MOGWAI Young Team (Chemikal Underground) 2cd 14.98
Long before every band in the world had quite verses and loud choruses, before every band listed Godspeed You Black Emperor as an influence, there was Mogwai. And yeah, they owed their very existence to Slint and the Pixies, but unlike many of the bands that would follow, they wrapped up all that Pixie-dust and all of those Slintisms into something brooding and epic and at the time we first laid ears on Young Team, like -almost- nothing we had ever heard before. For being a seminal post rock classic, this record has spent much of its time out of print and unavailable. Finally, it's available again, this time housed in a swank slipcover and with a whole extra disc, featuring a handful of tracks from comps and singles, including one previously unreleased, and a bunch of killer live tracks. Folks who already love this record, are just the sort of folks (like us mind you) that will almost for sure have to buy this again for the bonus stuff, but if you somehow managed to make it all the way to 2008 without owning a copy of Young Team, this is your lucky day.
What's the big deal about Young Team, yeah, Mogwai, heard 'em, they have a bunch of records out right? Yeah, and they're all great, but this one. THIS one, THIS is it! THE one. The record that launched a MILLION other records. Half the bands we love and freak out about wouldn't even exist if it weren't for THIS RECORD. Or if they did, they sure as heck wouldn't sound the way they do. Sure there was Spiderland. And the theory that everyone who heard Spiderland started a band. And the Pixies. Same thing. And let's not forget Nirvana. Between Slint, Nirvana and the Pixies, the template for angsty loud/soft indie rock was pretty much defined FOREVER. Until Young Team that is. Mogwai most definitely owed a huge debt to the above mentioned big three, but there was just something special about Young Team. The ultimate brooding post rock stumble into massive epic metallic crush record we had ever heard. This is heavy, but oh so pretty, dark and romantic, but also creepy and seriously ominous sounding. Soft super blissed-out meandering almost-ambient soundscapes, dark brooding passages of near silence, eventually shattered into a million pieces by bursts of frenzied, rhythmic noise a la Godflesh, crushing and metallic and machinelike, but always ready to drift and fade back into soft swooning tranquility. But even the loud heavy parts are strangely melodic and ridiculously catchy. This record is so fucking great. Even now, more than a decade after it was first released, and after we've heard more than enough bands do their own versions of Young Team. Maybe the best way to really drive home how massive and amazing and incredibly influential this record is, would be to list a handful of bands who most likely owe their entire existence to this record. No disrespect to any of these groups AT ALL (we love them every single one of them) but you gotta give credit where credit is due... the sons of Mogwai include Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Isis, Timeout Drawer, Snowblood, the Ocean, Magyar Posse, Gregor Samsa, Aereogramme, This Is Your Captain Speaking, Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Ros, Pelican, Mono, Grails, Tarentel, Jimmy Cake, Switchblade, Minsk, Conifer, Tides, Eden Maine, Rosetta, Red Sparrowes, Indian, Baroness, Cult Of Luna, Mouth Of The Architect and we could go on and on. So if you love any or all of the above mentioned bands, and how could you not, and yet you've somehow never heard Young Team, you are in for it in a big beautiful way! The return of one of indie rock's most epochal releases, back from the grave to remind us all just how devastatingly fantastic this record is!
The bonus disc features four extra tracks, one unreleased, seemingly a trifle, super short, but in its 3 minutes it manages to evoke some serious moodiness, and has us wishing it was way longer. A second, previously released, clocks in at less than 2 minutes, and is culled from some obscure comp, but again, it's a gloriously bleak moodscape. The third bonus track is more of an actual song, with skittery electronic sounding drums, and washed out minor key strum, all very dark and drone-y, and then there's Mogwai's gorgeous cover of Spacemen 3's "Honey", paying homage to another band that obviously influenced their sound, their version is not quite as druggy as the original, but bathes the vocals in reverb, adds glockenspiel and chimes, and turns it into something almost choral. The live stuff is raw and urgent and intense, AND loud, listening to "Mogwai Fear Satan" live is almost like being there, the drums a frenzy of crashes and endless fills, roiling beneath dense clouds of druggy FX drenched clouds of soaring guitar, truly transcendent.
File this next to Spiderland and Surfer Rosa and a handful of other epochal indie rock touchstones. Needless to say, ridiculously recommended and essential.
MPEG Stream: "Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home"
MPEG Stream: "Like Herod"
MPEG Stream: "Mogwai Fear Satan"

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

HEALTH Disco (Lovepump United) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL!
Health, the band, are an entirely unHEALTHY, and thus utterly appealing concoction of manic rhythms, jagged guitars, yowled vocals, all wound into exploding bursts of freaked out noise drenched new wave tribalism. Chaotic, spastic, freaked out, manic, mathy, grindy. It's like the musical version of a diet rich in Pixie Sticks, Lik-M-Aid, licorice whips and Mountain Dew, and it's that imaginary diet that seemingly fuels Health's sound. What else could explain the boundless energy, the intense spazziness, the fractured heaviness, the blown out total rock action?
But as we mentioned in our review of their self-titled debut, as much as we love pretty much everything they do, we like them best when they're drone-y and synthy and drifty and hypnotic, and that is the side that seems to shine through on Disco, a collection of remixes and reinterpretations from a bunch of artists, none of which we recognize except for Crystal Castles, who shared a split with Health a while back.
At first we thought the title Disco was ironic, a pisstake, especially considering the first track. The opener, remixed by Acid Girls, doesn't do much to the original, except loop certain parts, add some noise, some bursts of electronics, none of which would have been that out of place in the original. There is definitely much more of a dance-y groove, but it's almost more New Wave-y than dance-y, and again, if you told us this was a non-remixed Health track and we hadn't heard the original, we wouldn't even blink. The second track, had us maybe reconsidering, while not disco by any stretch, it begins with tribal drums and reverbed vocals, which soon gives way to a dance-y groove, some noodly synths, but again, not all that far removed from the original, at least in our admittedly fuzzy memory. But then the next track drops, another Acid Girls remix, and everything changes. The Disco title makes way more sense. Suddenly the record is in full on modern electro disco, fuzzy synth, groovy Ed Banger style jam mode. From gloomy new wave skittery disco pop, to full on ultra distorted synth heavy Justice style dancefloor destroying jams, to skittery After Dark new wave, to minimal housey style Kompakt-ed grooves, to eighties Japanese video game style 8-bit worship, to Fischerspooner-esque Theme From Beverly Hills Cop retro, and pretty much every awesomely cheesy groovy stop in between. Pretty schizophrenic and all over the place, but somehow, all the various versions remain sort of true to the original sound. Anyone who dug the Health debut, and are not afraid to explore the dancefloor, will dig this big time. And folks who have never heard Health, but love shit like Crystal Castles, MGMT, Justice, Daft Punk, Alter Ego, Digitalism, Cut Copy and the like, this might just be your gateway drug, to things more noisy and punk rock.
MPEG Stream: "Triceratops (Acid Girls RMX A)"
MPEG Stream: "Lost Time (Pictureplane RMX)"
MPEG Stream: "Heaven (Pink Skull RMX)"

VARGHKOGHARGASMAL Drowned In Lakes (tUMULt) cd 13.98
Varghkoghargasmal. When we first discovered this German one man band, it was via a cassette, with a black and white photocopied cover, a washed out image of some wintry forest landscape, accompanied by the legend 'wooden metal'. Needless to say we were totally intrigued, only to discover, that there wasn't anything really that metal about it, or wooden even. Not sure if 'wooden' referred to the trees, or to acoustic guitars, but none of that mattered once we head the music inside. A twisted confusional mix of slowed down Dick Dale style surf riffage, stumbling drums, haunting melodies, warbly organs, all wrapped around a simple motorik almost krautrock groove. We had no idea what to call it, or really even what to think, other than being totally smitten, transfixed and ensorcelled. Definitely ensorcelled.
So here we have the brand new album from Avenger, the man solely responsible for Varghkoghargasmal, and if anything, it's even more haunting and mysterious, more creepy and strange, and somehow way more beautiful.
It's a difficult sound to explain, the guitars are clean, but are often still playing in a black metal style, frantic riffing or rapid picking, but just as often the guitars are spidery and minor key, unfurling lugubrious tendrils of creepy twang, or reverbed shimmer. The vocals are minimal, a hushed whisper here and there, a Viking style chant during one song, but it's mostly left to the music, which is incredibly evocative, it's like some sort of acoustic black metal, mixed with slowed down surf rock, dark languorous krautrock, and a distinct Morricone vibe as well. And then there are the drums, which by design or by happenstance, are a definite sonic focal point, as they are WAY up in the mix, and they are all over the place, the fills are chaotic, the rhythms stumble and stutter, but in their imperfections lie a truly unique sort of emotion and feeling not found in most music. The drums anchor everything, locking into foresty krautrock grooves, sputtering into dense little tumbling squalls, the prefect framework for Avenger's rickety moonlit jams.
Most of the songs creep and crawl, sometimes behind a curtain of rainfall, the sound of the forest spirits, flickering firelight, fireflies lighting up the canopy overhead, pianos pick out mournful melodies, the drums, lurching along, a perfectly imperfect accompaniment, organs wheeze, synths whir, steel strings twang, the whole thing so impossibly transcendent, effortlessly evoking ancient atmospheres and deep emotions. When the band lock into a more rocking groove, and the rhythm builds into something propulsive, the guitars stretch out into long streaks of buzzing melodies, the organ plays along like some old time music box, and the sound transforms before your ears and transports you to some truly mysterious otherworld.
There are some black metal references for sure, mostly the ambient bits of Burzum, and some of the riffing recalls suicidal black metal, albeit played with no distortion and more melancholy really than miserable, some of the more frenzied parts even sound like Iron Maiden played on acoustic guitars, and sometimes the guitars manage to sound like banjos, but still the creepiest and prettiest moments occur when the sound winds down into something much more minimal and muted, letting the keyboards weave fluttery melodies, over whirring drones and spare guitar melodies, only occasionally flecked with little flurries of haphazard drumming.
One of the few records that we can unequivocally describe as being utterly unlike anything else you will ever hear! Hauntingly beautiful, beautifully bizarre, and WAY WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Autumn Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Far Away From The Earth..."
MPEG Stream: "...Near The Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Listen To The Wind"

MONARCH / GREY DATURAS Dawn Of The Catalyst (Throne) 12" 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally! Been waiting for the vinyl version of this for a while now. Taking the slow boat all the way from Spain, but it was well worth it, sounds awesome, looks amazing. Metallic gold and black on shimmery silver matte finish, all new artwork. SUPER LIMITED, we got a bunch, but we won't be able to get more. Here's more about the music inside:
A while ago we were informed that French ultradoom combo Monarch had called it a day. We were crushed. One of our favorite purveyors of filthy slow motion doooooooooom, fronted by a woman, a rarity in doom for sure, and with a penchant for smiley skulls and Hello Kitty. A band that seemed tailor made for the very bizarre tastes of the AQ faithful, seemed to be no more. 
But before we could begin our campaign of mourning, black clothes spray painted with cute skulls, black Hello Kitty armbands, we discovered that in fact we were misinformed, or maybe the band had taken a break, or something, but we cared not, for whatever reason, Monarch was still alive, and would live to doom another day. And doom they did. Gracing us with more and more glorious downtuned heaviness, including their bad ass cover of Turbonegro's "I Got Erection"!
So now that we're pretty comfortable with the continued existence of our favorite cute doomsters, we can wait patiently for each new, massive slab of harsh slow motion glacial dooooooooooooooooooooom. And for folks new to Monarch, don't go expecting this to actually -sound- cute. They may be fronted by an adorable French girl, who spins playfully on the beach in their videos, but when she opens her mouth to sing, it's the sound of blackness and misery, a demonic caterwaul, unrivaled by most male metal vocalists. And sure the art on their records may be cute cartoon burning churches and big eyed ghosts, but the sounds inside are slow and black as tar, guitars tuned so low they rumble instead of roar, drum beats so far apart, the drummer can probably smoke a cigarette between beats. And we're happy to report that this 16+ minute chunk of doom is all that and more. The more being the haunting ethereal female vocals partway through... Crushingly heavy, weirdly beautiful. A plodding symphony in slow motion. Essential Monarch beautiful brutality.
The surprise here is the Grey Daturas track, also a 16 minute epic, that on first listen sounds surprisingly doomy, and a lot like the Monarch track. The Daturas are often heavy, but rarely doomy like this, but it suits them. And they pepper their doom with all sorts of sonic weirdness, bits of electronic fuckery, strange modulated feedback, subtle FX, until about 13 minutes in, when the song suddenly morphs into a muted wall of smeared and crumbling white noise, a blast of blurred sound that eventually fades into nothingness. 
Pretty amazing stuff, from both bands. Doom hounds will be well pleased.
MPEG Stream: MONARCH "Rapture"
MPEG Stream: THE GREY DATURAS "Golden Tusk The Endearing"

OCEAN, THE Precambrian (Throne / Garden Of Exile) 3lp 45.00
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"s 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"

