perfect sense, Leviathan for example, Wrest was a drummer first, so the drumming on Leviathan records is amazing. The more midtempo bands, well it's not nearly as hard to drum a simple 4/4 as it is some insanely complicated blast beat. But some groups, the drums struggle and stumble, the tempos waver, but as we mentioned above, in BM that's not always a bad thing, Graveland, WoodtempleŠthe sound of those bands for some reason is enhanced by the off kilter drumming, just like in some crazy artrock bands it's not about precision or perfection, it's about feel and emotion, and a drum part that is stumbling wildly is sometimes way more suitable than a super straight locked in rhythm.
So what the fuck does this all have to do with the new Xasthur record? Well, if you must know, it's that Defective Epitaph is the first Xasthur record to feature real drums. No more programmed drums, this is the sound of Malefic behind the kit, and while the sound is different, it's not half bad. In fact if anything it makes the sound more raw, more live, due in no small part to the murky lo-fi production. The drums definitely have that sort of rehearsal space quality to them, but they do suit Xasthur's murky muddy soundworld. And there's only one track that requires a serious blast beat and even then it's only briefly before the song reverts back to a loping dirge.
But beyond the drums, Defective Epitaph is just another step in Malefic's slowly evolving descent into darkness. All of the usual sounds are present. And a quick listen, you probably wouldn't be hard pressed to immediately pick this out as a Xasthur disc. But it's not just the drums, or the presence of real cello, also played by Malefic, the songs are generally slower, the chords more dissonant, sometimes to the point of sounding detuned. It's almost as if Xasthur is transforming from a black metal band into a funeral doom band. Which is definitely not a bad thing.
"Purgatory Spiral" on first listen was really atonal, and the most out of tune sounding of the batch, but repeated listens reveal some strange masterplan, the music becoming more twisted and gnarled, more woozy and sick than out of tune. The cello moaning way down in the mix, the drums a super simple plod. "Cemetery Of Shattered Masks" is more classically Xasthur sounding, but the recording is really strange, cavernous, very much like a rehearsal recording, not just the drums, as if everything was recorded on a single mic in the corner of the room. Once again, it's not bad, just strange, but like the rest of the disc, it grows on you, taking on a sort of washed out blurred vibe as if the record was recorded by Tim Hecker or something. Then there's "Malignant Prophecy", which launches out of the gate thick and distorted and corrosive, the guitars loud and crumbling, again slightly atonal, but heavy and thick, until about halfway through, where it reverts back to that booming practice space sound, as if two separate tracks were pasted together. Weird but still pretty cool. And actually a lot of the record sounds like that, as if maybe all the tracks were super raw and lo-fi, recorded with a few mics, but then some got guitar overdubs adding that super intense buzzing immediacy.
There are long stretches of near ambience, and moody murky interludes, and even bits of the song proper change in timbre and sound like haunting breakdowns, the cello, sounds less classical and more like an abrasive drone, but it suits the rawness of the overall sound.
This record has been pretty polarizing. Lots of folks have absolutely hated it, lots of folks love it. It seems hard to believe if you were a fan of Xasthur, that you could totally hate it, but it is weird, and definitely takes some warming up to. For us, since we're into the damaged and demented, the fucked and far out, well if anything, this Xasthur record is more of all of those things, so it's probably easier for us get into. But folks of a similar mind will most likely feel the same. Nocturnal Poisoning may still be our favorite Xasthur record ever. Subliminal Genocide might be a close second. But Defective Epitaph, while currently in third, is just fucked up and unique enough that it might move up to second any time nowŠ
We do carry the Hydra Head version, but the Daymare Japanese import version comes with an entire extra disc of unreleased tracks, nearly 40 minutes! So we figured anyone into Xasthur would probably want the extra disc as well. So here it is, five tracks, all unreleased, a couple alternate early versions of songs on the record proper, a couple untitled tracks, a pretty cool sort of coda to the record. From a long drawn out doomy synthscape, to a classic old school buzzing Burzumic dirge, complete with chanting monk like vocals and a killer overblown riff, to an epic buzzing black doom jam, that morphs from creepy crawl to blasting buzzŠIt's cool to hear some of the alternate versions, with the fucked up edits, and weird segues, all left in (hence the subtitles "First Attempt", "Second Attempt").
As with all Daymare releases, the packaging is gorgeous, a miniature lp style gatefold, Japanese obi, and a foldout insert with tons of liner notes (all in Japanese).
MPEG Stream: "Souless Elegy"
MPEG Stream: "Purgatory Spiral"
MPEG Stream: "Cemetary Of Shattered Masks"
MPEG Stream: "Unblessed Be..."

NJIQAHDDA Njimajikal Arts (E.E.E. Recordings) 2xcd-r 19.98
With a name like Njiqahdda, and a record title like Njimajikal Arts, all the text written in some unreadable Eastern script, and cover art consisting of lush green foliage and nothing else, with the promise that this was some mysterious alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed black metal, you know we were seriously intrigued. But at the same time, we really had no idea what to expect. We got these from E.E.E. one of our current favorite labels, home to all of the amazing unblack metal we've been raving about forever... so at first we assumed it was another unblack metal offshoot of one of the many E.E.E. bands, but the label assured us it wasn't. Later we discovered, it was actually a sort of experiment to see if folks reacted differently to stuff on E.E.E. if they thought it wasn't Christian. So, after all, it ends up, it is actually guys from Flaskavsae and Drommer, who together have whipped up one of the weirdest and most gorgeously fucked up (un)black records of the year. Which is saying a lot considering how twisted and far out most of the E.E.E. stuff is...
