AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: 2XL) T-Shirt 22.00
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Extra Large) T-Shirt 22.00
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Large) T-Shirt 22.00
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Medium) T-Shirt 22.00
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Small) T-Shirt 22.00
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

AQUARIUS T SHIRT Special Limited Artists Edition #1: Justin Bartlett (Size: Youth Large) T-Shirt 22.00
Finally! The first in a series of super limited, artist designed aQ T-Shirts, featuring original art by some of our favorite artists, who just so happen to be loyal aQ customers as well! Each one will be super special, totally unique, and will only be available for a limited time, as we're only making a finite amount of each.
The first shirt design is by aQ pal and infamous killustrator Justin Bartlett, whose style many of you no doubt will recognize. He's done tons of drawings for Oaken Throne black metal magazine, as well as record covers for grim groups like SUNNO))), Moss, Nadja, Pentemple and loads more. His style is incredible, super detailed, pen and ink with tons of stippling, lots of skulls and guts and demons and various crusty oozing offal. For aQ he's designed a super creepy and super evil mother and child, heads in bags, their rotten innards spilling out, skulls on spikes, and "Aquarius Records" carved into the stone archway in the background. It looks amazing, and will for sure get some eyes a popping as you wander through the grocery store or sit in church (heaven forbid).
The back features a small aQ logo up near the collar, the shirts are white on black, they are Hanes heavyweight T's, 100% preshrunk cotton, and we have sizes all the way from Youth Large (for kids and little ladies) all the way up to XXL (for the big guys).
We will only be selling these for a couple months, so don't miss out. Once they are gone, they won't be reprinted. EVER.
Future aQ Artist Edition T's will include designs by Savage Pencil, Stephen O'Malley, Aaron Turner and more more more!!!

COLEMAN, GEORGE Bongo Joe (Arhoolie) cd 17.98
Originally released on Arhoolie in 1969 this disc features the collected wildness, weirdness and wisdom of one George Coleman, also known as Bongo Joe, on vinyl for the first time in AGES (you may remember Bongo Joe was on the bonus 7"s that originally came with the first pressing of the Mississippi release Life Is A Problem!)
George Coleman is not called Bongo Joe because he plays the bongos, it's because, well no one is sure exactly, but he does play the drums, or more specifically, the giant oil barrel. Modified of course. Coleman's instrument of choice is a 55 gallon oil drum, it's sound customized by dents and bulges and tears created with a small axe. He beats this oil drum with hammer handles, the bottom of the barrel filled with sand and buckshot to create a sort of rattle. And while that might be amazing on its own, it's Coleman's singing, or rapping, or whatever it is, probably somewhere right in between that really seals the deal. When former aQ staffer Byram worked here this was his FAVORITE record and he played it incessantly, and we all eventually grew to love it, a totally wacked stripped down freaky funky sort-of-steel-drum rhythm and blues, Coleman calls it "fundamental beat music", as played by a crazy Texas street musician, who has plenty to say about pretty much everything, and does so quite eloquently, and a bit confusionally, a wild unhinged delivery that some folks around here have likened to Wesley Willis, but we think it's way more soulful, like James Brown crossed with Screamin' Jay Hawkins, imagine one of those guys jamming with Moondog and voila.
Bongo Joe played all over Texas, once with Dizzy Gillespie, for presidents, for Muhammad Ali, in front of the Alamo, he eventually ended up in San Antonio after a retirement community complained about the racket he was making outside. And at one point he shot a man who he thought was going to rob him while he was performing. Woah.
But none of that matters as much as the music, and the music is amazing. Far out and funky, rhythmic and stripped down, wild and strange and beautiful and pretty much unlike anything else you'll ever hear.

IRR. APP. (EXT.) Ozeanische Gefuhle (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 14.98
BACK IN PRINT!!! If anyone has the ability to carry the post-Surrealist torch of Nurse With Wound, it would have to be Matt Waldron through his irr. app. (ext.) project. Like Nurse With Wound's eccentric genius Stapleton, Waldron would never qualify himself as a Surrealist, but it's a good jumping off point to describe their respective works. With Ozeanische Gefuhle, Waldron establishes irr. app. (ext.) establishes himself as one of the most gifted sound-sculptors whose work have passed through the doors of Aquarius. If you've ever picked up any drone / minimalist / ambient records or even just anything that Andee has poetically described as 'completely fucked', then you owe it yourself to pick up Ozeanische Gefuhle. This review could ramble on and on, but let's cut to the chase and state the obvious, this album is brilliant.
Strangely enough, Ozeanische Gefuhle -- as great as it is -- almost disappeared into the ether, as it was slated for release a few years back on another label who just sat on it for years, much to the chagrin of Mr. Waldron. Fortunately, the good people at the Helen Scarsdale Agency rectified the situation and made sure this album got its due recognition.
The title itself is an allusion to Wilhelm Reich, who used the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it. Such ideas in lesser hands would result in limp idylltronica with New Age sentimentality; but this is not the case for irr. app. (ext.), who solidly grounds this record upon a fundamental drone, which slinks its way through numerous field recordings and performative gestures. Waldron's masterpiece emerges as a tidal current of electronic sound, rumbling through blackened spaces and soaring with divine expressivity. As good if not better than anything by Nurse With Wound, Organum, :zoviet france:, Phill Niblock, and the Hafler Trio. Yeah, it's that good!
MPEG Stream: "Ozeanische Gefuhle (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Ozeanische Gefuhle (excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "The Demiurge's Presumption"