SINK The Process (Kult Of Nihilow) cd 16.98
The Kult Of Nihilow website has this to say about Sink's The Process: "This is not a sludge record. This is not a drone record. This is not an experimental record." Which is not actually true, since it's actually an awesome mix of all three. More accurately, it's not an average sludge record, or a typical drone record, and isn't like most experimental music, but that's precisely what makes it so appealing.
Sink are from Finland and have shared a split with aQ faves, UK dronelords Marzuraan, and they traffic in a sound that is both crushingly slow, blindingly heavy, as well as mysteriously dark and droney, but just like anything, it's what you do with all that stuff that matters. Anyone can tune down and play an E chord for 10 minutes. But not anyone can make it sound like angels singing.
On their split with Marzuraan, we described their sound as "a swirling, sludgy wall of hissing fuzzed out blackened ultra noise, harsh and horrific", but there's nothing like that here. The Process is much more musical, and more measured, for a band who is typically defined as a sludge band, they spend much of their time unfurling dark muted shimmery dronescapes, hushed whispery smears of barely audible thrum. And even when they are dropping some serious sludge, it's not really sludgey, the guitars are thick and corrosive, but glimmering and crystalline, rife with haunting chords, the vocals deep monk like chants. The opener here is the perfect example, it sounds like Tibetan monks fronting a doom band, only the doom is strangely melodic, and hauntingly cinematic. Halfway through the track fades into some dark chiming ambience, all muted and blurred, before the crushing doomic blows begin to rain down again, those vocals returning to underpin everything with their thick rumbling whir (sounding quite a bit like Tuvan throat singing). It's a pity the track is only 11 minutes long. We could have gone for twice that! At least.
The second track is all soaring Sunroof! like streaks of sound and strummed acoustic guitars, sounding like a noisier doomier Kiss The Anus, but all washed out and smeared into bleary shoegazey drifts, reminding us of a way more abstract Nadja or Angelic Process actually.
Strangely enough, almost the whole rest of the record is devoid of any hint of sludge or doom, instead exploring longform guitar drones, super minimal sinewave skree, gentle dreamlike ambience, rumbling cavernous dronemusic, until finally, the not at all appropriately titled final song "The Silence", which is anything but silent, four minutes of murky corrosive drift, but like the opener, rife with mysterious melody, disembodied vocals, glimmering chordal blur, all spread out into a thick sluggish doom-ic haze, that seems to blot out the sun, bathing everything in a burnished blood red glow.
Beautifully packaged In an elaborate fold out sleeve, printed in full color with a little tab to hold it shut. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Weakness (The Process)"
MPEG Stream: "Ascension"
MPEG Stream: "Receiving Silence"

STARVING WEIRDOS Absolute Freedom (Abandon Ship) 7" 5.00
Doing some Spring (umm, Late Autumn?) cleaning, and discovered a little stash of these, so figured we'd list them again, and what the heck, let's put em on sale too, last few copies, now at a WAY reduced price, and beyond that, a pretty bad ass 7"...
A brand new record from the Starving Weirdos, two old old tracks, resurrected and pressed onto what we're pretty sure is the SW's very first 7". The group's sound changes so much, that these two archival tracks, while entirely different from anything we've heard from them, still sound very much at home in their constantly shifting body of work. And unlike the more recent material, is much more lo-fi and looped, giving the sound a very rough, lo-fi, sort of Jeck / Tim Hecker vibe, which obviously we love!
The A side begins with a murky processed pulse, with propulsive krautrock drumming but before it gets more than 10 seconds in, there's a strange backwards swoop, and the track seems to skip back to the beginning, which takes up almost the whole side, a gorgeously fragmented tribal drone krauty loop, until right near the end, when the track shifts, the guitar builds to a chaotic squall, the drums blown out, the cymbals sizzling distortedly, a serious freaked out psych jam, with strange spoken word vocals, bits of feedback, and tons of distorted murk.
The flipside is also loop based (or sounds like it), a militaristic snare, rat-a-tat-tat's out an insistent beat, over which a cool shimmery loop, cycles over and over, while in the background deep rumbles pulse and swell, until the drums drop out and the track finishes off with some moody washed out Jeckian ambience.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Pro printed black and white covers, with printed inserts.

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

V/A Living is Hard: West African Music in Britain, 1927 - 1929 (Honest Jons) cd 17.98
Living Is Hard. Indeed. Truer words were never spoken. The plight of Africans in Britain in the beginning of the twentieth century, was indeed one of hardship and strife, of persecution and destitution of unspeakable violence and unfettered racism. And the songs on Living Is Hard perfectly capture the spirit of the time. The anger and resentment, but also the hope and happiness, the frustration of constant harassment and the dreams of something better.
As the liner notes mention, these songs were a "disruptive late entry into the history of black music in Britain", a music that owes very little to any white listenership. A hybrid of African spirituals, blues and plantation songs, with hints of Carribean music, bits of highlife, mostly vocal, with minimal instrumentation, managing to be simultaneously complex and musically dense, but also simple and heartfelt.
A few tracks are immediately recognizable as a sort of highlife blues, simple acoustic guitar and seemingly celebratory vocals, but much of the music on Living Is Hard, is truly unique, unlike anything we've ever heard, even as fans of wondrous and mysterious world musics, there are strange acapella tracks, where the rhythms are created from grunts and mumbles, the main vocal line, strangled and guttural, peppered with occasional percussion, some tracks have a Western folk vibe, even hinting at some Morricone-ish twang, others sounds a bit like doo wop, rich harmonies and gorgeous hummed melodies, but most of the tracks here are just vocal and percussion, chanting, crooning, call and response, voices sometimes rough and raw, sometimes smooth and silky, the rhythms backing them up ranging from simple and spare to dense and tribal, so varied and moving and simply wonderful.
As with all Honest Jons releases, Living Is Hard is gorgeously packaged, with a thick book of liner notes, lots of photos, translations of the lyrics and more.
MPEG Stream: ISAAC JACKSON "Nitsi Koko"
MPEG Stream: BEN SIMMONS "Untitled"
MPEG Stream: HARRY E. QUASHIE "Anadwofa"
MPEG Stream: DOUGLAS PAPAFIO "Kuntum"

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

NAMBLARD, MARC Chants Of Frozen Lakes (Kalerne Editions) cd 17.98
We've long been proponents of the idea, that any sound man can make, using technology and engineering and electronics, nature can make too. And it will be just as mysterious and interesting. Made even more so, that those sounds occur, well, naturally. And in most cases, especially in electronic music, many of the sounds we discover and create using synthesizers, mimic sounds already produced in nature.
Countless field recordings have proven this, and this latest disc - a recording of the ice on a lake in France, slowly melting - does so once again!
By now, regular readers of the list, have been exposed to plenty of unique field recordings, drag races, life support machines, frogs, applause, monkeys, cowbells, barking dogs, rutting deer and of course the sound of water and ice. Ice and water seem to be particularly interesting sonically, as they always seem to be in motion, whether at the microscopic level melting and cracking, or on a more physical level, the sound of rushing rivers, pouring rain.
The sounds here, like many of the other field recordings we are so fond of, sound NOTHING like what you would imagine ice would sound like. Apparently, the layer of ice on the lake, acts like the head of a drum, transmitting the various cracks and crackles and vibrations across the expansive sheet of ice, producing strange tones, some very electronic sounding, all of them mysterious.
This record was woven together the sounds of the ice covered lake on a single day. Hours of recordings edited into one hour, but no other work has been done on these sounds, this is the actual sound of the ice. It begins with the sound of birds, the ice producing tiny little streaks of sound, that do sound like synthesizers, strange space-y FX, suspended in an expanse of murky murmur. The intensity and the frequency of those space-y streaks increases as the day warms up and the ice begins to fracture and melt, the barrage of bleeps and bloops begin to sound like a Star Wars laser battle, and sound like it couldn't possibly be the sound of ice. Eventually, the laser like streaks get deeper, and more resonant, as if someone was adding reverb or delay, until it's just a cloud of fuzzy bleeps and warbly tweets, underpinned by the actual staticky crackle of the ice cracking.
It's hard to explain much better than that, try listening to the sound samples, you will be amazed. It truly is a rare glimpse of some impossible and mysterious soundworld. A peek into how nature works, or at the very least, a chance to overhear the magic of nature, the sounds the exist in the wild, even if most of the time we're unable to hear them. Magical.
MPEG Stream: "Chants Of Frozen Lakes (Excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Chants Of Frozen Lakes (Excerpt 2)"

VARGHKOGHARGASMAL / OCTOBER FALLS split (Deathstrike) 7" 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Managed to dig up a few more copies of this, probably last copies ever...
One final teaser before the tUMULt release of Varghkoghargasmal's Drowned In Lakes full length. Another glorious slab of "wooden metal" from this German one man band, that as always, is not particularly metal, or wooden. In fact, it's more like some strange off kilter krautrock, warbly organs, stumbling drums, lurching grooves, off kilter tempos, simple downtuned clean guitar strum, haunting keyboard melodies, all tangled up into a gorgeous creepy forest jam. The track begins all doomy and droney, the keyboard wavering over the deliberate drumming and the muted riffing, very spare and space-y, eventually locking into a more propulsive groove, the drums impossibly off, in an amazing way, totally in their own dimension, the guitar a mere mumble, except for the spidery melody that holds the whole thing together, the keyboard louder than anything else. Imagine a cross between Avarus and Benighted Leams and you might get something close to Varghkoghargasmal. Awesome as always.
Splitting the disc with V. is October Falls, another one man band, this one from Finland, who specializes in dark ambient folk, and here, it's just that, all mournful minor key acoustic guitar, lilting and sorrowful, moody and meandering, so darkly pretty.
Super thick sleeves and jackets, a handful are on colored vinyl, so you might get lucky, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

HARVEY MILK Life... The Best Game In Town (Hydra Head) cd 14.98
It's weird to think that there was a time when it was practically impossible to get a Harvey Milk record. We spent ages trying to track down any information about these guys, looking for their Courtesy And Good Will lp, trying to decipher the mystery of the My Love Is Higher album cover. A random sequence of events led to Andee reissuing Courtesy on tUMULt, which was later snapped up by Relapse. And after that, things started to snowball, singles collections, reissues, and lo and behold a new album, the band back together again, and touring! Finally taking their rightful place at the head of the heavy rock table where they always belonged. Only now, they're the elder statesmen instead of the young upstarts. But hell, they still sound way heavier and more alive than any of the current crop of heavies. And this brand new disc just seals the deal.
And as if the band weren't heavy enough, they've added Mr, Joe Preston (Thrones/Melvins) to the group. And the results are pretty stellar. Not only do the band still crush and destroy (they couldn't really get any heavier, could they?) but they're even more melodic. In some strange twist, they seem to have melded the classic rock tendencies of Pleaser era Milk, with the infuriatingly and brilliantly repetitive dirge of Courtesy, creating something both epic and catchy, hooky and heavy, and insanely obtuse and difficult.
The opening track begins with Creston singing in a delicate falsetto, over simple strummed guitar, and then the bomb drops, and the band explode into some post-Melvins, post-Killdozer dirgey crawl, but even at their most sludgiest, they still manage to sound incredible. It's like some pop band got flayed alive and shoved in a bubbling tar pit. Only to emerge a stumbling lurching dripping beast. Epic grinding riffage and classic rock leads give way to an extended chugscape, over and over and over, the vocals suddenly sounding all Gibby-like, the guitar so distorted it crumbles and falls like sodden chunks through the grill of your speaker, until the very end when the vocals transform into a line from the Beatles' "A Day In The Life", and then they finish off with their own version of -that- famous chord. What the fuck?
The next track begins all Led Zep, huge booming drums, until in swings the riff, and vocalist Creston Spiers wounded howl. Then there's "After All I've Done For You" a super dense tangled riffscape that recalls Don Caballero or Bastro, with it's furious mathiness, but it is Harvey Milk, so it of course mutates into a slow motion doomdirge complete with fucked up backwards production.
Our favorite track might be "Motown", with it's soaring melody, and super hooky main riff. A total pop classic albeit one bathed in guitar crunch, and delivered in a feral croon. Some killer leads seal the deal, and some almost Eagles like guitar harmonies. Then there's "Roses", which begins all gentle piano, and guitar harmonics, and Creston's plaintive warble, before slipping into something a little sludgier and sloooooooooooow. Very Courtesy sounding for sure. Near the end, "Barn Burner explodes into another frenzy of mathy riffage, proving again that HM are not a slow motion one trick pony. But it's not just a riff fest, there are some gorgeous harmonies, and some amazing guitar playing going on.
Finally the band finish off with a bang. The nearly nine minute "Good Bye Blues", an impossible slow trudge, peppered with little jagged chunks of riff, plenty of space, stop start weirdness, an almost classic rock sounding bridge, all tangled soaring leads and manic drumming, only to slip back into epic dirgery, and finishing off with a goofy little burst of 'Milked polka and a big Gong Show goooooong. Irreverent, goofy, funny, but somehow still deadly serious, musically merciless, creating epic skull crushing doomscapes one second, whispered balladry the next, and fucked up mathy what-the-fuck the very next, and thus remaining still, without a doubt, one of the best bands in the world.
How can you not love Harvey Milk?! You can't. You just can't. So buy this. It's probably the best record you'll buy this year, and for lots of you, it will immediately become the best record you own. All hail the Milk!
MPEG Stream: "Death Goes To The Winner"
MPEG Stream: "Decades"
MPEG Stream: "Skull Socks & Rope Shoes"