Where to start? Two discs, looooong tracks, weirdly washed out buzzing post rock, with lots of clean guitars and haunting atmospherics, all tangled up with thick blasts of dense black buzz, and with super freaked out production and lots of unlikely and not very metal sounds and arrangements.
The opening track, "Blister Within The Hive" is based around a super Slinty' guitar riff, looped and repeated, the drums weirdly staggered and mathy, the vocals a muted mumbly howl, super distorted and demonic, but not like black metal, more like noise rock. The main riff shifts and gets more and more dramtic and lush, while the vocals become more distorted and more unhinged, transforming into swirling clouds of harsh hiss and blurred white noise. With the repeated almost looped riff, it's like an un-black metal Circle, relelntless and mesmerizing, and totally hypnotic. The guitars and drums slowly fade out leaving a twisted, slithery buzzing low end drone, super minimal, as it crawls through a field of glitch and shimmer, like some cd-r drone record.
The second track, "A Tale Of Ancient Tergue" is more traditional black metal, but it's all relative. A loping Burzumic midtempo buzz, with tho seame freaked out alien vocals, the drums and cymbals super hot and way up in the mix, threatening to overload everything, the main riff and melody surprisingly melancholy and catchy, again locking into a continuous loop, until the main riff drops out, and suddenly a haunting chorus of voices takes over the main melody, humming and crooning over the still poundin and crashing drums, creepy and so beautiful. All hovering in a thick cloud of swirling FX and spaced out shimmer.
The disc finishes off with the nearly half hour long "Blue Wintry Days", a doomy surge through fields of hissing white noise buzz, the guitars soaring, the drums again sizzling white hot all over the place, mournful and melancholy, but so weirdly washed out at times it sounds like Tim Hecker vs. Burzum vs. Merzbow. About halfway through the various elements become less and less distinct, and the song transforms into an almost static blur, before shifting back into a dark doomy plod, but still always, a bit more mathy and post rock and spaced out that any black record has a right to be. And we love it.
The second disc is just two long songs. The first, "Ancient Tergue Recital" begins all ambient, with deep cavernous drones and birdsong, shimmering metallic reverberations and delicate chimes, a sparse ambient sprawl, that builds and builds, getting darker, and more ominous, the melodies turning minor key, but continuing to drift, a tranquil black ambient lullaby wrapped around a lilting and haunting music box melody.
The final track, "The Wintry Grey" is another long ambient workout, this one even more minimal than the first, more in line with Coleclough or Chalk, minimal and nearly static, subtle overtones shifting gently as the various layers rub against each other almost imperceptibly. A keening high end draped over a warm whirring low end, the two all tangled up in a divine dreamy drift.
Definitely one of the coolest, darkest, weirdest, doomiest, dreamiest (un)black metal records of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Blister Within The Hive"
MPEG Stream: "A Tale Of Ancient Tergue"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Wintry Days"

WORMSBLOOD In The Stars (Aurora Borealis) lp 14.98
The cd-r is long out of print, but for a limited time we've got a super deluxe vinyl version of this bizarre bit of grim, fractured blackness...
It doesn't really get any more METAL than this. Wormsblood. Killer name. Wicked illegible logo, the band name written out in the black roots of some hellish plant. Over a black and white photocopied canyonscape. Epic and windswept, snow covered and GRIM. The man behind Wormsblood is Wyrdskull, and to the black cause he contributes "common ritual tools, heavy-handed electro-overblood, vibrations of the unsilent dark tomes and the crossing of song and siege." Guests include Crimson Maaritkitaka who delivers "cryptwyrm bloodlet and akashic magnet", Vragknacht The Two-Handed, who offers up "battle-ready bloodsong", then the song titles: "Thundercall", "The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken", "Ritual Of Bone And Horn", "Tolling Beyond Our Lunar Trance", plus they do a Manilla Road cover, "Street Jammer" and they even offer up a hearty "Hails to the fucking Mad Street Hammers".
But for all the pure troo metal action, the sound is anything but, which is most likely due to the fact that Wormsblood is very likely made up of folks from the free noise / freak folk scene, who in Wormsblood finally get the opportunity to indulge in their darker musical side, to touch that blackened part of their music soul, to unleash all those pent up demonic forces, and the result is a dizzying confusional blast of chaotic, lo-fi, muddled and muddy, freaked out and blown out, damaged what-the-fuck blackened METAL.
The closest comparison we could come up with is probably a black metal Faxed Head, which is pretty much all we'd need to hear. The vibe is definitely similar, the riffs a garbled buzzing mess, thick swaths of weird keyboard, the drums splattery and stumbling and blasting, the tape hiss, and random instrument buzz as much a part of the sound as the bands damaged black roar, then there are the vocals, hysterical shrieks, rumbling grunting moans, haunted howling, the tracks often crumbling into utter disarray, or coalescing into epic doomy pound, everything drenched in malfunctioning electronics and fried FX.
An absolutely dementedly genius fucked up black metal noiserock melt down....