NEU! Neu! ( Gronland) cd 16.98
A few years back, we were ecstatic 'cause seminal krautrockers Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger had at long last (after an uncomfortable decade-plus of legal wrangling) patched up whatever their differences were, in order to allow their three classic '70s albums to be officially released on cd for the first time! Hallelujah! Unfortunately, those reissues on Astralwerks then went out of print, again. Argh. How are we supposed to do our job, recommending essential stuff like Neu!, when the record labels can't keep these albums available?? We've got Harmonia and Cluster but it's a shame not to have Neu!... Well thankfully, there's been a new Neu! reissue program on the Gronland label. And Neu!, Neu! 2, and Neu! 75 are back in print and back in stock, for a new generation (and those who missed out before) to enjoy.
For those of you not already Neu!-savvy, these are the guys responsible (along with Kraftwerk, with whom guitarist Rother and drummer Dinger once played - that's how they met, before splitting to form Neu!) for the "motorik" beat, the propulsive, autobahn-friendly, proto-punk electronics hybrid that has influenced countless bands. From big fans Bowie and Eno back in the seventies to the hundreds of postrock/electronica acts that namecheck them now, Neu! are gods. Negativland not only got their name from a Neu! song off the first album, but even the name of their label, Seeland, comes from a track off of 75. Indeed, some bands have built their entire careers on, uh, paying homage to Neu! (Michael Rother, quoted in Mojo magazine: "I went to a Stereolab concert once. Suddenly I had the impression I was listening to myself -- very strange!")
Neu! 1 (1971) is a stunning work of art, drifting back and forth between the stripped down minimal kraut-pop that they're most commonly associated with, to long, spacey and psychedelic forays with lapses into musique concrete like moments with lapping water, children and jackhammers. Their sound could be most closely compared to early Kraftwerk or Cluster. In fact, the track "Im Gluck" sounds an awful lot like both Kraftwerk's "Radioland" and, believe it or don't, the beginning preamble to Rush's "Xanadu." Whether these two had Neu! in mind when they worked these songs out remains to be proven, but it's nice to think of such dissimilar groups drawing from the same well.
MPEG Stream: "Im Gluck"
MPEG Stream: "Weissensee"
MPEG Stream: "Negativland"

NEU! Neu! 2 (Gronland) cd 16.98
Neu! 2 could possibly be considered the world's first "remix" album, as a good portion of it features "varispeed" versions of previously released Neu! material. They ran out of studio time/money, so the story goes, and after recording two songs for a single ended up making alternate versions by playing the record itself at 16 rpm and 78 rpm - you can even hear the needle drop and the record player bumped into - and doing similar remixes of tracks off of the first album with a cheap tape player. 2 wasn't considered the best Neu! album back in the day, but it actually stands test of time quite well (even better than 75) and boasts the acclaim of having had a track used on the soundtrack for the English dubbed version of "The Master Of The Flying Guillotine" (those who spent countless hours of their childhood watching Kung Fu Theater will know well the One Armed Boxer and his travails.)
MPEG Stream: "Fur Immer"
MPEG Stream: "Lila Engel "
MPEG Stream: "Super 16"

NEU! Neu! 75 (Gronland) cd 16.98
The critical status quo qualifies Neu! 75 as the best of their three albums, simply because it is the most musically adept and possesses the most studio polish. While we here at Aquarius are not going to deny that Neu! 75 isn't a great and pretty much required album, we disagree that this is their best work.
The two previous albums were infused with a bold spirit of experimentations that led to the mutable pace of the motorik grooves on "Negativland" (from Neu! 1), and the idiosyncratic "remixes" from Neu! 2. While Klaus Dinger's percussion remains unchanged from the first two releases, Michael Rother moves away from the risk-taking agendas from the first two albums, to a more commonplace rock schtick. Rother's guitars hold a greater range of dynamics with beautifully soaring Pink Floyd-esque harmonics to gritty aggro / glam rock power chords, but his insistance on singing much more maybe isn't a great idea... As previously mentioned, Neu! was a profound influence on David Bowie; thus, it is not a coincidence that Neu!'s "Hero" (from Neu! 75) predates Bowie's "Heroes" by a good two years!
MPEG Stream: "Hero"
MPEG Stream: "Emusik"

NOTWIST, THE Neon Golden (City Slang) cd 14.98
Finally available domestically, at a lower price and with three bonus tracks!! If you're a regular AQ customer you already know that we're all huge fans of Village of Savoonga, the darkest and most dramatically experimental of the many musical outfits hailing from the loose collective of musicians based in Bavaria, Germany. Another group from this incredibly fertile scene, The Notwist started out as a punk band but have gotten better and more different with each release (reflecting the Acher brothers' growing musical smarts and proficiency), culminating in this nice rock album. But not just any indie rock, this music is wistful, lyrical, softly flowing music that's *extremely* well executed, no filler, and brings in all kinds of non-rock elements -- in sort of the same way that the Beta Band does -- *casually*, not making a big deal out of it. Cos electronic keyboards and programming and stuff (courtesy Martin Gretschmann of the solo electronic act Console) are merely one facet of The Notwist's sound, which also includes very catchy minor key hooks, attractively textural cracklings and wooden clop clops, plucked strings (cello?), machine made gurgles and squishies, even out-of-place (-but-not-really) breakbeats that actually work.
In addition to the guy from Console, The Notwist personnel includes the abovementioned Acher brothers Micha (Village of Savoonga, Tied+Tickled Trio) and Markus (VoS, T+TT, Lali Puna).
Highly recommended! This is a grower.
RealAudio clip: "One Step Inside Doesn't Mean You Understand"
RealAudio clip: "Consequence"

KONONO NO. 1 Congotronics (Ache Records) lp 16.98
The vinyl version of AQ mega-fave Congotronics is BACK IN STOCK! Here's our review from way back when we first listed the cd:
Some of us have been waiting forever for this record, or at least ever since we discovered a tiny, super compressed, thirty second long sound clip on the internet over a year ago. In all of half a minute, we became OBSESSED. Completely captivated by this band's totally alien, lush, organic 'world music' weirdness. We eventually tracked down a (great) live record by Konono No.1, which we listed here a few weeks back, and then after tons of internet sleuthing and a bunch of emails we finally managed to get in touch with someone at the Crammed label in Belgium who was willing to sell us this brand new studio album directly, since they are without US distribution. Phew! So was it worth it? Hell yeah! Anyone who heard that infamous sound sample (which was from this album), or who got to hear the live record, knows that this band is totally amazing, and indeed this record is beautiful, wild and wonderful, chaotic and festive, totally perplexing but completely mesmerizing. For those who missed out on the live record (which we've also just restocked!) or are new to the wonders of Konono No.1, here's the story: twenty five years ago, Konono formed in Kinshasa, an area between Congo and Angola, performing their own version of traditional Bazombo trance music, incorporating the then-unwanted distortions of their haphazard homemade sound system. They left the bush and settled in the capital where they were forced to compete with the harsh sounds of the city: cars, trains, buses, shouting, etc. So with very little to work with they fashioned pick-ups, microphones, loudspeakers and amplifiers from stuff they could find on the street -- old car batteries, pots and pans, magnets, even branches. Their main instrument is the likembe, a kind of thumb piano. Konono features three of 'em (bass, medium and treble) and the sound of the electrified and amplified likembe is what defines their sound. Accompanied by dancers and percussionists, the likembes wail and drone, buzz and moan, totally overblown and distorted, sounding a little like sixties fuzz guitars, turning a glorious high life jam into something much more strange and wonderful. Super rhythmic, and thick with the buzzing melodies of the likemebe's, Konono weave a massive sound. It's the wildest weirdest street party you've ever been to. Throbbing with energy and emotion, rambunctiously rollicking and totally infectious. Seven lengthy tracks that all sort of bleed and fuse into one epic world-psych jam. The African high life Hawkwind? So so great!
Check out this video clip:
http://www.crammed.be/craworld/movies/konono_promo.mov
MPEG Stream: "Lufuala Ndonga"
MPEG Stream: "Masikulu"