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

FLAMES OF HELL Fire and Steel (Draconian Records) cd 14.98
We managed to get, like, 5 copies of this mysterious cd reissue the first time around, and the disappeared in a flash, we've been on the hunt for more ever since, and just found a distributor who happened to have 5 more copies. So like before, act fast if you want one, as we won't be getting any more. Unless we get very very lucky. Again. And we sure wish we could though, 'cause this is thee best doomy DIY black metal album recorded in 1987 in the basement of a YMCA building in Iceland we've EVER heard!!
So lo-fi and raw and fucked up it's amazing, with tons of cult '80s atmosphere (a la Hellhammer) and truly bizarre vocal stylings, as on the chugging, erupting "Evil". What strange wretched howlings and absurd rasping shrieks! Like, Tim Baker of Cirith Ungol with more than one frog in his throat. Musically this both shreds and sludges, in both cases clogged with lo-fi production (not helped by this reissue's dodgy mastering from what sounds like a crackly vinyl original) and off kilter outsider aesthetics. But that's all part of the charm. It has to be heard to be believed.
If you liked, say, some of the other eccentric '80s metal artifacts like Black Hole or Dark Quarterer that we've reviewed, and want to hear the "Venom" version of a band like that, this is for you.
MPEG Stream: "Evil"
MPEG Stream: "Flames Of Hell"

V/A Steppas' Delight (Soul Jazz) 2cd 25.00
Pretty soon we're gonna have to stop complaining about not getting enough dubstep. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the double cd collection from PDX label Lo Dubs, and now we've got this, another killer collection from Soul Jazz, a follow up to their Box Of Dub collection. But where Box Of Dub seemed to cover a wide sonic spectrum of dubstep and modern dub, Steppa's Delight is all the current hyped shit, dubplates, white labels, singles, lots of names we already know and love, Kode9, Benga, The Bug, Shackleton, but loads more we've never heard before.
Right out of the gate, it's already a winner, with Kode9's "9 Samurai", a dubstep classic if there ever was, sounding like the RZA gone dubstep, ominous cinematic samples, a strange skittery beat, brief squalls of intense synth buzz, some creepy spoken word, this is like the dubstep version of that ubiquitous Massive Attack song, groove but so full of dread. Would be surprised if this didn't start showing up in soundtracks pretty soon (Guy Ritchie? You listening?). Next up is Benga, who while not as grim sounding, still offers up some intense minor key grooves, complex skitter, and some jagged buzzing synth melodies. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" we already loved from that Skull Disco comp a while back, and it still sounds amazing, murky and menacing, the drums muted and murky, except for the occasional gunshot-like snare blast, mumbled vocals, haunting swells and deep atmospherics. The Bug Teams up with Warrior Queen, for a dense slab of buzz, some super heavy low end, a slithery bass line, simple stripped down beats, and some crazy catchy sing songy toasting. There's even some grime here and there, with Skepta contributing a killer convoluted flow to Plastician's "Intensive Snare". Uncle Sam's dubstep is almost straight old school reggae, except for that little dubby shuffle. Goth-Trad offers up some seriously darkened dub, the neverending bassline buzz, the clattery percussion, the haunting sampled vocals, a horror movie melody straight out of Halloween. Shit, we could go on and on, track by track, but by now you probably realize this is a must have. Like we mentioned in the Lo Dubs review, the dubstep and grime obsessed absolutely need this, and if you dug Milanese, Kode9 and the Box Of Dub comps then this too is another must have.
MPEG Stream: KODE9 "9 Samurai"
MPEG Stream: BENGA "Evolution"
MPEG Stream: GOTH-TRAD "Genesis"

V/A Steppas' Delight Vol. 1 (Soul Jazz) 2lp 26.00
Pretty soon we're gonna have to stop complaining about not getting enough dubstep. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the double cd collection from PDX label Lo Dubs, and now we've got this, another killer collection from Soul Jazz, a follow up to their Box Of Dub collection. But where Box Of Dub seemed to cover a wide sonic spectrum of dubstep and modern dub, Steppa's Delight is all the current hyped shit, dubplates, white labels, singles, lots of names we already know and love, Kode9, Benga, The Bug, Shackleton, but loads more we've never heard before.
Right out of the gate, it's already a winner, with Kode9's "9 Samurai", a dubstep classic if there ever was, sounding like the RZA gone dubstep, ominous cinematic samples, a strange skittery beat, brief squalls of intense synth buzz, some creepy spoken word, this is like the dubstep version of that ubiquitous Massive Attack song, groove but so full of dread. Would be surprised if this didn't start showing up in soundtracks pretty soon (Guy Ritchie? You listening?). Next up is Benga, who while not as grim sounding, still offers up some intense minor key grooves, complex skitter, and some jagged buzzing synth melodies. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" we already loved from that Skull Disco comp a while back, and it still sounds amazing, murky and menacing, the drums muted and murky, except for the occasional gunshot-like snare blast, mumbled vocals, haunting swells and deep atmospherics. The Bug Teams up with Warrior Queen, for a dense slab of buzz, some super heavy low end, a slithery bass line, simple stripped down beats, and some crazy catchy sing songy toasting. There's even some grime here and there, with Skepta contributing a killer convoluted flow to Plastician's "Intensive Snare". Uncle Sam's dubstep is almost straight old school reggae, except for that little dubby shuffle. Goth-Trad offers up some seriously darkened dub, the neverending bassline buzz, the clattery percussion, the haunting sampled vocals, a horror movie melody straight out of Halloween. Shit, we could go on and on, track by track, but by now you probably realize this is a must have. Like we mentioned in the Lo Dubs review, the dubstep and grime obsessed absolutely need this, and if you dug Milanese, Kode9 and the Box Of Dub comps then this too is another must have.
MPEG Stream: KODE9 "9 Samurai"
MPEG Stream: BENGA "Evolution"
MPEG Stream: GOTH-TRAD "Genesis"

V/A Steppas' Delight Vol. 2 (Soul Jazz) 2lp 26.00
Pretty soon we're gonna have to stop complaining about not getting enough dubstep. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the double cd collection from PDX label Lo Dubs, and now we've got this, another killer collection from Soul Jazz, a follow up to their Box Of Dub collection. But where Box Of Dub seemed to cover a wide sonic spectrum of dubstep and modern dub, Steppa's Delight is all the current hyped shit, dubplates, white labels, singles, lots of names we already know and love, Kode9, Benga, The Bug, Shackleton, but loads more we've never heard before.
Right out of the gate, it's already a winner, with Kode9's "9 Samurai", a dubstep classic if there ever was, sounding like the RZA gone dubstep, ominous cinematic samples, a strange skittery beat, brief squalls of intense synth buzz, some creepy spoken word, this is like the dubstep version of that ubiquitous Massive Attack song, groove but so full of dread. Would be surprised if this didn't start showing up in soundtracks pretty soon (Guy Ritchie? You listening?). Next up is Benga, who while not as grim sounding, still offers up some intense minor key grooves, complex skitter, and some jagged buzzing synth melodies. Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" we already loved from that Skull Disco comp a while back, and it still sounds amazing, murky and menacing, the drums muted and murky, except for the occasional gunshot-like snare blast, mumbled vocals, haunting swells and deep atmospherics. The Bug Teams up with Warrior Queen, for a dense slab of buzz, some super heavy low end, a slithery bass line, simple stripped down beats, and some crazy catchy sing songy toasting. There's even some grime here and there, with Skepta contributing a killer convoluted flow to Plastician's "Intensive Snare". Uncle Sam's dubstep is almost straight old school reggae, except for that little dubby shuffle. Goth-Trad offers up some seriously darkened dub, the neverending bassline buzz, the clattery percussion, the haunting sampled vocals, a horror movie melody straight out of Halloween. Shit, we could go on and on, track by track, but by now you probably realize this is a must have. Like we mentioned in the Lo Dubs review, the dubstep and grime obsessed absolutely need this, and if you dug Milanese, Kode9 and the Box Of Dub comps then this too is another must have.
MPEG Stream: KODE9 "9 Samurai"
MPEG Stream: BENGA "Evolution"
MPEG Stream: GOTH-TRAD "Genesis"

WRNLRD Pentagon (Small Sacrifice / Order Of The Cloven Eye) cd-r 8.98
When we first discovered Wrnlrd, a mysterious one man black metal band from Virginia, we were happy enough to discover a new weird band to dig. The usual buzz and howl augmented by lots of strange ambience, plenty of noise and murk, all wrapped up in some truly unique packaging. We had no idea how weird it would, or could get.
This latest disc, at least visually is the best of the bunch, a silvery splattery logo painted right on the jewelcase, the booklet filled with strange text, images of maps and graveyards, hidden behind a gauzy vellum sheet, featuring a barely detectable image. More weirdness on the disc, and peaking out beneath the tray.
But all of that barely prepares you for the music. The fist disc we reviewed, the 4th in Wrnlrd's in-the-works 9 part series, was a dense tangle of blackened buzz and furious riffing, the next, #3 in the series, was all washed out ambience, this latest, being number 5, is in fact nothing like either. Sure it incorporates bits of buzzy blackness, and lots of strange atmospherics, but it's way more abstract, woozy, tripped out, blurry and mysterious.
21 short tracks (there's some serious number obsession going on here, check the Wrnlrd website for more) the first handful very spare, each made up of just a handful of chords, big warbly downtuned chords that strike, and then fade out sloooooooowly, leaving tons of space for stray voices, bits of country music (Wrnlrd, pre-black metal, was a serious bluegrass player), intercepted transmissions, there seem to be some drums, and even some vocals, but they're definitely indistinct, the drums a plod here, a skitter there, the vocals a buried croak, it's not really until the 6th track, that the band locks into something even remotely resembling black metal, and even then, the guitars are brittle, and seem to bend and twist like viewed through a funhouse mirror, the drums a machinelike blur buried in the mix, all beneath the same moaning doomy guitar that oozed across the first handful of tracks.
The rest of the disc staggers dizzily through all these disparate sounds, the black buzz, is peppered with Jandekian detuned guitar warble, acoustic guitars and banjos offer up little steel string tangles, beneath detuned guitar riffage, all very angular and chaotic, huge sheets of distant thunder like rumble, skittery percussion, more voices and mysterious sounds, samples, super atonal guitar weirdness, lurching deconstructed doom, thick walls of guitar buzz wreathed in tripped out FX, the whole record seemingly sounding like some black metal record left in the sun to warp and melt just a bit, and then played back on a dusty old Victrola. Like nothing we've ever heard (even on other Wrnlrd discs) but whatever it is we are digging it big time.
MPEG Stream: "Susurration Of Cairn"
MPEG Stream: "Agalma Manteia"
MPEG Stream: "Veil & Rope"
MPEG Stream: "Apparition"

GNARLS BARKLEY The Odd Couple (w/Backwards LP!) (Atlantic) 2lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Okay, we listed this a while back. Sure we dug it, but then someone let us in on a little secret, which was that the vinyl version of The Odd Couple came with a second lp, which was the whole record IN REVERSE! BACKWARDS!!! Faithful readers of the aQ list know how much we love backwards music, so needless to say, the vinyl version of this is ESSENTIAL. So much so that since we got the lp we pretty much ONLY listen to the backwards disc. All dizzying and slippery and swoopy and trippy and, well, gloriously backwards! But be warned, we only have a couple copies, and have had trouble getting any more than that. We just wanted to give mailorder folks a chance to grab one of these
But just in case, some tripped out backwards Gnarls Barkley isn't enough for you, well, here's what we had to say about the UN-backwards side:
Summer Jam lightning rarely strikes twice, and in the case of Gnarls Barkley fluke hit, "Crazy", they were lucky lightning struck at all. So instead of setting out for the impossible, they have made a more memorable full length without the erratic stylistic leaps and goofs of their debut. The tone is darker, but more soulful and while the upbeat jams are fewer, they have enough hooks to keep you listening and coming back. While St. Elsewhere was neurotic and bi-polar, The Odd Couple is addressing demons in a far more beguiling and groovy manner, one that gets better with each listen. Could this be therapy?
MPEG Stream: "Going On"
MPEG Stream: "Run (I'm A Natural Disaster)"
MPEG Stream: "She Knows"