WORMSBLOOD In The Stars (Skulls Of Heaven) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It doesn't really get any more METAL than this. Wormsblood. Killer name. Wicked illegible logo, the band name written out in the black roots of some hellish plant. Over a black and white photocopied canyonscape. Epic and windswept, snow covered and GRIM. The man behind Wormsblood is Wyrdskull, and to the black cause he contributes "common ritual tools, heavy-handed electro-overblood, vibrations of the unsilent dark tomes and the crossing of song and siege." Guests include Crimson Maaritkitaka who delivers "cryptwyrm bloodlet and akashic magnet", Vragknacht The Two-Handed, who offers up "battle-ready bloodsong", then the song titles: "Thundercall", "The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken", "Ritual Of Bone And Horn", "Tolling Beyond Our Lunar Trance", plus they do a Manilla Road cover, "Street Jammer" and they even offer up a hearty "Hails to the fucking Mad Street Hammers".
But for all the pure troo metal action, the sound is anything but, which is most likely due to the fact that Wormsblood is very likely made up of folks from the free noise / freak folk scene, who in Wormsblood finally get the opportunity to indulge in their darker musical side, to touch that blackened part of their music soul, to unleash all those pent up demonic forces, and the result is a dizzying confusional blast of chaotic, lo-fi, muddled and muddy, freaked out and blown out, damaged what-the-fuck blackened METAL.
The closest comparison we could come up with is probably a black metal Faxed Head, which is pretty much all we'd need to hear. The vibe is definitely similar, the riffs a garbled buzzing mess, thick swaths of weird keyboard, the drums splattery and stumbling and blasting, the tape hiss, and random instrument buzz as much a part of the sound as the bands damaged black roar, then there are the vocals, hysterical shrieks, rumbling grunting moans, haunted howling, the tracks often crumbling into utter disarray, or coalescing into epic doomy pound, everything drenched in malfunctioning electronics and fried FX.
An absolutely dementedly genius fucked up black metal noiserock melt down. Packaged in a super strange fold over plastic sleeve, with multiple printed inserts, and most likely crazy limited...

ANGELBLOOD Mambo Mange (Locust) lp 17.98
It's been a while since we've heard from mysterious tribal, psychedelic, what-the-fuck outsider metal outfit Angelblood. But they've returned, with a vinyl only blast of damaged metallic skree that sounds as fucked up and tripped out as ever.
When we first heard Angelblood, we assumed, because of their sound, and the fact that their record was a Japanese import, that they were some mysterious all girl Japanese metal troupe. We only later discovered that Angelblood was in fact Dave Nuss from the No Neck Blues Band and artist/musician Rita Ackerman. While some of the mystery was gone, it wasn't enough to stop us from diggin their crazy sound.
So now here we are years later, with a brand new missive from Angelblood, a stumbling, chaotic, drug addled, metallic transmission from some weird otherworld, that produces feral voiced majestic metal. Or whatever this stuff is. It's definitely metal, at least some of the time, although it spends a lot of time sprawled out in strange stumbling streaks of droning ambience, the vocals, a Yoko Ono-ish wail, washing over the shimmering dronescapes in the background.
The opener is a free rock psychedelic trip out, the guitar spending more time swirling and humming than actually riffing, the vocals mewling and howling, the guitars gradually becoming more and more riff-like, eventually launching into some eighties style metal riffing, but the metallic vibe is wrapped around an ethereal drift, and strange loping groove, that eventually falls to pieces, the vocals dancing wildly atop an avalanche of drums and crumbling guitars.
The second track is where things get heavy. As in heeeeavy man. A blown out proto metal riff looped hypnoticall beneath the wild banshee wails, and over the course of the track swinging from that metal riffing, to a more proggy rhythmic workout. Minus the vocals this could be some lost Italian hard rock classic, but the vocals turn it into some insane avant psychmental freakout.
Our favorite track is probably "Edward's Call", a damged off kilter take on power metal, with some killer grinding start stop riffage, freaky leads, super convoluted song structures and more wild unhinged vocalizing.
The whole record is so haunting and tripped out, heavy and cracked, catchy and insane. Imagine Hammers Of Misfortune if they got lost in some massive black forest, eventually went feral and were adopted by a tribe of Yeti's, the tribe's forest rituals eventually seeping into the metal psyches of the band. Years later, the bearded and filthy Hammers begin making sounds, a primal primitive forest metal band, the tales of their tribe told in wails and whoops and hollers, all over a stumbling metallic ritual. That's sort of what this sounds like. But not quiteŠ
Needless to say, this is essential listening for outsider metal freaks, and even prog nerds and weirdo krautrockers with a taste for the truly demented might be able to get into Angelblood's far out psychmetal damage. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Edward's Call"
MPEG Stream: "Bellowed From Risen"

FEAR FALLS BURNING First By A Whisper, Then By A Storm (Special Edition) (Tonefloat / Ikon) lp+cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We only got TEN copies of this, and even that was a stroke of luck as these are already out of print. This is not brand new, but we missed it when it first came out, and Mr. Fear Falls Burning himself graciously let us have his remaining copies.
Another absolutely gorgeous collection of abstract guitar experimentation, but that makes it sound too clinical, these are experimental, but they are also warm and melodic, thick and textured, like all the FFB releases, the sounds hover somewhere between the corrosive slow motion sludge of bands like SUNNO))) and Boris, and the glistening abstract shimmer of folks like Jonathan Coleclough or Andrew Chalk, the difference being that this is ALL guitar.
The copies we got are the super limited tour edition, so not only do they have the lp, but also a bonus tour cd. The lp is three long track, the first a swirl of thick humid clouds of guitar whir, rich streaks of buzz and throb, that warp around each other, creating subtle melodies and delicate overtones. The second track sounds almost like a harpsichord, the guitars unfurling lustrous metallic reverberations, a strange symphony of sympathetic vibrations and singing metals. The final track is dark and meditative, drifting melancholy melodies over a slow shifting sea of low end rumbles and distant pulses, finishing off with a dreamy delicate soft guitar coda.