SUN CITY GIRLS You're Never Alone With A Cigarette (Abduction) cd 16.98
In recent months, we've seen several interestin' Sun City Girls reissues come out on cd via the Abduction label, like such previously vinyl-only rarities as the (supposed) soundtrack recordings to Piasa The Devourer Of Men, Dulce, and Juggernaut. Along with the shaggy dog hillbilly joke that is Jacks Creek. So fans of the now sadly defunct Sun City Girls, that cultish, psych-punk, faux-ethnic, WTF? trio, have had some welcome listening of late. However, this new disc, a collection (volume one!) of Sun City Girls singles, has us the most excited yet. That's cause these nine tracks, mostly released as singles on the Majora label back in the day, were actually all recorded during the same sessions that resulted in the acclaimed 1989 SCG album Torch Of The Mystics. That album, now out of print, is almost universally regarded as the band's best, and most popular. We'd agree, it's definitely the unanimous fave here at AQ (well, along with the equally long gone 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda). Too bad Torch Of The Mystics is out of print!! But of course that makes these tracks, cousins to those on Torch, all the more covetable!
Apparently, originally Torch was meant to be a double LP, and most of these tracks were instrumentals that would have been sequenced in amongst the songs that appeared on the final version of Torch. Plans for a double LP were eventually scrapped, and much of the extra material was then released by Majora on the You're Never Alone With A Cigarette 7" and Three Fake Female Orgasms 2x7". However, three of the tracks here are previously unreleased studio recordings, and another track, "The Fine-Tuned Machines Of Lemuria", is restored to its full 12 minute length for the first time (having been edited down for 7" release).
On of the reasons we (and everybody) likes Torch so much is that the songs, sounding much like some sort of alien, Southeast Asian surf rock, were unhindered by the unhinged eccentric excesses that make so many other, more confusional SCG recordings something of an acquired taste. Their unique take on "world music" was at its most accessible on Torch, with some of their most memorable, melodic moments and evocative atmospheres. You're Never Alone..., while not quite Torch part II, is certainly in that ballpark, with the ringing, exotic electric guitar skree of Richard Bishop taking center stage on much of this, ably supported by the drums and percussion of Charles Gocher and the bass playing of Alan Bishop (with sundry other, often ethnic, instrumentation from all). There's glorious folky riffing and moody improvs and plenty of prime SCG wonderful weirdness. Definitely an essential disc for all SCG fans!!
MPEG Stream: "Amazon One"
MPEG Stream: "Wild World Of Animals"

ZOVIET FRANCE Digilogue (Soleilmoon) cd 15.98
BACK IN PRINT! So, here we are waxing poetic about this album even as Zoviet France has all but disappeared from the public eye, with founding member Ben Ponton holding onto the project even though no new recordings appear in sight and as former member Robin Storey has released a whole bunch of middling albums (amidst a couple of greats) as Rapoon.
Given how many contemporary gutteral drone artists have been delving into tape loop manipulation, multiple delay pedal configurations, and transcendent tones vulcanized from base elements, listening to Zoviet France in today's climate is essential... as it would prove that this British semi-anonymous collective had better ideas, better execution, better packaging, and better results than 99% of what's coming out today. Sadly, the Zoviet France albums that would have best paralleled much of the current lo-fi drone obsession (i.e. Eostre, Norsch, Mohnomische, and even Shouting At The Ground) are all woefully out of print thanks to a unreconcilable rift between the aforementioned Ben Ponton and Robin Storey. Only a handful remain available for public consumption; and Digilogue is one of them, demonstrating the Zoviet France process of overlapping loops, hypnotic atmospherics, and ephemeral dub activity when applied to digital technology. While there is a considerable crispness to many of the sounds heard on Digilogue, Zoviet France still managed to render their sounds as if they were the liturgical / ritualist music for some hitherto unknown non-Occidental culture hidden in the English countryside. Digilogue's opening track "Alchemagenta" is a noteworthy entry into the Zoviet France pantheon of sounds for its eerily dubbed out miltaristic horn stab which former AQ-employee Byram Abbott was convinced made its way on to an early episode of The Simpsons. Mechanized bells, streched out vocal plainsongs, and oceanic swells of electric wash all cascade through Zoviet France's graceful use of delay patterns for what truly is one of the best records of the '90s and is absolutely required listening for anyone with a passing interest in experimental music over the past 50 years.
MPEG Stream: "Alchemagenta"
MPEG Stream: "Haze Polder"

FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND Satori (Phoenix Records) cd 16.98
While they last, at long last, here's another reissue of this all-time AQ fave, hot on the heels of the Japrocksampler conveniently enough! This version is packaged in a cardstock gatefold and is (unfortunately) limited to 1000 numbered copies.
Here's what we said about Satori last time we had a cd edition in stock:
A while back we listed this, just 'cause we happened to order a few in and some of the staff here who were previously unexposed to the wonders of the Flower Travellin Band, notably Byram, became obsessed with it (and them). It was a Japan-only import and we felt that while many might already know this album backwards and forwards, it had most certainly slipped through the cracks for too many others out there. So we listed it and got an overwhelming response. Now it's a constant seller here at AQ. And still to this day, almost any time you come into the store, you might well hear the Flower Travellin' Band blaring.
This is an album (and a band) that are not celebrated nearly enough -- possibly out of misguided notions of their being another bad psych knock-off among the many crowding the record racks in the early seventies. But Japan's Flower Travellin' Band were no mere cheesy imitators of occidental rock 'n roll, they were in actual fact a full-fledged, pioneering tour de force of psychedelic progressive hard rock, equalling the krautrock heavies of the era. FTB can be compared favorably to Amon Duul's better efforts with their experimental meandering (think Yeti), and the best trancey spaceouts from Can. Yet there's never a sense that FTB lose track of their compositions no matter how far out they take a track. Perhaps because even more than these experimental Krautrockers, FTB's heavy (fucking ominously heavy) sound points to a major Sabbath, Purple, and Crimson influence. Released in 1971, Satori is the band's second and arguably best album. From the first screech/howl at the beginning of track one -- "Satori Part I" (the tracks on the album are all "Satori", parts I-V) -- from vocalist Joe, who inhabits a zone somewhere between Can's Damo Suzuki and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, the album gets straight down to business. Joe's scream is followed by a foreboding bass, guitar and drum dirge that's straight up collision between Cream and Black Sabbath in which no one survives. It's got so much more teeth than either, it's not even funny, predating punk by a good many years. "Satori Part II" however is quintessential FTB Over a pounding tribal drumbeat, alternating between a buzzing sitar-esque guitar drone and a melody line that curls ripples and lilts like a plume of burning incense smoke, guitarist Hideki Ishima lays out one of the creepiest, coolest guitar leads ever. If that ain't enough, vocalist Joe's singing is like that of Axl Rose being channelled by the Sun City Girls! Even if the rest of the album were total shit -- which it ain't -- the cost of this cd would still be well worth it for this song alone! "Part III" -- an instrumental -- picks up where II leaves off but slows the tempo down to a deathly pace, which makes it even heavier. This is the Sabbath influence on FTB writ large. Replete with an improv freakout before returning to the original riff and building into a frenzied crescendo. Needless to say, if you weren't bobbing your head at the beginning of the song, you will be by its end. "Part IV" could be considered FTB's "blues" number, with Joe picking up the harmonica instead of singing. But instead of churning out the expected twelve bar formula, FTB truncate the form and construct a minimalist jam around a short riff instead. "Part V" shows yet another facet of FTB's seemingly infinite potential with Hideki (?) playing some kick ass, spooky koto-like guitar overdubbed on top of some heavy psych. Damn! They could have done ten fucking albums around this schtick alone and probably never lost our interest... sigh... Absolutely, fucking recommended!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part II"
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part III"

NURSE WITH WOUND Homotopy To Marie (United Jnana) cd 14.98
FINALLY REISSUED!!! Of all of the Nurse With Wound records (and we like a bunch of them!), this is our favorite. Perhaps because this makes the least 'sense,' with a textbook definition of how Surrealism can be accurately applied in an aural context. Within Homotopy To Marie, Steven Stapleton (the proprietor of Nurse With Wound) addresses most of Andre Breton's qualifications of Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by the reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation." In many respects, John Cage took Breton's theories to one possible logical end; but Stapleton wanted to bridge contemporary musical production techniques (musique concrete informed by Industrial culture) with the original Surrealist fascination with Victorian imagery applied to Freudian definitions of fetishism, thus offering a version of Surrealism that fits better with how Breton may have thought Surrealism would sound. References to culture and the world as we know it abound in this record, but in such a convoluted way as to appear perfectly normal next to something that would normally be aurally incongruous. The title itself certainly refers to this. Often utilized within the highly specialized vocabularies of genetics and chemical engineering (you think that *we* get verbose!), a homotopy (as best as I could determine) is the relationship between a specific object and the fundamental characteristics that define the family in which that object belongs. Who Marie could be is perhaps best left between Stapleton and Marie.
Homotopy To Marie is Stapleton's finest audio collage, culled from various studio sessions, found sounds, and unknown media samples. Proceeding along at a stately pace, this album is certainly not a quiet affair, yet each sound within the album is given plenty to hold its unique place with the collage at large. It opens with "I Cannot Feel You as the Dogs are Laughing and I am Blind" -- a close investigation of shards of glass with a gated volume filter on it to accentuate the brittleness and fragmentation of the sound, followed by a period of snoring (presumably from Stapleton) which shifts to various screams, maniacal laughs, and hysterical utterances as if from an asylum. The title track is an amazing collage of a multiple gongs with the tonal rings augmented by occasional backwards masking and manipulated attack. Stapleton's use of the vocal sample is at it's best here with two characters (a shy little girl and a confident woman) intermittently reciting ambiguous phrases "When I woke up I didn't know where I was" answered by "Don't be naive, darling!". The rest of the album is a clutter of non-descript distortion, feedback from guitar buzz, microphones overloaded by megaphones screaming into them, broken by backwards dialogues in Spanish, rag time pianos, and clattering horns finally explode into a whimsical polka but have a weird aura surrounding them like when Hermann Nitsch uses polkas as punctuations to his orchestral drones.
Homotopy To Marie is a confounding album that matches its psychological instability with its dexterity in its composition, that leaves you not with a recognition of sound within an organized context, but the feeling of unidentifiable unease. An absolute masterpiece.
MPEG Stream: "I Cannot Feel You As The Dogs..."
MPEG Stream: "Homotopy To Marie"
MPEG Stream: "Astral Dustbin Dirge"

FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND Anywhere (Universal Japan) cd 22.00
At long last, back in stock! The cd reissue of the 1970 debut album from AQ faves Flower Travellin' Band is still a Japanese import, but on a different label at a cheaper price (yay!), and is now housed in a regular jewelcase this time rather than a mini-lp styled sleeve. Before we launch into what's gonna be relatively long-winded review, let's just state up front that this has the best album cover EVER: the band themselves cruising down a rural highway on choppers wearing nothing but their birthday suits!! But if that's not enough to get you to buy this, read on...
As you may know, we've given a big thumbs up to the album Satori, the masterpiece from Japanese '70s psych rockers the Flower Travellin' Band [Satori is is also back in stock in a Japanese pressing, reviewed this list too].
Anywhere doesn't quite scale the heights of Satori but it'll help you to understand how they got there. Along with a great take on "House Of The Rising Sun" (a nod to Frijid Pink?), this album also explicitly demonstrates, via covers, these Japanese freaks' radical recognition of the genius of two of their Western contemporaries, Black Sabbath and King Crimson. Like many other great artists, with humble beginnings Japan's Flower Travellin' Band cut their teeth on the material of their mentors. Though Anywhere is primarily a covers album, it's also quite a testament to both the band's veracity in their reproductions and their creativity in realigning the building blocks of rock & roll. Their cover of Black Sabbath's self-titled track was actually recorded in the same year as the original and their version of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" only a year after its release. And they aren't merely content to play only the "Schizoid Man" opening riff, like so many other bands that have attempted to cover it, but take on the entire piece in all its schizophrenic freaked out glory, getting waaay into the improv element of the mid-section. The same is true for "Black Sabbath" and you have to appreciate singer Joe's take on the unique Ozzy voice. The most interesting track on the record though has to be their attempt at straight-up blues rock -- while their "Louisiana Blues" starts and finishes almost pedestrianly enough on the "Minglewood Blues" riff by Gus Cannon (of Cannon's Jug Stompers) that was popularized in the rock scene by the likes of The Grateful Dead and Captain Beefheart, the interior of the song is a complete departure of sorts. Not only devoid of the original progression, it's not even "bluesy" at all. Here in the extended jam that makes up the meat of this musical sandwich, the Flower Travellin' Band's Eastern roots surface a bit. It's a precursor to the sound of their later albums Satori and Made In Japan.
MPEG Stream: "Louisiana Blues"
MPEG Stream: "Black Sabbath"

FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND Satori (WEA Japan) cd 26.00
ALL RIGHT! BACK IN STOCK!! An all-time AQ fave here, that we've been unable to get for much too long. At last, we've got a Japanese import which, while more expensive than the version on defunct UK label Radioactive, is much nicer lookin' and undoubtedly more legit. So if you missed it before, we absolutely recommend that you pick it up now! Here's our original enthused review of this classic:
This is an album (and a band) that are not celebrated nearly enough -- possibly out of misguided notions of their being another bad psych knock-off among the many crowding the record racks in the early seventies. But Japan's Flower Travellin' Band were no mere cheesy imitators of occidental rock 'n roll, they were in actual fact a full-fledged, pioneering tour de force of psychedelic progressive hard rock, equaling the krautrock heavies of the era. FTB can be compared favorably to Amon Duul's better efforts with their experimental meandering (think Yeti), and the best trancey spaceouts from Can. Yet there's never a sense that FTB lose track of their compositions no matter how far out they take a track. Perhaps because even more than these experimental Krautrockers, FTB's heavy (fucking ominously heavy) sound points to a major Sabbath, Purple, and Crimson influence. Released in 1971, Satori is the band's second and arguably best album. From the first screech/howl at the beginning of track one -- "Satori Part I" (the tracks on the album are all "Satori", parts I-V) -- from vocalist Joe, who inhabits a zone somewhere between Can's Damo Suzuki and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, the album gets straight down to business. Joe's scream is followed by a foreboding bass, guitar and drum dirge that's straight up collision between Cream and Black Sabbath in which no one survives. It's got so much more teeth than either, it's not even funny, predating punk by a good many years. "Satori Part II" however is quintessential FTB Over a pounding tribal drumbeat, alternating between a buzzing sitar-esque guitar drone and a melody line that curls ripples and lilts like a plume of burning incense smoke, guitarist Hideki Ishima lays out one of the creepiest, coolest guitar leads ever. If that ain't enough, vocalist Joe's singing is like that of Axl Rose being channelled by the Sun City Girls! Even if the rest of the album were total shit -- which it ain't -- the cost of this cd would still be well worth it for this song alone! "Part III" -- an instrumental -- picks up where II leaves off but slows the tempo down to a deathly pace, which makes it even heavier. This is the Sabbath influence on FTB writ large. Replete with an improv freakout before returning to the original riff and building into a frenzied crescendo. Needless to say, if you weren't bobbing your head at the beginning of the song, you will be by its end. "Part IV" could be considered FTB's "blues" number, with Joe picking up the harmonica instead of singing. But instead of churning out the expected twelve bar formula, FTB truncate the form and construct a minimalist jam around a short riff instead. "Part V" shows yet another facet of FTB's seemingly infinite potential with Hideki (?) playing some kick ass, spooky koto-like guitar overdubbed on top of some heavy psych. Damn! They could have done ten fucking albums around this schtick alone and probably never lost our interest... sigh... Absolutely, fucking recommended!!!!
That's what we said then, and we still mean it now -- to this day, almost any time you come into the store, you might well hear the Flower Travellin' Band blaring. Well, especially now that it's back in stock. YEAH!!!
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part II"
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part III"

ALGARNAS TRADGARD Framtiden Ar Ett Svavande Skepp, Forankrat I Forntiden (Silence) cd 17.98
AT LONG LAST, BACK IN STOCK!! This is one of those essential reissues that remind us that everything cool was already done about thirty years ago. Yep, these Swedish hippies sure knew what they were doing. Timeless psychedelia from 1972. Certainly everybody who gets worked up over the umpteenth new Acid Mothers Temple release *must* buy this disc! Likewise, fans of Godspeed You Black Emperor! should check this out as well -- Algarnas Tradgard (Garden of the Elks, in English) were droning away darkly on violins and cellos before those French Canadians ever matriculated into the Suzuki School. So if you like those bands, and/or Ghost, Pelt, Sunroof, Thuja and other modern psych interpreters, here's a classic from back in the day that ought to enter (and alter) your consciousness. To utilize a period comparison, imagine the kosmiche krautrock vibes of Amon Duul mixed with Nordic forest-darkness, as this group of solemn longhaired freaks space-out with their guitars, drums, strings, sitars, tabla, Moog synth, jew's harp and various other exotic instrumentation. There's some folky female vocals a la Fairport, and group chant as well, but Framtiden is mostly instrumental, and entirely magical. That's reflected in the song titles, some quite wonderful: the album begins with "Two hours over two blue mountains with a cuckoo on each side, of the hours...that is" and ends with the title track which is rendered in English as "The future is a hovering ship, anchored in the past".
This reissue adds two amazing live bonus tracks that are worthy of the price of the disc alone!
These live tracks, along with the whole of the album proper, reveal Algarnas Tradgard as creators of dark stoned driftdrone every bit as cinematic as the best GSYBE! and even more authentically psychedelic than AMT leader Kawabata's beard. It's lovely, blissful, transportational stuff indeed. Our quick AQ-guide to the crucial Swedish psych essentials definitely includes this disc, along with the Parson Sound double cd, Bo Hansson's Lord Of The Rings opus and the International Harvester album. (Those are the top of the list, but once you've gotten into those you'll need to investigate Harvester, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Kebnekajse, and others from the Silence catalog, including Algarnas' lost-until-now second album, Delayed.)
MPEG Stream: "Two hours over two blue mountains..."
MPEG Stream: "Rings Of Saturn"
MPEG Stream: "5/4"