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

GNAW THEIR TONGUES An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
We listed the vinyl version of this amazing chunk of sinister sonics a while back, and as you'll see below, gushed epiphanically, like a crimson fountain of black blood, all about how much this record utterly destroys. Easily our fucked-up, heavy record of the year! Finally, we have the cd version, in a fancy gatefold style mini lp sleeve, and most importantly, with a bonus track not on the vinyl!! So for those of you sans turntable, and those of you who somehow just missed out first time around, and of course those of you who, even though you bought the vinyl, NEED that extra track (and trust us you do, you need everything you can get your bloodsoaked weirdo music obsessed hands on), well here ya go:
You can definitely tell a lot about a band by the names of records and song titles. Case in point: Gnaw Their Tongues. Some song titles: "My Body is Not a Vessel, Nor a Temple. It's a Repulsive Pile of Sickness", "And There Will Be More of Your Children Dead Tomorrow", "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Sound the Horns, the Water is Poisoned". Some album titles: Spit at Me and Wreak Havoc on My Flesh, Preferring Human Skin Over Animal Fur, Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh, Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladders Emptying, Vomiting, and now this, An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood. But then what is it exactly that we can glean from these titles? That the men in Gnaw Their tongues are demented? Sick? Depraved? Probably. But where titles like this might lead one to assume the music attached to the above words would be some sort of hateful harsh white noise, or some sort of near unlistenable Whitehouse worship, the truth is, Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the few bands with an utterly distinctive and recognizable sound. There are very few bands we can think of, even amongst our favorites. You will absolutely never confuse the music of Gnaw Their Tongues with any other outfit. And conversely, you will never hear something that is not them, and assume it is, because NOTHING sounds anything like Gnaw Their Tongues.
So much so that even explaining their sound in a review is fairly difficult. The last GTT review, we resorted to a tale of hell and hellbound journeys, of total annihilation and utter destruction, of death and decay and misery, all in a bid to evoke the same sort of images and visions, thoughts and feelings that are evoked by the sounds these guys produce.
It's definitely not black metal, but it is most certainly black. If forced to describe their sound in some succinct, and non-rambling manner, it might be cinematic operatic orchestral avant industrial doom. But since we can ramble, it might be easier to dig a little deeper.
Every song is epic, like little films, sounds evoking images, evoking thoughts and emotions, horns and orchestral stabs, flutes and strings, are as much a part of the sound as guitars. Probably more so. Thick gristly slabs of buzzing low end, crawl beneath pummeling percussive plod, operatic vocals soar and wail, bits of electronic glitch and whir drift in and out, guitars are downtuned and allowed to spread like toxic oil spills, tracks are peppered with bits of dialogue, and snippets of films, found sounds and mysterious textures, occasionally, harsh hellish blackened shrieks join the fray, as do bits of dark ambience. There is plenty of space, the sound managing to be expansive and open, as well as claustrophobic and suffocating.
It's a bit like a black metal Arvo Part, scoring a lost Hitchcock thriller, so totally intense and emotional and epic, rife with nervous tension and extreme dread. Whenever the sound verges on white noise, or total implosion, the sound abates, leaving Bernard Hermann-ish strings, or some bit of cryptic dialogue, or some strange disembodied rhythm, before spilling forth again like black vomit. The layers of blasphemous sound piling up like blackened bodies, buzzy and filthy and grime-y but so composed, not really that chaotic at all, a controlled chaos perhaps, each sound painstakingly placed to help paint that blood red picture.
An impossible blend of metal, choral, industrial, electronic, ambient, drone, noise and blackness, a gorgeous, and gorgeously infernal concoction, every record, another chapter in some sick saga, hell swallowing the surface dwellers, misery and mayhem overtaking humanity, death and pestilence, the world a graveyard for humanity, such utter depravity conveyed in such epic and dementedly brilliant sounds, which is precisely why Gnaw Their Tongues is quickly becoming one of our favorite bands goingŠ
MPEG Stream: "My Body Is Not A Vessel, Nor A Temple, It's A Repulsive Pile Of Sickness"
MPEG Stream: "Teeth That Leer Like Open Graves"
MPEG Stream: "An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood"

COUGH Sigillum Luciferi (Forcefield Records) cd 10.98
On first glance, you might assume this was a black metal record. The cover is all black, with intricate metallic silver inked designs, a strange pentagram like shape in the center, pentagrams on all four corners, there's even an upside down cross in the band logo. But then you realize the band is in fact called Cough. And that all around that strange pentagram like sigil in the center are the distinct shape of pot leaves.
Then the music starts with a solid 15 seconds of high end solid state feedback, before the band kicks in, and we are suddenly in druggy slow motion ultra stoner doom country, and we like it. In fact it's almost three minutes of nearly continuous Eyehategod style feedback, separated by the occasional crash of the band, before the song really kicks in, and then the band lock into a lurching druggy stoner groove, more Electric Wizard than Eyehategod, but still plenty of both. Clean vocals carry the melody, but harsh blackened shrieks pepper the landscape, the riffs huge churning downtuned black swells, about as slow as a band can get while remaining even slightly 'groovy'. And don't worry, throughout, the band pause now and again to unleash lightning bolts of high end feedback, before lurching back into action.
And so it goes. Six long songs, each blessed with a handful of kick ass riffery, oozing hate and distortion and filth and crust, the rhythms staggering from doomic plod, to druggy slither, to an almost rocking pound, the riffs slipping into Sabbath territory, but usually straying much further south. The band dabble here and there in tripped out space rock, getting a little psychedelic, the vocals wreathed in effects, the melodies crazy catchy, but no matter what, they thankfully never wander too far from their gloriously filthy fucked up drug drenched doom-ed sludge.
MPEG Stream: "Killing Fields"
MPEG Stream: "Lyssavirus"

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

CIRCLE X Prehistory (Blue Chopsticks) cd 14.98
First proper full length from this mysterious seventies outfit, who formed in Kentucky (some argue that Circle X were the first punk band from Louisville), the band eventually relocated to the Big Apple where they became a small part of the burgeoning no-wave underground, a scene at the time that consisted of bands like Mars and DNA, they would later graduate into the second wave of NYC noisemakers like Swans, Sonic Youth, Cop Shoot Cop, Live Skull and others.
Unlike the raw primal fury of their debut ep, 1983's prehistory is much more restrained and rhythmic, the drums tribal and trancelike, the arrangements less like songs and more like rituals, the guitar abstract and angular, the bass locked into mesmerizing loops, the vocals gloomy and emotive, the mood dark and depressing, the drums very reminiscent of Southern California tribalists Crash Worship, in fact, much of Prehistory references the ritualistic drum jams. But Circle X, due in no small part to the company they keep, injected plenty of moody miserablism into their decidedly gothic sprawl, a strange hybrid of chaotic post punk, junkyard crash and clatter, and dark depressing almost new wave. Jagged guitars are tossed about by frenzied percussion and buzzing low end synth drones, melodies are mostly angular and atonal, although here and there the band do inadvertently slip into something bordering on catchy and lovely, wild vocal caterwauls wrap themselves around, flurries of intense drumming, and long drawn out rhythms, Jandekian guitars surface and blurt out some strangled melody before sinking back into the mire, it's definitely a strange sonic miasma, a quick listen reveals mostly chaos, but beneath it all, the band had some strange twisted pop sense, which somehow holds the whole rickety thing together.
MPEG Stream: "Current"
MPEG Stream: "Pre-History Part I"

MUDHONEY Superfuzz Bigmuff (Sub Pop) 2cd 15.98
This is another one of those records that is almost beyond reviewing. A record that if we found out someone we knew didn't own it, we would simply insist they buy it immediately. No questions asked. Of questions were asked, we would respond with something like "Because it's awesome!" or "It's one of the best collections of songs EVER" or more likely "JUST BUY IT! IT RULES!".
But since that doesn't work on everyone, we'll do our best to describe what is one of our favorite records EVER, and arguably the best Mudhoney release EVER. Partially because it's not a proper album, but rather a collection of single tracks. Pretty much every one a perfect chunk of slithery filthy grungy punk rock genius.
When we first discovered Mudhoney, it was because we were super obsessed with Green River, the band that vocalist/guitarist Mark Arm and guitarist Steve Turner called home before Mudhoney. Both quitting as that band leaned more and more toward glam rock and late eighties Sunset Strip rock. But to our ears, Mudhoney didn't sound all that different from Green River. Maybe a little punkier, definitely less bluesy, but from the second we first heard Mudhoney, we were in punk rock love.
A lot of it has to do with Arm's raspy croon, so raw and primal, but managing to be super melodic and versatile. He's a bit like a mop topped grunge rock Iggy Pop, wiry and writhing while spitting out insane punk rock bon mots, wailing away on his axe, bouncing maniacally around the stage. His voice is definitely the defining feature of Mudhoney, but that wouldn't mean shit if the songs weren't amazing, and they are. Punk as fuck, but way poppy, hooks galore, but all wound up in super tight riffs, wiry melodies and wild drumming, the band careening wildly one second, pounding away through some doomy dirge the next.
No amount of flowery description, no review, no matter how well written, can possibly compare to just hearing this stuff. We're so jealous of anyone who gets to hear "Touch Me I'm Sick" for the first time, or their cover of the Dicks' "Hate The Police", or the slithery "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More". When we first heard these songs, our minds were BLOWN. Literally, we had no idea what the heck we were hearing. Punk rock. Grunge. Pop. But it was more than that. The energy, the spirit, the groove, the vibe, and holy shit THE SONGS. So with all of that to chew on, I think we're finally at a stage where we can unleash the "JUST BUY IT. IT TOTALLY RULES!!"
We get a little bummed out on reissues sometimes, thinking we have to buy a record all over again, for maybe a few extra tracks, or a dvd, or whatever, but then you have to realize, stuff like this is not necessarily for fans who already have the record, but for folks who might have somehow missed out, many of whom were maybe not even alive, or still toddlers when it first came out. So for you folks, this is absolutely a must have. Whether you're a metalhead, an emo kid, a punk rocker. Mudhoney are one of the few bands whose appeal transcends genre, and rightfully so.
For those of us who already have one or more copies of Superfuzz Bigmuff, well, the new version has three demo tracks, as well as an entire disc of live tracks, one live show, one live on the radio, new fancy pants packaging, deluxe six panel digipak, housed in a slipcase, huge booklet with tons of photos, liner notes, all the original single covers, so yeah, we're all gonna buy one, you might as well too, replace the old worn disc with this new remastered version, support a bunch of cool dudes who are still making kick ass records (in fact, a new one to be reviewed here real soon). But really, all that extra stuff is just icing, on a cake that already tastes better than any other sonic confection we can think of...
MPEG Stream: "Hate The Police"
MPEG Stream: "Touch Me I'm Sick"
MPEG Stream: "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More"
MPEG Stream: "In 'N' Out Of Grace"

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

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

CROM Hot Sumerian Nights (Forest Moon Special Products) lp 12.98
NOW ON VINYL!
Crom are funny guys. Their first record, The Cocaine Wars, featured one of the best album covers EVER, a Heavy Metal Magazine style painting of a hot babe in armor, riding a huge polar bear, across a vast tundra, covered in a thick layer of snow, that once the booklet was opened, was revealed to actually be mounds of cocaine being sniffed by a mighty Viking! The new record, features the band painted in the same style as the first record, all Vikings, wearing armor, swords at their side, one flipping the bird, trudging across another snowy expanse, that this time, turns out to be the fluffy bedspread of a sleeping Viking, warm and cozy beneath a polar bear skin, his arm around his sleeping wench. Needless to say we were sold before we even heard a note.
And musically, these guys are pretty goofy too, tons of short short tracks, as many skits and interludes and weird sonic experiments as there are proper songs. But the key to Crom is that A. They really are funny, and the skits, while often dumb or puerile or pointless, are in fact pretty hilarious, and B. The riffs KILL. To the point of being incredibly frustrating, as each song cuts off after only a minute or two, leaving the listener wanting more. Way more. But somehow, all of those metallic fragments, and all of the fucked up silly non-musical moments, are woven into one awesomely over the top, confusional genius mess.
The sound is part black metal, part classic metal, part grind, a little Fucking Champs, some death metal, a little doom, it's obviously the work of some seriously obsessive metalheads, with seriously short attention spans, but the songs when they kick in totally destroy, from furious thrashing blackness, to grinding churning chug, to what-the-fuck metallic free for all, to total classic old school majestic metal, often all in the same song, and then there's all the snippets from movies, the bits of dialogue, the weird whispered vocals chanting 'join us', the entire track made of the sniffle of cocaine sniffing (we assume), weird epic fade-in's that fade in to nothing, some seriously Melvins-y sludge, confusional collages of samples and downtuned riffage, but none of that shit would fly if the band weren't capable of rocking like mother fuckers, which they most certainly are.
Hot Sumerian Nights will probably frustrate the shit out of a lot of folks, but they could be quickly won over with a polar bear, a warrior babe, a wall of amps and lots and lots of blow...
MPEG Stream: "Wee Hours Of The Snowgoat"
MPEG Stream: "Thorgrimm's Lament"
MPEG Stream: "The Lurker Within"
MPEG Stream: "Grim Grey Gods"

NADJA Desire In Uneasiness (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
And they're back, once again, to test even the loyalty of their most faithful fans. Like clockwork, another list, another Nadja. It's difficult enough doing a list every two weeks. The thought of writing, recording and releasing an album every two weeks boggles the mind.
Okay, so we're exaggerating a little, but only a little. And in fact, this here Nadja, has been out for quite a while, but it went out of print before we could get enough copies to list, so we had to wait until it was finally repressed.
We may gripe about the ridiculous frequency of Nadja and Aidan Baker releases, but a lot of that has to do with having to review them. If we were a fan, and all we had to do was just kick back with some headphones and drift off, well, hell. Bring it on!
But as we've mentioned before, Nadja actually do manage to mix it up, each record exploring different facets of their sound, offering up new takes on their dirgey droney shoegaze-y doom. Desire In Uneasiness brings in a real drummer, and it's noticeable, the songs have a bit more swing, are a little less mechanical sounding, and actually do sound more organic. This record actually is strange in that even though it's split up into 5 songs, the guitar sound is super distinct, and they all seem to be in a similar key, and thus, the record plays out like a single extended song, which with some bands might be a huge complaint, but in the case of Nadja, it actually is pretty excellent.
The first track (movement?) might just be one of our favorite Nadja tracks yet. The new guitar sound is killer, super processed and almost alien sounding, but still thick and distorted. The drum sound is BIG, the main riff is a dizzying fuzzy swirling harmony, almost like some metal lead, slowed down and drenched in FX and distortion, mesmerizing and looped and hypnotic, the drum pounding away beneath that circular riff. The second track blisses  out a bit more, gets super shoegazey, a gorgeous washed out drift, that near the end slips into a strange almost funky shuffle.
Track three is super spare, the drums pounding along in an expanse of distant drones and swirling effects, sort of jazzy, a little bit dubby, stripped down and abstract, which gives way to part 4, a 15 minute long crush, channeling Godflesh and Loop, a churning spaced out groove, with the drums holding things down until things begin to drift apart, the looped guitar spiraling into the ether, while the drums gradually go from simple and tribal to sporadic and space-y. The final track is nearly 20 minutes, and finds Nadja doing their very best space rock, the blown out buzz and relentless pummel builds to a tripped out space-y, many minutes long blow out, that reminds us a bit of Terminal Cheesecake crossed with Hawkwind!
Another Nadja. Another good one. As long as you have room on your shelf, no reason to stop now...
MPEG Stream: "Disambiguation"
MPEG Stream: "Sign-Expressions"