The bonus disc is much more chordal and riff based, not nearly as abstract, but just as lovely. The songs drift from Spacemen 3 like mesmer, to Galaxie 500 like soft focus drift, to epic orchestra-tuning swells, to dreamy minimal blurs, to shimmery subtle swells to Loren Connors like reverbed strum. All subtle and dark and so lovely.
Gorgeously packaged as always. Thick black cardboard innersleeve wrapped in a textured paper outer sleeve, with a red wax seal on the front, inside, the cd is affixed to a nub on the sleeve, and inside also is a vellum envelope, containing the liner notes, black ink on thick textured black paper. So nice.

V/A John Barleycorn Reborn: Dark Britannica (Cold Spring) 2cd 24.00
There'`s really nothing 'freak folky' going on in this British folk compilation. The music here is all pretty traditional. And thus pretty fantastic. Think Incredible String Band, Steeleye Span, Comus, Richard Thompson (and Fairport Convention), Trees, C.O.B., Shirley Collins, or the Wickerman Soundtrack (there's actually a song called 'Wicker Man' by The Story). As much as we love us some freak folk, none of that stuff would exist it it weren't for the above mentioned bands.
And the groups included on this comp, whose focus here is the fairly abstract 'dark folk', do a pretty amazing job of sifting through the various strains of classic British folk, and offering up their own subtle interpretations. And again, nothing shocking or even that experimental, just a new generation of musicians, paying tribute to the music that they grew up on, and that informed the music they make now. A handful of AQ faves are present, the Story, Far Black Furlong, Alphane Moon, Sharron Kraus, Martyn Bates, as are the A Lords, the Kitchen Cynics, Sol Invictus, and tons and tons of bands we had never heard of: The Horses Of The Gods, The Triple Tree, Pumajaw, English Heretic, The Anvil, Electronic Voice Phenomenon, The Purple Minds Of Lazeron, Quickthorn, Sand Snowman, Stormcrow, While Angels Watch, Xenis Emputae Traveling Band, Drohne and we could go on and on.
Two discs of glorious, classic sounding 'dark folk.' From lilting shanties, to tense ominous dirges, to brooding apocalyptic folk, to buzzing ragas, to dreamy lullabyes, fluttering flutes, fiddles and bongos, steel string guitars and an incredible array of vocal styles, male and female, raspy and weathered, wispy and dreamlike, mournful and melancholy, soft and breathy, dark doleful melodies, rich harmonies, weaving a gorgeous landscape of a lost sonic Britannica.
Amazing liner notes too, text on the source of the title, an introduction and explanation to the compilation, various short pieces on folk music and the history of folk music from a handful of the artists on the comp, concerning their songs, their groups and their musical journeys, lyrics, reproductions of old woodcuts and more. So fantastic. And absolutely essential listening for fans of freak folk, dark folk and seventies British folkmusic.
MPEG Stream: THE STORY "The Wicker Man"
MPEG Stream: SOL INVICTUS "To Kill All Kings"
MPEG Stream: ANVIL "John Barleycorn Must Die"
MPEG Stream: MARTYN BATES "The Resurrection Apprentice"

SPEKTR Mescalyne (Moribund) cd 12.98
In the AQ pantheon of fucked up freaked out damaged weirdo black metal, we're constantly having to re-assess which band or which record is truly the MOST fucked up, the most damaged. And it can change in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, deeper listening reveals some until now hidden reserve of completely what-the-fuck-ness in a record we already considered a classic, other times, a band who maybe was never all that weird, will unleash a new record that is utterly confounding, and the bands that tend to be our favorites, seem to keep pushing the limits of the genre, continually subverting the classic sound of black metal until it's all but recognizable. In many cases, we're surprised that some of those bands continue to be loved by metalheads. Necrofrost, Furze, Striborg, Blut Aus Nord, Dead Reptile Shrine, and of course Spektr, who with each new release, jumps right to the front of the pack. Mescalyne is no different.
Were this not a 4 song ep, we'd probably already be trumpeting this as black metal record of the year, and heck, we might as well proclaim it black metal EP of the year. Even considering that black metal is only one small part of their overall, twisted and blackened sound.
As always, very little information anywhere, just some cryptic photos, and the band introduced like this: "Thus, Speller are:". One member Hth, is credited with Infra B. Distrubance, lead and rhythm anomalies, programming, sampling and vox, while kl.K is credited with percussive manifest, sampling, programming, words of spell and vox. So with all that programming and sampling, you can safely assume, that the weirdness here has much to do with electronics and processing, but it's not as simple as all that. Spektr's vision is a gnarled chaotic tangle of impossible rhythms, backwards guitars, black ambience, and FURIOUS black buzz. It sounds a bit like someone computer was hooked up to the guys in Deathspell Omega, and was sucking various black bits from their bodies and electronically weaving them into some sort of blackened beast, hellbent on destroying the world.
A mad scientist, working with black metal, in some hidden fortress, creating some Frankensteinian buzzing behemoth, a lurching, skittering blown out riffed monstrosity.
The opener, "Hollow Contact", begins with dark ambient swirls, some industrial moan and creak, a bit of metallic drumming, giving way to an incredible fierce and in the red blast of black metal fury, the drums machine gun fast, the riffs so blurred and buzzy, they're almost a continuous drone, some weird dynamics, with the guitars flipped backwards, and then chunks of tangled arpeggiated woozy blackness sent drifting into the void.