GENDREAU, MICHAEL 55 Pas De La Ligne Au No. 3 (23five) cd 14.98
Throughout the '80s and '90s, Michael Gendreau worked extensively in the East Bay avant-noise project Crawling With Tarts, often constructing surreal experiments with idiosyncratic pop-babble and tape collages of art-damaged noise. For Gendreau, the turntable became an ideal instrument for his explorations; and soon, he began working with the archaic technology of lathe cut, handcrafted vinyl. Often the results were bizarre, if sporadically successful recontextualizations of homemade instrumentation, radio noise, and anti-pop. Recently, it seems as though Gendreau has put Crawling With Tarts on an extended hiatus, due to his increasing attention into the field of vibrations diagnostics and consultation. This incredibly technical arena has lead him to researching the problems of acoustic noise vibrations upon highly sensitive pieces of optical equipment, which could present faulty analysis due to the tiny, but measurable effects of environmental noise (air conditioning ducts and heating vents in particular).
55 Pas De La Ligne Au No. 3 finds Gendreau bridging his current activities of acoustic diagnostics with his once prolific avant-turntable collages. It appears that Gendreau has hooked up a number of accelerometers -- technical devices used to detect, measure, and catalogue any number of vibrational frequencies -- to a series of battered record players spinning his handmade vinyl. Gendreau's accelerometers are so sensitive, that they pick up, not only the interaction between the needle and the record in question, but also the muffled whir of the thick rubber band stretching between the motor and the turntable plate. The results found on 55 Pas De La Ligne Au No. 3 are astounding, with eerie mechanical drones, minute needle crackle, and the occasional, but always unnerving upsurge of quiet voices floating though the din like the EVP sounds from The Ghost Orchid of purported recordings from beyond the grave. One of the best records of 2002, and now available once again!
MPEG Stream: "Two Worlds For Now"
MPEG Stream: "55 Pas De La Ligne Au No. 3"

CHALK, ANDREW East Of The Sun (Faraway Press) cd 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Easily, one of the most important reissues of 2006, East Of The Sun available again though Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press, complete with breathtakingly resplendent packaging: a silkscreened and embossed printing. These recordings originally came out in 1994 as a cassette, released through Ora's in-house label, Ora being an early collective that revolved around Chalk, Colin Potter, and Darren Tate with occasional assistance from Jonathan Coleclough, mnortham, Lol Coxhill, and a handful of like-minded British drone enthusiasts. A few years later, the Italian label Hic Sunt Leones convinced Chalk to reissue the cassette in digital form. That CD version of East Of The Sun compressed the two sides of the cassette into a single 50 minute piece and was flushed out with some complementary dronescaping. Chalk was never happy with the Hic Sunt Leones version; and thus his reissue of the album returns to the original version found on the cassette, now gloriously remastered in its entirety. For those persnickety types, the 17 minutes or so which concluded the Hic Sunt Leones version is not here; but that is a minor loss compared to the pinnacle of drone-based minimalism found here.
Sure, Eno's ambient records On Land and Thursday Afternoon were milestones in the realm of ambient music, setting an impressionist context through which any number of the images, thoughts, and ideals could be imagined; but that strategy was perfected by Andrew Chalk on a couple of records. There was his ephemeral album Sumac in collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough, there was the first Mirror album Eye Of The Storm, and there's East Of The Sun. Very dark without becoming unbearably cold, East Of The Sun is a constant bloom of nocturnal frequencies, whose origins may be thoroughly blurred bass guitar or possibly some resonant artifact from Chalk's acoustic work in Organum. Regardless, the resultant drones drift with no beginning and no end, merely rippling, reflecting, and turning upon themselves in a perpetual, very slow motion turbulence. Leaves tumbling in autumnal twilight. Fog spilling over coastal hills. Moonlight tickling the agitated surface of a pond. Any of these organic references for meditation on simplicity to reach the sublime and the profound could easily apply to Chalk's East Of The Sun. Not just recommended, this is required listening.
MPEG Stream: "Winter Arc"
MPEG Stream: "High Water"

SENOR COCONUT El Baile Aleman (Multicolor) cd 16.98
Few artists' music can guarantee to brighten your days and nights the way Atom Heart (and his numerous aliases) can. Any new release from this fella is received with a huge aQ grin! If you dug the recent Yellow Magic Fever tribute from the always deliriously delightful Senor Coconut and Los Negritos' Speed-Merengue Mega-Mix, you know what we're talking about and you definitely won't wanna miss these freshly reissued earlier Senor Coconut releases including this, his awesome Kraftwerk tribute! Even if you got 'em the first time around, heck, we're sure you know somebody who'd benefit from this festive treat!
Back in 2000, we had this to say about El Baile Aleman: Senor Coconut is actually the guy better known as techno/electronica artist Atom Heart. He's moved to Chile and gone all Latin and groovy on us. However, all the songs on this (high-) concept album are Kraftwerk covers! So this joins a long line of weird and wonderful tributes to Kraftwerk. Soon we'll be able to have a whole bin at Aquarius dedicated to such endeavors: the Balenescu Quartet one, the Terre Thaemlitz one, the one with all the Slovenian acts, the Japanese import one, the Miami Bass one, etc. etc. Anyways, so incredibly executed down to the tiniest detail, this one will sit at the top of the heap! Super duper fun.
MPEG Stream: "The Robots (Cha-Cha-Cha)"
MPEG Stream: "Neon Lights (Cha-Cha-Cha)"