HAVE A NICE LIFE Deathconsciousness (Enemies List) 2xcd-r + book 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Let's just get it right out in the open, first thing. This should have been record of the week. It's beautiful, weird as fuck, mysterious, it's two whole discs of far out sounds, it comes with a massive photocopied book, filled with lyrics and text from some mysterious professor, and they're called Have A Nice Life...
BUT, the band decided to not make any more copies, and let us have their last 40. It will probably be available as a download or something in the future, but for now, these are the last 40 physical copies available EVER. And the only way, as far as we know, to get the book as well.
So what's the deal with Have A Nice Life? People are always emailing us about the new wave of shoegaze bands, nu-gaze as some folks like to call it (the same ones who now have us using the term metalgaze), and someone recommended Have A Nice Life, telling us the band was some sort of doom, metal, black metal, gothic, new wave, shoe gaze outfit, so obviously we were pretty curious. So we emailed the band. No response. Emailed the label. No response. Then we just happened to be going through piles of records, and found this one just sitting on the desk, where it must have been for weeks, a cool creepy cover, a color painting of a man's arm, bleeding, the words "the plow that broke the plains" on a black field above it. And it was bundled with a book. Hmmm. With the word Deathconsciousness printed on the front. And wham. It clicked. Those guys had already sent us a copy, which had somehow slipped through the cracks. So we quickly threw it on, and it was everything we had expected, everything we had hoped for, and more. We finally got in touch with the band, who told us they were not going to make any more, but would make one final batch for us.
So here they are.
Two discs, jam packed with dark blissed out shoegazey, new wave-y, slightly metallic nearly perfect pop. The songs insanely varied, but impossible cohesive. Some sort of sprawling bliss rock opera. Each track, perfect on its own, but even more perfect as part of the bigger whole.
The first disc is the prettier and poppier of the two. The opening track is a creepy stretch of Goblin like synth ambience, peppered with simple minor key acoustic guitar, haunting and lovely, which quickly gives way to thick ropy basslines, and reverbed electronic drums, a definitely Joy Division vibe, swirls of thick guitar, gorgeous melodies and heartfelt vocals, it's dirgey and doomy and depressive, but so catchy and poppy. The next track is a big blown out pop epic, all effected vocal harmonies and washed out watercolor guitars, reminding us quite a bit of M83. The rest of the first disc slips easily from gloomy goth pop, to minimal drone, to shimmery shoegaze, often all at once. The disc finishes off with a gloomy dirge, all downtuned grindguitar and pointillist piano. Softly crooned vocals, and a surprisingly catchy melody.
Which perfect leads into the second, darker and heavier disc, which begins with a track the boasts probably the greatest song title EVER: "Waiting For Black Metal Records In The Mail". But don't be expecting any black metal, instead it's a killer slab of eighties style indie doom pop, jangly guitar, propulsive drumming, and killer vocals, all wound into an awesome blast of hooky retro gloom, very reminiscent of the Comsat Angels. Hot on the heels comes another awesomely named song: "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000", but again the title gives no clue that the song is a lilting mostly acoustic jam, with more piano, sad vocals, minor key melodies, a super reverby eighties production, all set to that Casio keyboard preset metronome rhythm. But about half way through, the track shifts and becomes a pounding rocker, the guitars thick and distorted, the drums pounding, but then all around synths buzz, vocals croon, the heaviness transformed into something much more dreamy and blissy. "The Future" is an aggro, almost no wave workout, all jagged guitars and shouted vocals, and more of that thick throbbing bass, but just like the rest of the tracks, it gets totally twisted around, his time by the addition of fake strings, and yet another killer and totally irresistible hook.
"Earthmover" finishes things off, but instead of being some dirgey doom epic, it's another blissed out popscape, lots and lots of fuzz and buzz, glistening melodies, minimal rhythms, all buried beneath layers of woozy whir and sun dappled sparkle. Almost like a much prettier and poppier Nadja.
And the thing about this record and these songs, is that, they all manage to be outrageously catchy, but not obviously so, and while they straddle about a million different genres, they manage to weave them all seamlessly into each other, making Deathconsciousness feel less like a rock band's collection of songs, and more like one massive organic mass of blackened dronepop jangle-goth bliss. Which as far as we're concerned it actually is.
The packaging is amazing. A slimline dvd case, two cd-r's each hand spray painted, full color cover, super spare and striking, and then there's the book. A dvd sized 80 page book, filled with lyrics, liner notes, woodcuts, engravings, illustrations, and a massive amount of text on the soul, spirituality, death, sorcery, Medieval heresy and more, all supposedly penned by an East Coast professor and scholar.
So awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Waiting For Black Metal Records To Come In The Mail"
MPEG Stream: "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000"
MPEG Stream: "Bloodhail"
MPEG Stream: "The Big Gloom"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter"

PORTISHEAD Third (Mercury) 2lp 14.98
Now available on vinyl (for a minute or two anyway)!
It seems a bit strange to spend very much time writing about the new Portishead. Since by now, odds are you're probably sick to death of hearing about it. Sure we all loved Portishead back in the day, they were one of those rare 'electronic' bands whose appeal knew no boundaries, metalheads, moms, indie kids, the sound of Portishead was dark and sexy and mysterious, sinister and ominous, dark and rife with crackle and buzz. Perfect drugged out late night bliss out music, their strange way of creating sound and composing music, recording their own samples on to vinyl and then spinning and scratching those samples to create new textures, made for a totally unique sound.
So what does a band do after taking almost a decade off? Do they return with a record that sounds just like the last one, which is probably what most folks want, or do they return radically altered? With a sound bold and brash, reinventing the sound they themselves invented in the first place.
On first listen, Third definitely sounds like the latter, but with repeated listening, the record slowly and subtly begins to slip toward the former. Which most definitely speaks to the magic of Portishead, and the new record, which at once embraces the old sound, while turning it into something new. More than past outings, Third is dirty, out of tune, atonal, noisy, chaotic, urgent, sure past records had all that crackle and buzz and fuzz, but those elements were carefully placed, and kept well within line. Third sounds much more, well, loose for lack of a better word, like actual musicians, feeling each other out, maybe even improvising. Less like a studio concoction and more like a real live band. And the sound suits them. And makes for a record at once warm and familiar, but also alien, sort of 'rocking' and rife with WTF? moments.
Take the opener, "Silence", which begins with some sort of radio broadcast, which gives way to a killer loping breakbeat, immediately the fastest tempo Portishead have ever explored, strings swoop in, the sound raw and urgent, almost like the chase scene from some spy movie, gorgeous distorted chiming guitar harmonics ring out, until finally the track slows down, and slithers sexily, the vocals a sexy sultry croon, but it's not long before the track kicks back into the haunting and tense, string laden cinematic jam that opened the track.
Then there's "Hunter", which begins like classic Portishead, all smokey and late night sounding, soft muted reverbed guitars, a lush gauzy production, the vocals ethereal and ghostly, but even here, a few seconds in, the song is interrupted by a super distorted crumbling guitar chord that halts things in their tracks, before fading out, and allowing the song to resume. The a few minutes later, a strange noodly synth freakoutsurfaces, again derailing the song's slow motion groove, but It just sounds perfect. It doesn't at all sound like random weirdness for random weirdness' sake. The first time is jarring, the second time, you find yourself waiting for those parts, even humming along as if they were as crucial to the song as the main melody or the vocals, and the thing is, they are.
Near the end lurks the single, "Machine Gun", with its very machine gun like rhythm, herky jerky, stuttery and not at all fluid, reminiscent of Art Of Noise, the vocals sweetly soaring over this jagged rhythmscape below, which only really varies part way through when the original machine gun drums are replaced by BIGGER, more distorted drums, and wrapped in strange moaning horns (or maybe synths), only to shift once again moments later becoming more electronic, the beats awash in strange FX and metallic buzz. It's so unlikely, that it makes perfect sense as the first single. If you can embrace that strange rhythm, that relentless and very un-Portishead like sound, then the rest of the record will make perfect sense, unfolding in front of you, revealing both the warm familiar sounds missed, and the new, bizarre sonic elements never even imagined
All over the record, the band confounds and confuses, gloriously, the brooding whispery "Small" shifts gears partway through and transforms into a fuzzy organ drenched krautjam, "Deep Water" is a straight up old timey folk song, the vocals and strings soaked in fuzzy ambience (and reminding us a bit of vocalist Gibbons' post Portishead project Rustin Man), "We Carry On" is a sort of atonal Stereolab style jam, relentless percussion, thick swaths of synth, very repetitive and hypnotic, "The Rip" is part whispery folky flutter, part synthy electro buzz, every track here offers some sort of surprise, whether it's the song itself, or some little sonic strangeness lurking within, but never is the song or the sound sacrificed, each track is perfect in its own beautifully twisted way, catchy but never obviously so, groovy, but often convoluted and fractured, it's a difficult record to explain for sure, which is perhaps why so much ink has been spilled, and while we may be sick of reading about it, we sure are finding it nearly impossible to imagine ever getting sick of listening to it, which is precisely why it's one of our Records Of The Week.
MPEG Stream: "Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Machine Gun"

BORIS / MERZBOW Rock Dream (Southern Lord) 3lp 28.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available as a super duper, totally over the top, insanely and extravagantly deluxe triple lp. And that's not hyperbole, this thing is a mindblower. Not sure where Southern Lord can take the packaging next, gold plated? Sealed in a massive Lucite cube? Packed in a hyperbaric chamber? It's gonna have to be something like that, considering how swank this is. A super thick scrapbook style 12" sleeve, each lp in its own sleeve, attached at the spine in a sort of book package, the front panel elaborately diecut so the live shot on the second sleeve is visible through the letters cut out of the cover. All in eye popping full color, each band member (including Merzbow) gets their own full 12"x12" panel, the last panel a collage of various live shots, the vinyl thick 180 gram, the whole thing crazy heavy (if you're mailordering only this, you'll have to pay the 3 items or more shipping rate). But it's not just the packaging of course (it is Boris after all). The triple lp also includes a bonus track, "Dyna-Saur", not on the cd version, a song we totally recognize, but here it gets all blown out and tore up as it's run through Merzbow's sonic wringer.
Limited to 3800 copies worldwide, we got a bunch, but odds are we won't be able to get many more (if any at all), so if you want one, and why wouldn't you, act fast. Here's what we had to say about the record when we first reviewed the cd version a while back:
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.
Then comes 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. The second half of Rock Dream is definitely more ROCK, 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.
MPEG Stream: "Feedbacker"
MPEG Stream: "Evil Stack"
MPEG Stream: "Pink"

GAS Nah Und Fern (Kompakt) 4cd 34.00
Not sure where to even start with this one. Everyone here at aQ, heck almost everyone we know loves Gas, the blissed out minimal ambient techno project of Mr. Wolfgang Voigt. But don't let the word 'techno' scare you off, as the music of Gas can easily win over the most ardent techno-phobes. The techno element in the sound of Gas is only a tiny part of Voigt's magical soundworld, often just a shadow, a distant heartbeat like pulse, sometimes more pronounced, but usually just a murky throb or a rhythmic murmur, the music of Gas is Gauzy and shimmery, blurred and softly buzzy, it's like an even more dreamlike Oval, or perhaps Porter Ricks crossed with Labradford, or Tim Hecker recording a record for Chain Reaction. When we talk about Kompakt's Pop Ambient sound, Gas is the template, that which we measure all other 'pop ambience' by. The sound is at once ethereal and intimate, haunting and mysterious, lush and expansive, the beatless tracks drift endlessly, each a divine blur of soft chordal whir and looped effervescence, the more beat heavy tracks, retain that same washed out otherworldliness, but manage to infuse them with a subtle, barely-there groove, sometimes adding gritty crackle, or subtle dubbed out delay, but always sounding light and airy, weightless and darkly blissful. We once described Gas as sounding like being adrift in a sea of electronics, in a fog so deep, the pulsating beats that would guide you back to shore are murky at best, muffled by distance and the unending push of the droning wind. And we're not sure if we could describe it better. But we'll try.
Nah Und Fern collects all four Gas albums, all of which have been out of print for ages: Gas, Zauberberg, Konigforst and Pop. And when we were first preparing to review this set, we were all ready to describe Gas' sonic arc, from the more overtly techno debut, to the much more ambient and ethereal final album. But on returning to the s/t debut, we discovered that the sound of Gas changed very little over the course of 4 albums, instead, each is like a movement in a massive symphony of gloriously murky minimalism.
The self titled debut deftly balances pure ambience with some of the most propulsive Gas tracks, including a 14 minute epic that seems to be assembled from a Chariots Of Fire loop, but in the hands of Voigt, it's transformed into something otherworldly. It is techno, but not for dancing, for many of us Gas serves the same purpose as dronemusic, sounds to lull you to sleep, to allow you to drift off, to disengage and let your mind float freely, led by your ears, entranced as they are by the beautiful shimmer and motorik soft focus propulsion of Gas.
As much as we love all of these records, the two middle records Zauberberg and Konigforst make up the heart of this Gas box. Both luminous and exuberant, yet subdued and melancholic. Sedate technotic pulses beneath wind swept drones, expansive orchestral sprawls burnished to an exquisite golden luster. Voigt's subtle dub techniques on these two discs coax the polytonal swells of deep sustained horns into lush rhythmic repetitions. These are heroic if gloomy electronica epics, realizing a fantasy fusion of Wagner's teutonic vigor and a disembodied dancefloor drone.
The final disc, Pop, is in fact the poppiest, or so we always believed, but in context with the other three discs, we are once again surprised by how consistent the Gas sound remained, while still managing to subtly expand on the sound Voigt virtually created and perfected over the course of the first three full lengths. Much like the original cover art, Pop is the metaphorical sound of the intrusion of the forest onto the dance floor, with all of its mysteries, mythologies, and wonders being ordered by the insistency of Voigt's monophunk beats. Where the earlier works were dark haunts wherein deep fluid ambience topped the nonstop pulsating rhythms, Pop is a shimmering sunfilled excursion that is mostly beatless, forming its structures out of repetitive sequences of trilling ambience swelling in and out of each other within Voigt's surreal soundworld of hypnodub washes. The lost beat resurfaces finally on the last track which is a beautiful looped repetition of the previous ambient modulations, but subtly and gracefully merged with a muted, insistent underwater dancefloor throb. Breathtaking.
A modern minimalist electronic masterpiece, four stunning parts of one majestic whole, finally united into one magnum opus, spanning years, yet sounding to our ears, utterly timeless.
Each disc is packaged in a full color sleeve, along with four inserts, all adorned with blue and green tinted forestscapes, and all housed in a gorgeous matte finished cardboard box, also adorned with a similar image, and the letters G A S embossed across the top of the box.
MPEG Stream: "Gas 2"
MPEG Stream: "Zauberberg 2"
MPEG Stream: "Konigforst - Eins"
MPEG Stream: "Pop 1"