The second track is just as strange, beginning with an almost typical black metal drum beat, but beneath a layer of what sounds like record crackle, static, and hiss, and all sorts of whirring buzzing ambience off in the distance, separated by thick blasts of nearly impenetrable black buzz, until the song splinters into a stuttering hiccupping stop start breakdown, all tangled warped guitar parts, backwards drums, tons of space, and that weird blast of gnarled twisted riffage punctuating the slow crawl. The third track is all ambient, a dark confusional sprawl of black whirs, and disembodied sounds, mysterious voices, which leads perfectly into the final track, the mellowest of the bunch, still with that same sort of unhinged Deathspell sound, but more spread out, more sort of Ved Buens Ende-y, a sort of post rock groove overlaid with those woozy guitars, and some haunting industrial ambience, finally erupting into some hyperspeed buzzing blackthrash, even then, constantly pulled apart into the opening guitar vs. drums dizziness, finishing off with a haunting minute of high end drone, and hushed, panicked whispering.
Words barely do this stuff justice. Listen to the sound samples. The sound of Mescalyne manages to be futuristic, and spaced out but still grim and black. Buzzy and brutal, but atmospheric and cinematic. This is the kind of fucked up forward thinking music, filmmakers should be using to score their films. Eyes closed, Mescalyne is a terrifying nightmare ride, through some hellish futuristic underworld, and needless to say another addition to the aQ fucked up black metal pantheon. And most probably, black metal ep of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Hollow Contact "
MPEG Stream: "Mescalyne"

SPEKTR Mescalyne (Debemur Morti Prodcutions) 10" 15.98
Outsider black metal industrialists Spektr offer up their most recent record on vinyl for the first time, housed in a super thick sleeve, pressed on heavy heavy vinyl and of course INCREDIBLY LIMITED!!
Here's our review of the cd from last year:
In the AQ pantheon of fucked up freaked out damaged weirdo black metal, we're constantly having to re-assess which band or which record is truly the MOST fucked up, the most damaged. And it can change in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, deeper listening reveals some until now hidden reserve of completely what-the-fuck-ness in a record we already considered a classic, other times, a band who maybe was never all that weird, will unleash a new record that is utterly confounding, and the bands that tend to be our favorites, seem to keep pushing the limits of the genre, continually subverting the classic sound of black metal until it's all but recognizable. In many cases, we're surprised that some of those bands continue to be loved by metalheads. Necrofrost, Furze, Striborg, Blut Aus Nord, Dead Reptile Shrine, and of course Spektr, who with each new release, jumps right to the front of the pack. Mescalyne is no different.
Were this not a 4 song ep, we'd probably already be trumpeting this as black metal record of the year, and heck, we might as well proclaim it black metal EP of the year. Even considering that black metal is only one small part of their overall, twisted and blackened sound.
As always, very little information anywhere, just some cryptic photos, and the band introduced like this: "Thus, Speller are:". One member Hth, is credited with Infra B. Disturbance, lead and rhythm anomalies, programming, sampling and vox, while kl.K is credited with percussive manifest, sampling, programming, words of spell and vox. So with all that programming and sampling, you can safely assume, that the weirdness here has much to do with electronics and processing, but it's not as simple as all that. Spektr's vision is a gnarled chaotic tangle of impossible rhythms, backwards guitars, black ambience, and FURIOUS black buzz. It sounds a bit like someone computer was hooked up to the guys in Deathspell Omega, and was sucking various black bits from their bodies and electronically weaving them into some sort of blackened beast, hellbent on destroying the world.
A mad scientist, working with black metal, in some hidden fortress, creating some Frankensteinian buzzing behemoth, a lurching, skittering blown out riffed monstrosity.
The opener, "Hollow Contact", begins with dark ambient swirls, some industrial moan and creak, a bit of metallic drumming, giving way to an incredible fierce and in the red blast of black metal fury, the drums machine gun fast, the riffs so blurred and buzzy, they're almost a continuous drone, some weird dynamics, with the guitars flipped backwards, and then chunks of tangled arpeggiated woozy blackness sent drifting into the void.
The second track is just as strange, beginning with an almost typical black metal drum beat, but beneath a layer of what sounds like record crackle, static, and hiss, and all sorts of whirring buzzing ambience off in the distance, separated by thick blasts of nearly impenetrable black buzz, until the song splinters into a stuttering hiccupping stop start breakdown, all tangled warped guitar parts, backwards drums, tons of space, and that weird blast of gnarled twisted riffage punctuating the slow crawl. The third track is all ambient, a dark confusional sprawl of black whirs, and disembodied sounds, mysterious voices, which leads perfectly into the final track, the mellowest of the bunch, still with that same sort of unhinged Deathspell sound, but more spread out, more sort of Ved Buens Ende-y, a sort of post rock groove overlaid with those woozy guitars, and some haunting industrial ambience, finally erupting into some hyperspeed buzzing blackthrash, even then, constantly pulled apart into the opening guitar vs. drums dizziness, finishing off with a haunting minute of high end drone, and hushed, panicked whispering.