AMON DUUL II Yeti (Revisited Records) cd 16.98
It's been reissued again and again, as well is should 'cause this is one of the best albums EVER everyone at AQ agrees and should always be in print, and you should even own more than one copy it's that good. For some reason, the rights to this album (and ADII's others as well) seem to constantly be in flux from one label to the next -- this time it's in the care of an outfit called Revisited Records, who have put it in a digipack almost identical to its previous incarnation on Repertoire, but sadly without the two bonus tracks from singles that that one had.
Anyway, maybe you're wondering what the heck the big deal is with Yeti, so here's our review we wrote last time it got reissued:
The absolute hardest albums to write about are those we hold in the highest esteem and though we have an aversion to the general notion of a "desert island selection", this Amon Duul II disc is one of those albums that we could see as an definite inclusion on a short list of "must have" rock records! 1970's Yeti is the second album of Amon Duul II, succeeding Phallus Dei, and captures these krautrockers at their zenith. The album opens with the four movement opus "Soap Shop Rock", an amazing 13+ minute track that encompasses the gamut of psychedelia. It begins as an uptempo number with driving bass and drums in which vocals, guitars and amplified fiddles swirl around in a multitude of melodic variations in counterpoint before breaking down into one of the most kick ass tempo changes ever performed in rock; a heavy dirge that never fails to knock my knee caps loose, and it's got a guitar line that certainly must have been held in immense reverence by Kramer at some formative point in his career. The song doesn't settle down there, but continues in its focused meanderings for another ten minutes, retaining enough of an anchor of its beginnings to give it coherence as a unified whole. The rest of the album is equally amazing, touching everything from blasted proto-punk psych ("Archangels Thunderbird" and "Eye-Shaking King") to spacey drone improv (the fifteen minutes of "Yeti Talks To Yogi" and "Sandoz In The Rain"). Essential krautrock. In fact, one of the best records EVER.
It's one of those albums, like First Utterance by Comus and Satori by Flower Travellin' Band, that when it's playing, we think, why listen to anything else again??
MPEG Stream: "Soap Shop Rock - Halluzination Guillotine"
MPEG Stream: "Archangels Thunderbird"
MPEG Stream: "Soap Shop Rock - Flesh-Coloured Anti-Aircraft Alarm Clock"

DISSECTION Storm Of The Light's Bane (The End) 2cd 12.98
Long overdue, super deluxe double disc reissue of this long-time Aquarius favorite / black metal classic. After a not-so-great past few years for Dissection, including a lengthy jail sentence for frontman Jon Nodtveidt, and a recent disappointing 'comeback/reunion' record (not yet reviewed here), this black classic returns to remind us just how mindblowingly kick ass Dissection really were. And while of course this is a fave of all the metalheads around here, and our metal-lovin' customers, it's also loved by the less metal inclined -- for instance, former AQ staffer Byram, not normally a big metal consumer, ranks this as one of his favorites amongst the Nordic hordes. In fact, it's one of the few metal cds in his collection. It's that great. It came out originally in '94, reissued as a digipak a few years back, and now sees a super duper double disc re-release with a whole disc of bonus tracks (more on those later).
With Storm of the Light's Bane, Dissection perfected their melodic, blackened Swedish death metal approach -- that means TRUE, original metal, with elements of everything from Morbid Angel to Mayhem to Iron Maiden, suped-up and super-grim, with raspy vocals, wicked drumming (the guy is AMAZING), truly memorable, majestic melodies, and tons of cold winter atmosphere. They take long breaks to let their acoustic guitars gently weep, then tear back into the brutal, razor-edged rifferama. Serious stuff, seriously great. This was to be their last album, a mighty swan song, as Dissection called it quits soon after when their frontman ended up in jail as accessory to murder -- but their -very- tangential role in any of that over-sensationalized Scandinavian black metal true crime stuff has nothing to do with why you should be interested in this band. Like we said, the band reformed last year when Nodtveidt got out of jail, and just recently released a mediocre new record, but it couldn't hold a candle to Storm Of The Light's Bane, nor could most metal records actually. Dissection was a brilliant band, and Storm of the Light's Bane is an all time classic that belongs in every metal collection. If you haven't already gotten this album, here's your chance. And even if you already have one of the previous versions, the extra disc might make it a necessary repeat purchase.
The second disc is crammed with bonus tracks and unreleased material. First up, the Storm Of The Light's Bane unreleased alternative mix '95, which might have been for completist nerds only, but a closer look reveals an extra track not on the album proper. Then there's two tracks from an unreleased 1994 demo. And finally the Where Dead Angels Lie ep, also remastered. Lots of liner notes and packaged in a spiffy slipcover. SO RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Night's Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Where Dead Angels Lie"
MPEG Stream: "Soulreaper"