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

KIKURI (HAINO, KEIJI & MASAMI AKITA) Pulverized Purple (Victo) cd 15.98
Oh boy. It had to happen. And it did, at 2007's Festival International de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Quebec. Kikuri is the heavyweight team up of two folks who cast long shadows in the realm of Japanese underground music: Japanoise master Merzbow (for he is Masami Akita) and that totemic Tokyo psych veteran, Keiji Haino, longtime leader of the free rock band Fushitsusha. There they are in the photo on the inside of the cd booklet, Haino and Akita both standing stoically in a leafy green forest... hey has Haino's hair turned grey, a la J. Mascis (with bangs)?? It's about time (not for the grey, for the team up). Haino has collaborated recently with Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins (including another highlight on this week's list!), and KK Null of Zeni Geva, and some years back with all of Boris, but this one's definitely as earthshaking (literally) as any of those, if not moreso.
So, think this might be dark, dense, and noisy? You're right! Putting this on is like telling your stereo, wake up, time to die!!! The first four of five tracks on this disc are all extreme, crinkled, screaming, disssstorrtted NOISE. It's interestingly varied, and very Merzbovian - although the cryptic, wordy song titles which are definitely the work of poetic soul Keiji Haino... such as: "Give Me Back That Colour You Stole From My Guts" (track 3) and "That Place Into Which You Fell Was Lined With A Cushion Of Pain And Is No Proof Of You Continuing Existence" (track 4). Yep, these initial four tracks of brutal catharsis, all but one of them over 10 minutes long, are quite excellent if you're a Merzbow fan, though those who know Haino will definitely be able to hear his input too, beyond the titles. The track "By Mischance That Soul I Devoured Was A Transparent, Vertical Blues" features bursts of his trademark tortured vocals amidst the throbbing hissing static that could be the work of either party. (Making it more of a "blues" is an outsider guitar part, well we think that's a guitar, plucked probably by Haino.) In any case, up to track five, this disc sounds most like Merzbow, with Haino as a special guest. But then, tipping the balance back towards Haino and his special brand of electric guitar apocalypse, comes the disc's last and longest track, with the shortest title, "Pulverized Purple". That's got to be Haino's title too, 'cause he has always had a thing about the color purple, no not the Alice Walker book. It takes up about half the disc, over 30 minutes long. And while it too is plenty distorted and noisy, like what came before it, it also features gobs and gobs of totally recognizable-as-guitar guitar playing, sheer howling psychedelic feedback style, that had even Andee here (who normally is a Haino hater, weirdly enough, and also thinks he's heard enough Merzbow already) declaring that this was fantastic. Heavy, heavy, droney, droney, and definitely worth the price of admission even if you maybe wouldn't normally buy a Merzbow record. Allan, who IS a big Haino fan, is happy that Andee has finally found something he likes by Haino (in large part 'cause it downplays his distinctive vocal stylings in favor of the way out heavy guitar wailin'). Shut up and play yer guitar is Andee's advice for Haino, and he takes it here. This is definitely something for fans of Fushitsusha (natch), Skullflower, White Heaven, Boris, Brotzmann (Caspar), Les Rallizes, LSD-march... The thick feedback wranglin' and added buzz and hiss sounds a bit like Hendrix' famous "Star Spangled Banner" trip given Striborg-style production!! Meanwhile, Masami Akita gets behind the kit to provide urgent drum tumble and cymbal splatter, reminding us that he played drums on that ol' krautrocky Crystal Fist cd that was a fave 'round here some years back. Damn. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Give Me Back That Colour You Stole From My Guts"
MPEG Stream: "Pulverized Purple"

SHIT AND SHINE Kuss Miche, Meine Liebe (Load) cd 15.98
Ahhh, Shit And Shine, even the name give us the warm fuzzies. That's because multiple drummer-ed lawn mower bass tribal drug jams often do. And no one does it better, or quite like the UK's Shit And Shine. With a constantly shifting lineup that often swells to double digits, including as many drummers as they can pack into a room. And a wall of amplifiers that makes SUNNO))) seem like they're playing through practice amps, several bass players, often just a phalanx of shitty Casio keyboards, howling vocals, all tangled up into a heaving mass of post-Butthole Surfers drug psych heaviness.
Much like the cd reissue of Cherry (last week's Record Of The Week), Kuss Mich, Meine Liebe is not entirely brand new, the two longest tracks we've had before on a super limited, crazy expensive lp, but here on cd for the very first time. Along with one other loooooooong jam, and a handful of shorter, but no less appealing chunks of what-the-fuck tribal psych-out heaviness.
Let's cover the tracks we've heard before. "Biggest Cock In Christendom" is an in-the-red tribal workout, like a more metallic and way more distorted and druggy No Neck Blues Band. Or a WAY heavier Chain Reaction disc. Thick pulses of low end drift beneath streaks of super distorted amp damage, all very krautrock sounding, but filtered through a bank of effects pedals, all broken or with dying batteries. Definitely blissed out and mesmerizing, but so ominous and creepy. This is the shit musical dreams are made of. 15 minutes of this stuff is not nearly enough. Set it to repeat, drink a bottle of Nyquil and let yourself get sucked under. The other track from the 12", "Toilet Door Tits", is an endless rhythmic jam, with ultra blown out drums, sounding a bit like some Butthole Surfers / Laddio Bolocko hybrid, albeit WAY more distorted and damaged. The sound is completely fried, the whole track sounding like it's crumbling through your speakers, strangled vocals drift amidst the tribal pummel, as do weird alien sounding squiggly leads that squirm and slither from speaker to speaker giving the whole track a super disorienting effect.
The other long track on Kuss Mich is the epic and drowsily sprawling "Preventions Arise", 10 minutes of muted almost industrial sounding rhythms, way more moody and washed out than the other tracks, an endless muddy murky rhythmic jam, pulsing and throbbing, a propulsive groove beneath a very noir spoken word. Strange but a good balance to the sheer brutality of the other tracks.
Scattered all around these three massive jams are jagged little chunks of shiny shit, blasts of noise and crunch and buzz and pound, from brief flurries of machine like grind, furious blast beats, and stuttering off kilter rhythms, to total Buttholes worship, pounding tribal rhythm, buzzing fuzz guitar, hypnotic and intense, to tripped out abstract skitter, all warbly distorted bass, and processed vox, to huge blown out chug and churn, heavy and epic and massively distorted and blown out.
Once again, more proof that these guys (and gals) are the current reigning kings and queens of crushing chaotic drugged out drone drenched drum corps psych-doom heaviness.
Killer packaging, very simple and cryptic, shit brown paper and metallic gold ink shine!
MPEG Stream: "Biggest Cock In Christendom"
MPEG Stream: "The Germans Call It A Swimming Head"
MPEG Stream: "Kuss Miche, Meine Liebe"

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

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

I SHALT BECOME Requiem (Moribund Records) cd 15.98
Newest disc from this long running depressive funereal black metal outfit. Originally formed in 1995, This Midwestern one man band has averaged about one record every four and a half years, although it seems that the band actually spent a good long stretch inactive, since the other two ISB records we reviewed were both recorded before the turn of the century, one under a different monicker. 
So, in fact, this is the first full length in almost a decade, and it sounds fantastic, even better than the other two discs, the sound beefed up and much more produced, but without losing any of the sound's miserable grimnity, a record of swirling murky buzzy slow motion doomscapes, distinctly USBM, very reminiscent of Xasthur actually, but ISB is even more blurred and indistinct, most songs having only one or two parts, locked into a mesmerizing looped crawl, the guitars buzzy, but blurred into soft waves of low end, churning and throbbing, everything bathed in a warm gauzy patina, a sea of shimmering keyboards, all very epic and majestic, but so layered and washed out, that it barely sounds metal at times. Instead sounding like some drone drenched super distorted Godspeed, huge crashing waves of sound, everything bleary eyed and smeared into shadows and shapes, even when the metal components drop out, leaving a simple keyboard line to repeat hypnotically or a minor key guitar melody to loop over and over, the sound is more akin to Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker than any sort of black metal, and when the guitars and drums and buzz do return, that doesn't really change. It's still some sort of hazy smoky impressionistic ambient black metal, washing over you like dreamy soft black waves of buzz and whir. Sometimes this feels like the sort of black metal band those guys would actually start. Imagine Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, Christian Fennesz and William Basinski, all in corpsepaint, lurking in a wintry forest, hunched over their instruments on a dimly lit stage, unfurling these roiling waves of gauzy blackness and looped blur. So intense and hypnotic and beautiful. If you ever wanted to get someone into black metal, this could very well be the record to do it with. WAY recommended.
MPEG Stream: "An Atteridgeville Horror"
MPEG Stream: "Cleansed"
MPEG Stream: "Enigma"

16-17 Gyatso (Savage Land) cd 14.98
WARNING: You -should- play this loud. But still, be careful! Make sure any of your easily-aggravated housemates aren't asleep. Move breakable objects out of the way. Take your heart medication. All reasonable precautions before subjecting yourself to the might of 16-17's newly reissued Gyatso.
The music of Switzerland's 16-17 has been called industrial free jazz. And it's certainly got the swarming, squealing saxophones of the most freaked out free jazz we've heard. But with its industrial/metallic elements, the BRUTAL trance-inducing grind of martial drumming and guitar chuggery, maybe "free" jazz isn't the word. How 'bout "totalitarian jazz"? When we previously highlighted the two-cd Early Recordings collection of 16-17's '80s output, we described the band as the "Gods of ultra extreme hardcore free jazz post punk whatthefuck". Ok, that's about right.
Well, Gyatso, originally released in 1994 on Kevin Martin's long gone Pathological imprint (home to Martin's projects like Techno Animal, God, and Ice, as well as crucial discs by Oxbow, Peter & Caspar Brotzmann, Terminal Cheesecake, Zeni Geva, etc.) was even more insane than the stuff on Early Recordings, being to us the pinnacle of 16-17's recorded existence. The thing is, this album takes their earlier excesses into a whole new realm, finally getting their music the heavy duty production treatment it deserved. It's about the heaviest "jazz" ever! Basically, imagine Godflesh teamed up with Peter Brotzmann (Machine Gun era) and this is about what you'd get. The aggressive, constantly-escalating tension of machine-gunning opener "Attack-Impulse" pretty much wipes the floor with all other contenders, going beyond the likes of Zorn's Painkiller or fellow Swiss maniacs Alboth! It simply kills. Having done so, for the rest of the disc 16-17 make sure you stay good and dead with an expansive onslaught of repetitive, rigid rhythms and psychedelic skree-scapes, with brassy bass drone and high-end sax skronk swimming in an ominous electronic miasma. A couple extra-noisy remixes are included at the end to wrap things up in the most extreme manner possible. (These appeared on the original version too.)
The trio responsible for making this masterwork consisted of Alex Buess (screaming saxophones and bass clarinet), Markus Kneubuhler (guitar, electronics and tapes), and the relentless Knut Remond on drums. Also, this disc features a couple very special guests: on utterly sick, thuddering bass, there's Ben "G.C." Green of (indeed) Godflesh fame. And providing electronic samples, Pathological head honcho Kevin Martin.
This essential reissue has been digitally remastered by Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and comes with a thick booklet of extensive new liner notes based on interviews with Buess and Martin, discussing the history of the band. We were fascinated to learn that Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine was such a big fan of 16-17 that back in 1995, he actually invited Alex Buess to work with him on the (still unrealized) follow up to Loveless! Who would have guessed? Apparently Alex spent a month in the studio with MBV, without much to show for it unfortunately... though we'd be still interested to hear what they were up to..
But, it surely couldn't be anything like this, there's nothing better as far as "ultra extreme hardcore free jazz industrial" or whatever is concerned!!
MPEG Stream: "Attack-Impulse"
MPEG Stream: "The Trawler"