Words barely do this stuff justice. Listen to the sound samples. The sound of Mescalyne manages to be futuristic, and spaced out but still grim and black. Buzzy and brutal, but atmospheric and cinematic. This is the kind of fucked up forward thinking music, filmmakers should be using to score their films. Eyes closed, Mescalyne is a terrifying nightmare ride, through some hellish futuristic underworld, and needless to say another addition to the aQ fucked up black metal pantheon. And most probably, black metal ep of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Hollow Contact "
MPEG Stream: "Mescalyne"

TECUMSEH Crossing Divides (Anarchy Moon / Black Horizons) lp 14.98
This one is for the slow and low crowd. More gorgeous slow motion sludgery, crawling dreamdronedoom, a slow black sprawl, but unlike the current crop of guitar-against-the-amp droners (and no dis, we love that stuff), this disc by the trio Tecumseh, harkens back to the classic Earth 2, the record that spawned a million sludge bands, by reintroducing the riff. And as we must have mentioned before, it's always ALL about THE RIFF.
So all three looooong tracks here, begin with a riff, downtuned of course, nearly to the point of dissolution, and slowed way down, so that 9 or 10 times through the riff might cover half a side of vinyl, and that riff is stretched out as far as it will go, the notes drifting in blackened expanses of buzz, no drums to speak of, it's all about the riff. EXCEPT, for something strange going on in the background. A constant low level hum, the soft swirl of wind like whirs, all manner of subtle buzzing and layered drones, all woven into a constantly, but subtly, shifting background, in front of which, Tecumseh's slow-low grind creeps and crawls. Not so much heavy as it is meditative, it's very dreamy and soothing and mesmerizing, not to take anything away from these guys, cuz I'm sure this sort of band prides itself on it's heaviness, but this is the perfect metallic drifting off music, almost like they've discovered some new genre, sludge-ambient, doom-age, whatever you decide to call it, it's pretty amazing, and fans of all things slow motion, downtuned and yes, heavy will dig this big time.
Packaged in gorgeous thick fold over gatefold sleeve, hand screened, blue metallic on grey, and of course quite limited...

ALUK TODOLO Descension (Public Guilt) cd 12.98
Finally, the first full length from these mysterious French post black metal krautrock alchemists. And if you think calling a band French post black metal krautrock alchemists might be overdoing it, you haven't heard Aluk Todolo.
An offshoot of black metal horde Diamatregon (who have one record on tUMULt, and another one coming soon), this trio, just guitar, bass and drums, are most definitely alchemists, working some sort of ancient magic, turning the simplest of rock band instrumentation, into something massive and mysterious, heavy and haunting, brutal and mesmerizing, repetitive and motorik. Crafting songs, that manage to be both pieces, in the classical sense, abstract and intellectual collections and arrangements of sound, subtle shadings, tonal color and timbre, harmony and dissonance, and SONGS, in the rock sense, fucking kick ass jams, that seem to go on forever, killer riffs, and relentless head nodding rhythms, like krautrock, only heavier and darker and way way blacker. Like black metal but without all the buzz and howl, stripped down to its very essence, to just mood and rhythm, ambience and propulsion.
In the review of the previous 7" we described the band's sound as: Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy.
And the full length essentially still sounds like that, but having loosed themselves from the shackles of the way too brief 7" format, the band can take all those elements, and lay them out, an epic massive post rock, krautrock, dronerock, experimental post black metal sprawl. These are the kinds of songs and sounds that need space, and time, need to lull the listener in, to entrance, ensorcel, the rhythms are stripped down and repetitive, looped and hypnotic, simple, but surprisingly and subtly complex at the same time. It's not hard to hear other hypno rockers in Aluk Todolo's sound, Circle, Salvatore and the like, but also space rock masters of repetition, Hawkwind, The Heads, and of course krautrock legends Can and Faust. Especially Can, with their focus on the power of the rhythm, no mater how seemingly simple or plain. But more than anything, it's legendary UK experimentalists This Heat whose, haunting mysterious rhythmic influence is all over Descension.
The opening track is the heaviest, a brutal slab of in the red distorted riffage, the actual riffs barely discernible, more like a heaving mass of crumbling distortion and space rock FX, but the rhythms that frame the whole record are already in place, pounding steadily beneath the buzz and skree. A head nodding pulse underpinning the swirling distorted clouds above. A bracing and white hot burst of blackdronekrautpsych that has the speakers rattling for all of its 8+ minutes.
But that track mostly serves as an intro to the complex and moody rhythmic sprawl that makes up the other three tracks. "Burial Ground" begins with what sounds like a slowed down This Heat rhythm track synched up to the free abstract drift of legendary seventies dronepsych collective Taj Mahal Travellers. The drums unwavering, but the background constantly in flux, swaths of black buzz, brief flurries of chaotic FX, distant low end swells, haunting fragmented melodies, a gorgeous spare kraut rock jam dropped into the abyss.
"Woodchurch" is a dense wall of high end buzz, all swirling distorted hum and keening feedback, tones all tangled up, a chordal wash of tuned vacuum cleaners, a sort of Sunroof! Style urdrone, but beneath it, the simplest of bass lines, distorted and downtuned, a heartbeat like throb, only a handful of notes, just enough to tie into the even simpler drum part, just kick drum and snare, a two step tattoo, as completely mesmerizing as it us utterly simple. The background buzz, swaying and pulsing, like some massive black sea, or clouds of insects ravaging a blighted sonic landscape.
The disc closes with "Disease" which opens with an ultra heavy slide guitar, unfurling a slow motion blues riff, caked in black buzz and thick distortion, the notes left to hang, ringing out until the tones slowly transform into feedback, immediately being swallowed up by the riff right behind it. It's like Robert Johnson playing SUNNO))), and then suddenly, the sound shifts, and the band reverts to its murky trawl, a thick throbbing bass line, another Can like rhythm, guitars warm and warbly, more like a layer of wet fuzz than distinct riffing, but occasionally, bits of that opening salvo return, offering up brief blasts of speaker destroying crunch, or brief bits of grinding buzz, a sudden start that almost, but doesn't quite wake you from your soporific reverie. Near the end, the distorted slide guitar returns, and drums drop out, and the track finishes with a thick coda of pealing guitar roar and shimmering chordal droneŠ
Intense and hypnotic and heavy and fucking genius. Ritualistic sounds, both black and brilliant, pulled from the void, a mysterious and sonic netherworld. Definite contender for record of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Obedience"
MPEG Stream: "Burial Ground"

XYNFONICA A Feast For Famished Ravens (Hekaloth / Cyclops) cd 15.98
What we're about to say, we don't say lightly. Trust us. We may traffic in hyperbole. And our shelves may be stuffed with lots of 'best evers' and 'worst evers' and 'greatest evers', but this friends, is quite possibly the weirdest record we've ever carried. When we first threw it on, we were immediately struck with the realization, that what we were hearing, was either the most amazing thing we had ever heard, or absolutely the worst piece of shit EVER. Andee quickly decided on the former. And no matter how hard he tried, or how many repeated listens he was subjected to, Allan is sticking with the latter. But the more we play this in the store, the more the tribe of Xynfonica worshippers grows, Antaeus, Matt, Cameron, one can only handle a few listens before you're forever in its thrall. We're not sure how Allan does it, maybe there's some sort of chip in his brain, or maybe he's not really human at all, who knows. What we do know is we will wear him down, and just like you, faithful yet doomed reader of this list, he will eventually bow down to the damaged glory that is Xynfonica.
By now you're probably wondering what the fuck we're on about. Fair enough. So let's go back a bit. Not sure how we first heard about Xynfonica, but we got the disc in, it had an amazing cover, an old painting of some ancient battle, men on horseback, wielding swords, the record title: A Feast For Famished Ravens, song titles like: "From Your Father's Skull" and "The Viking Zodiac", a huge booklet jammed with more lyrics than could possibly fit in the three songs here, there are even footnotes!!! So we still hadn't listened to it, but we were pretty much sold already.
So we finally threw it on, and were greeted with some strange synthesizers, guitar synthesizers to be specific (we later discovered) and a growled demonic vocal, the synths, sort of atonal and detuned, like a demented Peter And The Wolf, the vocals, a strangled black metal rasp, so okay, we're thinking, a cool weird intro, so we waited for the band to kick in, and waited, and waited, and waited some more, scanned forwardŠ So then we thought, okay, maybe the whole first track is the intro, so we skipped to the second track, which of course started with the raspy vocals and the seasick synths, but we gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited and waited, scanned forward, and then it dawned on us. HOLY SHIT. This was the band. There were no drums, no guitarist. It was just some trollish demon and his damaged synth, spewing endless tales of mysterious battles and lost civilizations. And suddenly, it had us. Xynfonica. Sure it's creepy and demented, and borderline retarded, and the synths sometime sound so wrong it makes us dizzy, so 'off' it makes our eyes water, the melodies are demented, alien, creepy ominous one second, bouncing cheerfully the next, but always those vocals, an everpresent demon storyteller, it's hard to explain exactly why we're so taken, but we are. Every time we play this, initial reactions range from confusion, to hysterical laughter, to anxiety to sheer unadulterated joy. Imagine if Jandek was the keyboard player in a black metal band and decided to make a solo record, or imagine Mr. Roger's neighborhood but Mr. Rogers is out sick, so the dude from Abruptum is filling in, or imagine the music files from some medieval video game getting corrupted, and then used as the intro music for some evil metal band. Well you know, what? There's no need to imagine. It's all right here. Xynfonica will give you all of that and more. With just a rudimentary grasp of the synthesizer, and a frog in his throat, all will be revealed, and we shall all revel in his stumbling, confusional musical brilliance.
Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. XynfonicaŠ
MPEG Stream: "A Feast For Famished Ravens Pt.1"
MPEG Stream: "The Viking Zodiac Pt.1"

HORNA / PESTE NOIRE split (Debemur Morti) 7" 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What more do you need to know? Finland's Horna. France's Peste Noire. Hard to imagine a more kick ass black metal match up. And sonically, a surprisingly suitable one.
The Horna track is epic and majestic, beginning with a cool backwards buzz guitar part, that segues into furious blackened riffing and a surprising amount of melody, sounding at moments like old At The Gates only blacker. The songs is laced with weird melancholy pounding, and haunting arpeggiated melodies, but all tangled up within dense blasts of hyper speed grimnity.
The Peste Noire track, some folks might already have, as it was a bonus track on the recent Peste Noire record Folkfuck Folie. Tangled and convoluted, the song structure constantly shifting, the guitars fuzzed out and insectoid, the vocals howling, it's definitely buzzing black metal, but in the hands of Peste Noire it becomes something else entirely, infusing the sound with bits of pop, melody, angular weirdness, turning it into an impossible catchy slab of black weirdness.
Obviously essential. And probably equally obvious is the fact that this is seriously limited, we got a bunch, but imagine they will be gone in no time. And yeah, they're a bit pricey, but you can blame the currently very sad US dollarŠ
Super thick vinyl, thick cardstock inner sleeves, and a super striking woodcut style outer jacket.