FRICARA PACCHU Midnight Pyre (Lal Lal Lal) cd 16.98
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK!! If you missed it when we made it a Record Of The Week back in the summer of 2008, you're in luck! Here's what we said about this then...
Yes! The cd debut of this fantastic Finnish four-track project... We actually meant to list this, like, a month ago, but unfortunately the original review we wrote of it was lost in one of our several recent arggh-inducing komputoor crashes, but actually that's a good thing, 'cause it gave everybody here at AQ more time to listen to this, over and over, at home and in the store, and have us all decide that this HAD to be a Record Of The Week. So we ordered more copies from Finland, and re-wrote the review (which, in our memory, was actually probably better written the first time, so trust us on this) and here we go!
Ah, Finland. We've said it before, we'll say it again. So many of our favorite bands hail from Finland, from the hypnotic NWOFHM space rock of Circle to the the funereal doom of Skepticism, with all the freaky forest folk of Kemialliset Ystavat, et. al. in between. And now Fricara Pacchu, solo project from a member of such underground Finnish acts as Avarus, Anaksimandros, Maniacs Dream, and yes Kemialliset Ystavat.
Hopefully you remember our review of the Fricara Pacchu 7" and accompanying art/collage booklet that the Fonal label put out not too long ago (we may still have a few of those babies in stock, if you act fast). Both Allan and Andee accidentally wrote separate gushing reviews of it, that's how much we all liked it! That 7" left us eager to hear a full-length, and now here it is, courtesy of Lal Lal Lal. 12 wigged out instrumental tracks of Fricara Pacchu's undefinable, eccentric, psychedelic weirdness. We had compared the 7" to everything from the Boredoms to Oliva Tremor Control, and that goes too for the all-instrumental music on this cd, to which we can add such other disparate references as Neu! and When and Fuck Buttons. Fricara Pacchu's music is part techno, part noise, part pop... all awesome.
Recording at home on a four-track, Pacchu creates a woozy, rhythmic soundworld filled with distortion and delight. A world of magical gnomes with chugging machines spewing colorful clouds... clouds of mysterious, maybe illegal substances that coalesce in pretty patterns you can hear, as well as kaleidoscopically see. There's dense, druggy layers of guitar feedback with electro beats; lo-fi fuzzy loops, gurgly computer bleeps and sci-fi sound FX swooshes; throbbing pound and gentle ambience. Fricara Pacchu produces fragile music box melodies that exist amidst exploding minefields of noise, like the detonations of distortion that rhythmically obliterate parts of "Four Seasons Of Violins". Noise that is taken to an extreme with the utter, surging distorto-destruction of "Sky Helicopter"...
Whew! Wow. Maybe if the glorious synthscapes of fellow Finns Shogun Kunitoki were way grittier and guitar-ier, done more D.I.Y., and wrapped in steel wool and played backwards on a cheap cassette, that would sound something like the quirky and compelling music of Fricara Pacchu. By which we mean, this is great!
MPEG Stream: "Four Seasons Of Violins"
MPEG Stream: "Freaky Labyrinth"
MPEG Stream: "Return Of The Rats"
MPEG Stream: "Possessed By Possibilities"

BAKER, AIDAN / LEAH BUCKAREFF / NADJA Trinity (Die Stadt) cd 24.00
You read that right, this is indeed another new Nadja AND another new Aidan Baker, at the same time! Even after the world record FIVE Nadja's on a recent list. And while we joke about how prolific this guy is, even we're a bit overwhelmed by what is basically, counting reissues, maybe the 10th or 11th new release in a matter of a month or two. Sure we can whip out reviews like nobody's business, but even we're run a little ragged. But we'll do our best.
Obviously fans will need this, lots of us bought copies, after all, we've yet to hear a bad record from Baker or Nadja, and this one is no different. However it is special for two reasons, one, it's crazy limited, only 500 copies, hand numbered. When we run out of the ones we have it will be gone for good. And two, it features the first (as far as we know) solo jam from the non Aidan Baker half of Nadja, Leah Buckareff.
Three long tracks, released to coincide with a German live performance in April. The Baker solo track is a pretty glistening drift, a bit more dense and thick than past solo efforts, a surprisingly busy sonic swirl, ethereal effects, murky drones, fragments of melodies, bits of feedback and rumble and twinkle, all set in a warm whirring expanse of soft sound.
The Nadja track begins all dark and serene, but quickly builds to an incendiary blown out doom trudge, quite possibly the heaviest and most distorted we've heard the duo, the guitar thick and crumbling and so distorted it almost obscures any melody, the drum machine a chaotic splatter, the last few minutes so intense and heavy and freaked out, the squall of swirling black psych and drum machine sputter almost completely obscures the churning riffage below.
The big surprise here, although we suppose it shouldn't really be a surprise, is Buckareff's contribution. We're tempted to suggest that she start releasing her own records, but that's just what we need! More kick ass records to buy. Anyway, Buckareff's track, is all low end whir, whispery static, and barely there percussion, that builds to a caustic dirgedrone as heavy and intense as anything Nadja has released, but the cool thing is that even when the sound is a wall of heaving roiling black buzz, beneath it lurks that opening bass melody, the strange pit pat percussion, a mournful lope, slowly being swallowed by a massive swell of muted murky washed out heaviness, that quickly fades out, leaving that minimal bassy shuffle to fade out into silence.
Ok, fine, fuck it, bring it on, more Buckareff solo stuff! We can take it. Even if we can't afford more musical obsessions. But after this we need to hear more. Once again, three for three. Nadja, Baker, Buckareff, essential listening for the doomdronedirge inclined.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, hand numbered, in a cool matte paper fold over sleeve.
MPEG Stream: LEAH BUCKAREFF "Socorro"
MPEG Stream: NADJA "Jornada Del Muerto"

PORTISHEAD Third (Mercury) cd 15.98
It seems a bit strange to spend very much time writing about the new Portishead. Since by now, odds are you're probably sick to death of hearing about it. Sure we all loved Portishead back in the day, they were one of those rare 'electronic' bands whose appeal knew no boundaries, metalheads, moms, indie kids, the sound of Portishead was dark and sexy and mysterious, sinister and ominous, dark and rife with crackle and buzz. Perfect drugged out late night bliss out music, their strange way of creating sound and composing music, recording their own samples on to vinyl and then spinning and scratching those samples to create new textures, made for a totally unique sound.
So what does a band do after taking almost a decade off? Do they return with a record that sounds just like the last one, which is probably what most folks want, or do they return radically altered? With a sound bold and brash, reinventing the sound they themselves invented in the first place.
On first listen, Third definitely sounds like the latter, but with repeated listening, the record slowly and subtly begins to slip toward the former. Which most definitely speaks to the magic of Portishead, and the new record, which at once embraces the old sound, while turning it into something new. More than past outings, Third is dirty, out of tune, atonal, noisy, chaotic, urgent, sure past records had all that crackle and buzz and fuzz, but those elements were carefully placed, and kept well within line. Third sounds much more, well, loose for lack of a better word, like actual musicians, feeling each other out, maybe even improvising. Less like a studio concoction and more like a real live band. And the sound suits them. And makes for a record at once warm and familiar, but also alien, sort of 'rocking' and rife with WTF? moments.
Take the opener, "Silence", which begins with some sort of radio broadcast, which gives way to a killer loping breakbeat, immediately the fastest tempo Portishead have ever explored, strings swoop in, the sound raw and urgent, almost like the chase scene from some spy movie, gorgeous distorted chiming guitar harmonics ring out, until finally the track slows down, and slithers sexily, the vocals a sexy sultry croon, but it's not long before the track kicks back into the haunting and tense, string laden cinematic jam that opened the track.
Then there's "Hunter", which begins like classic Portishead, all smokey and late night sounding, soft muted reverbed guitars, a lush gauzy production, the vocals ethereal and ghostly, but even here, a few seconds in, the song is interrupted by a super distorted crumbling guitar chord that halts things in their tracks, before fading out, and allowing the song to resume. The a few minutes later, a strange noodly synth freakoutsurfaces, again derailing the song's slow motion groove, but It just sounds perfect. It doesn't at all sound like random weirdness for random weirdness' sake. The first time is jarring, the second time, you find yourself waiting for those parts, even humming along as if they were as crucial to the song as the main melody or the vocals, and the thing is, they are.
Near the end lurks the single, "Machine Gun", with its very machine gun like rhythm, herky jerky, stuttery and not at all fluid, reminiscent of Art Of Noise, the vocals sweetly soaring over this jagged rhythmscape below, which only really varies part way through when the original machine gun drums are replaced by BIGGER, more distorted drums, and wrapped in strange moaning horns (or maybe synths), only to shift once again moments later becoming more electronic, the beats awash in strange FX and metallic buzz. It's so unlikely, that it makes perfect sense as the first single. If you can embrace that strange rhythm, that relentless and very un-Portishead like sound, then the rest of the record will make perfect sense, unfolding in front of you, revealing both the warm familiar sounds missed, and the new, bizarre sonic elements never even imagined
All over the record, the band confounds and confuses, gloriously, the brooding whispery "Small" shifts gears partway through and transforms into a fuzzy organ drenched krautjam, "Deep Water" is a straight up old timey folk song, the vocals and strings soaked in fuzzy ambience (and reminding us a bit of vocalist Gibbons' post Portishead project Rustin Man), "We Carry On" is a sort of atonal Stereolab style jam, relentless percussion, thick swaths of synth, very repetitive and hypnotic, "The Rip" is part whispery folky flutter, part synthy electro buzz, every track here offers some sort of surprise, whether it's the song itself, or some little sonic strangeness lurking within, but never is the song or the sound sacrificed, each track is perfect in its own beautifully twisted way, catchy but never obviously so, groovy, but often convoluted and fractured, it's a difficult record to explain for sure, which is perhaps why so much ink has been spilled, and while we may be sick of reading about it, we sure are finding it nearly impossible to imagine ever getting sick of listening to it, which is precisely why it's one of our Records Of The Week.
MPEG Stream: "Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter"
MPEG Stream: "Machine Gun"

ISENGRIND / TWINSISTERMOON / NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS The Snowbringer Cult (Students Of Decay) 2cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As we commented in our review of the now out of print Laurie Bird cd-r from French bedroom drone-psych-folk duo Natural Snow Buildings, it always surprises us how bands with nothing but a MySpace page and a cd-r or two, can generate so much hype and excitement. It seems to be a common occurrence these days, with some bands even getting real live major label record deals purely on the strength of the handful of tracks on their MySpace page.
To be fair to Natural Snow Buildings, they have been a band since 1999, toiling quietly WAY underground, and over the course of the last 9 years, have only released 4 cd-r's and two tapes, the total number of copies of all 6 releases hovering at about 250. That's insane! How does a band with such a small catalog, that has reached so few ears, possibly generate so much fanboy freakout?! But that's precisely what happened. But thankfully, and perhaps surprisingly, in this case, the hype does not seem unwarranted. The freaking out more than merited. The music of Natural Snow Buildings is definitely something special, much more than the usual generic fx laden droned out abstract cd-r floor-core that seems to be flooding the scene, this boy girl duo write songs, and create gorgeous soundscapes, they mix raga-like psyche with fluttery folk, deep drones with pristine pop, weaving it all together into something spectacular.
So here we have the very first proper cd release (others on the way, reissues of several of their various way-too limited cd-r's) from Natural Snow Buildings, bundled with an extra disc, featuring a whole record from both NSB members' solo projects, Twinsistermoon, whose last disc we reviewed recently, and Isengrind, the project of Solange, the female half of NSB.
Isengrind's half of disc one begins with some deep dark ambience, huge shimmering streaks of ominous sound, like an orchestra tuning up in a cave, drawn out into warm washes of dronelike sound, processed choral vocals, and wheezing accordions. That intro gives way to a buzzing Eastern style raga, lots of percussion, shakers, bells, hand drums, buried beneath a shimmery smear of thick coruscating buzz, a sea of sitars, with Solange's vocals soaring ghostlike over the top. The next track is a dark folky drift, a simple melody, fluttering flute, more abstract percussion, definitely reminiscent of Avarus and other Finnish forest folk, but somehow more ethereal, and genuinely folky. The rest of the Isengrind tracks drift from spectre like folk, simple strums soaked in reverb and wrapped around ethereal vocals, to more raga jams, Indian style buzz filtered through a fractured folk sensibility, to haunting cinematic ambience, abstract soundscapes rife with streaks of feedback and wheezing chordal whir, disembodied strum, mysterious vocals and sporadic percussion, tribal, primal, primitive and raw, but still dreamlike and lovely.
Mehdi begins his side of the disc, with a sound that perfectly compliments Solange's (and make it obvious why the two work so well together in NSB), long drawn out glimmering high end tones, draped over a dark minor key folky strum, and simple percussion, while Mehdi's feminine sounding falsetto soars over the top, all infused with some sort of freaky folky Wickerman vibe. Gorgeous and haunting. That track is followed up by a short chunk of perfect dreamfolk, simple folky strum, and Mehdi's crystal clear vocals, ringing out, pure and impossibly high, if you didn't know better you might think this was some rare track by some lost seventies female folkie.
And so it goes, tracks weaving back and forth, from warm washed out blissy dreamy dronescapes, to simple stripped down folk, often the two sounds drifting into each other, cross pollinating, the folk songs short and seemingly serving to separate the longer sprawling expanses of drone and shimmer, the two sounds dramatically different, but somehow complimenting one another perfectly.
So what happens when the two join forces, becoming Natural Snow Buildings? It would be way too easy to say that the sum equaled the parts, that if you took the sound of the two halves of the first disc, it would equal the whole of the second. There is certainly ­some- truth to that, but it's not math, it's magic. Alchemy, musical sorcery, these are sounds not numbers, and thus are governed by forces far more magical and mysterious than physics or science. The two together join spirits, their natures become entwined, they draw from one another, each offering the other part of their soul, rendered in music. The results are truly divine. An assemblage of sounds, deftly woven into expansive shapes and hushed mystery, landscapes of drone and shimmer, of cinematic wonder and dark introspection. Some tracks are super abstract, layered near static drifts, longform movements that sonically evoke other lands, other times, the past long forgotten, the future not yet experienced, other tracks are wheezing sun dappled Appalachia, but turned inside out, the chords and notes seemingly drawn inward, toward the speakers, the vocals breathless and mournful, all laid atop a thick swirl of distorted riffage, other tracks are fragmented folk, all murky blurred piano, backwards guitars, heartsick melodies, wrapped in a thick gauzy production, smeared into snapshots glimpsed through eyes brimming with tears. Other tracks are space rock writ small, minimal dirges, drone jams, chanted vocals, strange stuttery percussion, and glorious buzzing guitars, culminating in the final track, which begins much like the others, all hazy and dreamlike, vocals ethereal, guitars spare and skeletal, until unexpectedly the band lock into some serious droned out space rock. A serious dark and druggy looped riff, a la Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, Loop, anchored by a simple pounding thudrock rhythm, driving intensely through swirling clouds of FX and warm whirring ambience, a seriously dense, propulsive krautjam, that just so happens to hide a soft drifting pop shimmer underneath, and while the track rocks with a surprising intensity, it's precisely what's underneath that turns the jam into something resplendent.
Gorgeous packaging, a fancy 4 panel gatefold digisleeve, with super striking original artwork and liner notes all drawn by Solange.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS "Resurrect Dead On Planet Six"
MPEG Stream: NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS "Bear Hunting"
MPEG Stream: TWINSISTERMOON "Amantsokan"
MPEG Stream: ISENGRIND "To Ride With Holle"