MARBLEBOG Forestheart (Autopsy Kitchen) cd 13.98
Since we first heard the name Marblebog, we somehow just knew this obscure Hungarian horde would be a fast favorite, before we had even heard a note of music, and man were we right. The last record, 2004's Csendhajnal, now unfortunately out of print, was a huge hit at AQ, the perfect balance of swirling synthy ambience, and mournful melancholy Burzumic buzz, so we had been anxiously awaiting the reissue of 2005's Forestheart ever since, and now it's finally here.
This duo from Hungary mix traditional Hungarian folk, modern grim black buzz, and blissed out ambience into epic swaths of blurry blackness, woven from loping minor key guitars, simple mostly midtempo drumming, strangled croaked vocals, and while the parts might sound similar to black metal obsessives, it's not just the parts, it's how they're played, and recorded and arranged, the mood and the timbre, the sound and the feeling as much as the actual riffs.
And while the riffs are of course amazing, it's the feel more than anything that make Marblebog so special. Everything is dripping with such sadness and sorrow, not just minor key, but whole arrangements and progressions perfectly assembled to evoke strange feelings, heartbreak and woe, death and destruction, so mournful and melancholy, sweeping swells of buzzing sound, with incredible dynamics, and bits of melody that swoop in out of nowhere and are immediately swallowed up again.
The appropriately titled "Opening" is a brief stretch of swirling krautrocky synth, peppered with haunting animal like FX and creepy scrapes and groans, all drenched in reverb and delay, hovering beneath a pale moonlit sky. This intro opens up into the sort of title track "I Am The Forestheart", a glorious blast of melancholy blackness, with a main riff as catchy as it is dark and depressive. Part way through the band shift gear, and slow down into a strummed folky interlude, a jig like melody, Jew's harp, the sound of wind and rain, a haunting spare drift.
There are three more longish tracks, all channeling the same forest spirit, looped cyclical black buzz, suffused with hypnotic drones and unlikely little melodic flourishes, everything muted and murky and dreamlike, often breaking down into simple acoustic guitar drifts, before picking back up again. The harrowing over the top vocals of the first records are now much more settled into the background, more a part of the music, almost like another layer of buzzing drone, but still just as harrowing and anguished.
The final track is a 13+ minute ambient soundscape of shimmering synths, and mad scientist lab FX, burbling and gurgling beneath, dreamy washes of high end drift, strange muted percussion, some seriously Goblin like keyboard creep, and eventually some awesome lurching downtuned guitar, not so much crushing and heavy as creepy and thick, cyclical and hypnotic, a gorgeous lurching dream doom.
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Forestheart"
MPEG Stream: "A Tempest Never Calming Down"
MPEG Stream: "Closing"

WHITE HILLS Heads On Fire (Rocket Recordings) cd 14.98
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK!!
After a whole mess of crazy limited cd-r releases, this is only the 2nd proper, actual cd release from these East Coast blown out garage psych space rockers. Avid readers of the list will no doubt by now, be hip to these guys, their wall of guitar, Hawkwind meets the Stooges meets Monster Magnet meets the Heads is tough to beat, every song drenched in wild outer space FX, the drums pounding beneath an avalanche of psychedelic guitar, the vocals, shadows flitting across the molten surface of these tracks, barely audible just another layer of dense fuzz.
So how does this record stack up to the rest? We mentioned that the last release, the tour only Abstractions And Mutations, was the band's fiercest yet, but Heads On Fire might have us reassessing. Cuz this has to be exactly what it would sound like if your head was indeed on fire.
The opener is a heavy as fuck space rock romp, right out of the gate, a wall of buzzing wah wah guitar is loosed, and all you can do is hang on for the ride, it's like Spacemen 3 on speed, that same sort of billowy tripped out warm guitar buzz, but souped WAY up, supercharged, a blinding supernova of freaked out garage rock psychedelia. But the track right after that is way riffier, a serious Stooges-y stomp, plenty of guitar crunch and psychedelic squalls, but the vocals are more present, a sort of Wyndorf style lord mother fucker drawl, wrapped in reverb and draped over the jagged riffing and pounding drums.
Then there's "Don't Be Afraid", which begins with whipping wind and distant foghorns, ominous and mysterious, a phone being dialed, ringing and ringing, the band gradually coming in, a slow lope, simple tribal drums, a laid back guitar line, soft fuzzy swells of sound in the background, a lugubrious slow build, the vocals howled and spacey, reverbed and dripping with delay, the guitar getting gradually more and more jagged and distorted, until everything drops out, just wind, and muted electronics, muffled FX, the bass line creeping along steadily, bits of melody drifting by, the vocals come back in and BAM the band takes off, the guitar spitting flames, the drums falling down a mineshaft, a huge tangle of psychedelic space rock chaos, and then nothing, a weird, barely there, 5 minute outro, bits of guitar, creaking and buzzing, more wind, and finally silence.
And in case that last 30 minutes, and those last 5 in particular, had you forgetting just where you were, the band shuts things down with 4+ minutes of furious fuzz and pummeling pound, thick and corrosive, and so distorted the riffs seem to melt into each other, the vocals sung from the bottom of a well, a bit of start stop dynamics, replete with creepy giggling children, and then the perfect send off, a sky full of psychedelic fireworks, multicolored streaks of white hot guitar, a blinding ear full of sonic pyrotechnics like staring straight into the sun.
MPEG Stream: "Radiate"
MPEG Stream: "Ocean Sound"