TAIGA REMAINS Ribbons Of Dust (Root Strata) cd 12.98
Finally the way too limited Ribbons Of Dust cd-r's get a proper cd reissue. Three volumes, each a 3" cd-r, from one of our favorite abstract drone outfits going. We raved about all three installments, so if you missed out on any or all, or just want to upgrade to actual cd, then now's your chance.
Seems like the impetus for starting a cd-r label must be born from a similar need to create music yourself. Considering how many microlabel bosses are also serious sound makers in their own right (Campbell Kneale and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Antony Milton and PseudoArcana, Brad Rose and Digitalis, etc.) Makes sense, a passion for discovering new music can be fed directly by making that new music yourself. Taiga Remains is the solo electric guitar project of Alex Cobb, who also happens to run Students Of Decay, a pretty badass cd-r label. Volume 1 of Ribbons Of Dust is a slow moving, bleary eyed, slow moving morning of a track. The guitar is rendered riffless, instead it's transformed into a sparkling glistening glimpse of a sun dappled expanse of still water, foggy and fuzzy, a dream world of shimmering muted high end drift and warm soft hum. Reminds us a bit of ex-Souled American axeman Scott Tuma, and his abstract slow motion soundscapes. So totally lovely and blissfully otherworldly.
Volume 2 is made up of huge billowy clouds of dense but soft electric guitar drift. Melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds. Ambarchi meets Fennesz but with the bones removed, leaving just a drifting ghost of the guitar. It's hard to even think of this as a guitar. There's no strumming, or picking, or bowing, instead it's nothing but shimmering and glistening and sparkling and reverberating and drifting and shining and floating and twinkling and slowly fading away...
The final volume is all about late night, disembodied slow shifting guitar glimmer. Huge soft clouds of warm chords, thick swells of reverberating steel strings, minor key drifts of shimmer and whir, very oceanic, like drifting on some soft sleep sea, each note another gentle swell, lulling you into a state of complete bliss out. So beautiful.
Packaged in a super striking silkscreened origmai style fold over cardstock sleeve with a printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Ribbons Of Dust"
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

TAMAGAWA L'Arbre Aux Fees (Basses Frequences) 3x3"cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Not sure how we discovered the Basses Frequences, and yes that is correct. Basses Frequences. Maybe an email, a recommendation, a chance discovery on the web. It hardly matters, what is important is that we DID discover them, and with the first handful of releases, we're already convinced they might be one of our new favorite cd-r labels.
Not only is the music amazing, but the packaging is totally elaborate and handmade, and quite original, some of the releases in metal tins, this one, the first release from a person / group called Tamagawa, comes in an oversized envelope, with an assortment of small cards and a huge folded cardstock replica of a mini stage lamp, which you can cut out and assemble and store these three mini 3" cd-r's in. Wow.
But cool packaging is never enough, the music on these here discs is divine. And quite varied, from warm washed out ambient dreaminess, to buzzing crumbling drones, to squiggly spaciness, to gorgeous glistening sun baked post rock, to reverb drenched guitar drift, to thick super distorted dirgedrone, and each of those allowed to shift and shimmer, change shape, and alter sound, transform from one into the other, and then back again, the drone is definitely the root of the music here, but even that is sometimes relegated to whirring way off in the distance, while harmonics sparkle and rhythms shuffle, but just as often, the drone wipes the slate clean, and all the OTHER elements drift and whirl in the background while the drone rumbles and buzzes.
The recordings are gorgeous, the sound crystalline, even at its heaviest and most distorted, the music still glows warmly, the edges soft and rounded, the vibe gentle and tranquil, meditative and hypnotic.
Way recommended for fans of drone and drift, of post rock and abstract ambience, and folks who are obsessive about releases from PseudoArcana, Digitalis, Students of Decay and other like minded labels, might just have to add Basses Frequences to that list.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! Packaged in an oversized sealed envelope with printed cards and a replica cut-out-and-assemble stage lamp!
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

V/A Sacrifice At The Altar Of The Satanic Blood Angel: A Tribute To Von (Rusty Axe) cd 9.98
There are cult bands and then they are the TRUE KVLT bands. Few fit that bill better than San Francisco's Von. Von existed for a few years back in the late eighties / early nineties, recorded only two demos, and then split up and disappeared.
But that's just the sort of stuff that creates the cult, that turns a band into something more, that and an incredible collection of furious grim thrashing black metal madness. Fourteen songs, all fast and black, all quite similar sounding, almost like one long song chopped up into 2 minute movements, but like very few bands, there's just something special about Von, sure the sound, the production, the energy, but it has to be the songs too, since even played by other bands, those songs exude a strange black power, a grim malice and hellish energy that belies their simple composition.
Lots of folks have covered Von over the years, most recently SF's own Leviathan, on his split with fellow Bay Area black horde Crebain, but here we've got a whole disc of covers, most of them true to the spirit of Von, in that they are raw and primitive and buzzing, but each special in its own black way.
Very few bands here that we've actually heard of: Enbilulugugal, Black Vomit, Godless, Execrator, Beastcraft, Tjolgtjar, Raw Hatred and that's about it. Check out the names on some of the other bands: Blasphemophager, Unholy Crucifix, Godslaying Hellblast, Sermon Of Foulness, Nuclearhammer, Ceremonial CastingsŠ
And they all sound just how you might think, carrying on in the grim tradition of Von, lo-fi, thrashing, black, brutal, buzzy, the rhythms fast and relentless, the riffing and drumming in a constant fury, the vocals in various shades of howl and gurgle, lots of the tracks peppered with wild squiggly leads, sometimes the sound is thick and caustic, a white noise blur, other times it's a tinny practice space recording, once in a while, like with Black Vomit, the song is transformed into something freaked out and damaged, but for the most part, this is one for the true, the grim, those of black heart and cursed soul.
Definitely for fans of Von (obviously), Beherit, Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Darkthrone and other practitioners of raw raw raw primitive black metal.
MPEG Stream: BLACK VOMIT "Devil Pig"
MPEG Stream: ENBILULUGUGAL "Lamb"
MPEG Stream: BEASTCRAFT "Satanic Blood"
MPEG Stream: TJOLGTJAR "Christ Fire"
MPEG Stream: GODSLAYING HELLBLAST "Veinen"

PYRAMIDS s/t (Hydra Head) 2cd 14.98
As much as we love that Hydra Head sound, huge churning riffage, pummeling drums, crushing metallic dirges and all things heavy heavy heavy, we're becoming more and more obsessed with the releases that don't fit so comfortably on HH, don't necessarily embody that classic Hydra Head sound. Although that's not necessarily fair, as the more bands HH sign that sound different, the more diffuse and varied that HH 'sound' becomes, which renders this whole theory moot. But whatever, stick with us for a second, there is a point. It's sort of how we were with Sub Pop, sure we loved Green River and Soundgarden and Mudhoney, THAT sound, but we got crazy obsessed with stuff like Rein Sanction and Hardship Post, the stuff that stuck out, that sounded WEIRD, maybe almost more than the regular Sub Pop stuff.
It might be just that for a band to kick someone's ass SO much, that they're willing to release a record by them, even though sonically it's a whole different ball of wax, means that the record in question is that good, that fucked up, that unique, or could be that we just like to be contrary. Either wayŠ
Whatever. We love Isis and Cavity and Pelican, but lately, we, like a lot of you, have been obsessing over Jesu, Hayaino Diasuke, Austerity Program, Torche, Pet Genius and now Pyramids, who hail from Denton Texas, and who sound like nothing on Hydra Head. If we had to pick one band, it might be Jesu, but even then, the similarities are minimal. Pyramids are blissy and fuzzy and gauzy and pretty, almost ambient at times, drifting dreamily, their sounds shimmering and glistening, everything blurred and washed out and totally fucking gorgeous, BUT, they do have some surprises up their sleeves. And it's those surprises that make this record such a mind blower.
But let's start at the beginning. The first three tracks here are totally lovely, guitars are wisps, vocals are fluttery shadows, melodies are delicate and fragile, the production is warm and sun dappled, rhythms are muted shuffles, effects swirl and sway, here and there, the sound thickens into something almost heavy, but never quite gets there, remains on the pretty drifty side of heavy. It's like a more avant freaky version of Mazzy Star or Galaxie 500, that same sort of windblown washed out blissy vibe. Until the fourth track.
Beginning with some minimal guitar buzz, amidst a whirl of chiming harmonics, shortwave interference, and blown out buzz, the drums kick in, and the riff locks into an insectoid buzz, and suddenly the Pyramids are some sort of black metal band, still bleary and blissy, but with pounding drums and buzzing guitars, eventually vocals come in and it's like a metalgaze Sigur Ros, which is most definitely awesome.
The next track too offers more of the same, a sort of swirling chaotic shoe gaze-y black metal, and in fact the rest of the record continues on in that vein, each track a twisted convoluted take on blissed out black metal, sometimes grinding and furious, but even then swathed in a warm sonic glow, sometimes more poppy and swirly, like a more abstract Swervedriver. As you can tell, it's pretty hard to describe. Not sure it's really black enough to appeal to black metallers, it's more like some shoegaze ambient metal pop band just borrowed some black metal tropes and wove them into their gorgeous blown out soundworld.
There's a second disc too, of remixes, by the likes of Jesu, James Plotkin, Loveliescrushing, Birchville Cat Motel, Blut Aus Nord and more, and we would have assumed that remixes by those folks, of this sort of music, would just render them more blissed out, but instead, at least the first two, transform the songs into furious blown out black jams. The first, remixed by Toby Driver of Kay Dot, Ted Parsons of Prong and Swans and Colin Marston of Behold the Arctopus, begins all soft and swirly, but by the end has added super distorted drums, and all manner of fried buzz. The Plotkin remix up next, strips away most of the bliss, and leaves a seriously fucked sounding lo-fi in-the-red black metal blast. The Jesu remix sounds just like you might imagine, a gauzy slowcore drift, with the vocals jacked way up, soaring through the ether, a fluttery falsetto. The two Loveliescrushing mixes bring out the soft blurred ambience of the originals, making them even more tranquil and serene. Birchville turns his mix into a virtual BCM track, using bits and pieces of the original, creating a thick slow growing drone, that builds to a buzzing crescendo before fading back into a dark moody drift. Blut Aus Nord is the most fucked up remix. Not sure if they added tons of stuff, or just did some crazy mix, but the guitars groan all dizzy and woozy and angular, the drums, pounding and machinelike, the vocals a hissy evil howl, the whole track a lurching black lope. All the mixes here are amazing, utterly transforming the originals, but in doing so hewing to the spirit of the original record, which was already pretty schizophrenic and all over the amp as it was.
Way way way recommended. A new aQ favorite for sure...
MPEG Stream: "Sleds"
MPEG Stream: "The Echo Of Something Lovely"
MPEG Stream: "End Resolve"