V/A Ho!: Roady Music from Vietnam (Trikont) cd 19.98
We can not tell you how psyched we are to have this back in stock. We've been listening to this like crazy. We had almost forgotten how totally far out and mind blowing this collection was. Since we first carried this years ago, there have been tons of diverse and eclectic collections of musics from all over the world, psych rock compilations (Love, Peace & Poetry, Thai Beat A Go Go, etc.), the Sublime Frequencies series, and loads more, but as good as those are, they can't hold a candle to Ho!: Roady Music From Vietnam! So completely fascinating and fun, wild and so so weird! Everytime this gets played in the store, customers and employees alike have to check to see what the heck it is we're listening to!
Ho! is an amazing collection of pieces from Vietnamese street musicians. The folks that travelled to Vietnam and recorded these pieces gave themselves the tongue-in-cheek name Nuoc Mam Dirndl'n, evidence of their humor in the light of collecting the sort of music they suspect the Vietnamese government would perhaps NOT appreciate as a representation of Vietnam. Ho! ranges from raucous, percussion-heavy funeral songs played at midnight by 'young people provided with drugs' to traditional material played on the one-stringed dan bau to melodramatic love songs favored by the son of the owner of the hotel the folks stayed at. There's even a 'tasteful schmaltzy song' which is what the Vietnamese record-store saleswoman played for them when they asked for some traditional Vietnamese music! Check out the following excerpt from the fascinating liner notes, and, like us, marvel at the freshness inherent in the refusal to adopt the omniscient voice-of-authority tone taken by so many ethno-compilers: "We are stunned by the Vietnamese 'Lebensgefuhl' actually corresponding to our western idea of 'subculture': lively, anarchic, loud, dense, hearty; the people are living working, eating, sleeping, and holding their funeral ceremonies between house and street. We don't know yet if there is any subculture in Vietnam; if there is e.g. (organized) political counterforces to the one-party regime -- nobody talks about politics (with us) -- maybe there is no need for it, because everybody can do whatever he/she wants: though street trading is prohibited everybody does it -- under the hardly vigilant eyes of the law -- raids are very rare, then the stands are carried away quickly and when the mischief is gone it goes on... What matters is that people LOVE TO SING which, like in our part of the world, hide in gloomy basements and play till the ears/souls are ringing: every band in Vietnam needs a license for its existence, for every gig, every song. And because there is no basements in Vietnam, people like to use the karaoke machines in their homes, bars and special karaoke houses. Saigon's street musicians are rather despised by the yuppies of Vietnam: 'shit music.' The yuppies prefer Sting and western style in general." Highly highly highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: DAN BAU VIETNAM "Rider In The Sky"
MPEG Stream: DEAD MEN'S ORCHESTRA "Totencombo"
MPEG Stream: EO SINH + NAMH HAO "VC Love Song"
MPEG Stream: THU HIEN "Hoa Cau Vuon Trau"

OS MUTANTES Jardim Eletrico (#4) (Universal / Polydor Brazil) cd 19.98
Just a few weeks ago, we were happy to at long last re-list the first three incredible albums by long-time AQ fave, the amazing Mutantes from Brazil. We mentioned then that we also had been able to stock some other Mutantes titles as well, ones we hadn't ever reviewed before -- but also really like! Sure, we agree that their first three, and especially first two, albums are their absolute, all-time classics, not to be surpassed. If you haven't heard those, go check 'em out before returning to this review. But if, like us, you've worn those albums out and want to hear more Mutantes, you'll also be mighty pleased with records #4 and #5 as well, wethinks. Not to mention that if these *weren't* Mutantes albums, but psych-prog rarities from some other, more obscure late '60s Brazilian band, they'd be heralded as brilliant lost treasures with no question...
So, this week we bring you #4, Jardim Eletrico. Still featuring the crucial creative nexus of original members Rita Lee, Arnaldo Baptista and Sergio Dias, this record was released in 1971 (yes, that magical year Allan's so obsessed with, again!) and takes Os Mutantes' unique tropicalia mix of '60s acid-psych and carefree pop and Latin rhythms into perhaps a little bit more '70s prog-rock territory, without getting all serious about it or anything. They stick with the same playful 'n' eclectic (if not quite so experimental) songwriting approach as on albums #1-#3, but throw in some heavier fuzz freakiness at times, which is fine by us. The catchiness quotient is still way up too, many of the tracks being super-upbeat, surefire faves for any Mutantes fan. Take the sunniest songs by Sly Stone (this album's opener "Top Top" for sure hints at Sly) or the Kinks ("Virginia"), filter 'em through Brazilian bossa nova and Spanish flamenco folk ("El Justiciero"), step on the occasional fuzz pedal, and you'll have some idea what this sounds like. Most of the songs are in Portuguese, but you do get the all-English track "Technicolor" and also an English-language version of their Caetano Veloso-penned hit "Baby", gently sung by Rita Lee (unlike the Portuguese version on their debut, that had Baptista at the mic).
We're pretty sure that if you like A Divina Comedia Ou Ando Desligado (#3), there's no reason to stop there, you'll like #4 Jardim Eletrico too. Indeed, there's quite a few songs here that could easily compete for inclusion in our personal Mutantes top ten. So don't miss out, Mutantes fans.
NB. If you're wondering why we number all the Mutantes albums like we do, it's just a habit that started with trying to keep the first two, both self-titled albums straightŠ
MPEG Stream: "Top Top"
MPEG Stream: "El Justiciero"
MPEG Stream: "Jardim Eletrico"

OS MUTANTES Mutantes E Seus Cometas No Pais Do Baurets (#5) (Universal / Polydor Brazil) cd 19.98
One more time, welcome to the mixed-up Technicolor tropicalia psych-pop pleasuredome that is the music of Brazil's one and only Os Mutantes! This, their fifth album, from 1972, was their last with original vocalist Rita Lee before the band headed off into way proggier '70sness on later efforts of that decade, and it's one splashy send-off all right. We've said before that Mutantes discs #1 (Os Mutantes) and #2 (Mutantes) are the absolute must-have essentials, with #3 (A Divina Comedia Ou) running a close third... but #4 (Jardim Eletrico), reviewed last list, and this fifth one too are also full of great Mutantes moments that fans should certainly hear! (And it should be added that if you dig Yes, tracking down some of those subsequent Mutantes efforts might be worth it as well...)
It should come as no surprise to Mutantes aficionados that as a collection of songs, Mutantes E Seus Cometas No Pais Do Baurets is all over the place, from the McCartneyesque, Moog sizzling "Balada Do Louco" to the groovy, wacked-out prog-funk of the nearly 10-minute long title track. You'll hear peppy '50s rockabilly pastiche ("Posso Perder Minha Mulher, Minha Mae, Desde Que Tenha O Rock And Roll"), Zep-heavy fuzz rockers ("A Hora E A Vez Do Cabelo Nascer"), lovely folkiness ("Vida de Cachorro"), and a honky tonk piano beerhall singalong ("Todo Mundo Pastou II"). And one of Allan's (but not necessarily everybody else here's) favorite tracks has got to be the ultra kitschy, goofy "Dune Buggy"... there's certainly lots of humor and bizarre bits woven in and out of pretty much all these tunes, again as per Mutantes' usual modus operandi (as is the Beatles influence felt throughout). Definitely a fun listen!
MPEG Stream: "A Hora E A Vez Do Cabelo Nascer"
MPEG Stream: "Vida de Cachorro"
MPEG Stream: "Dune Buggy"

AQUARIUS BUTTONS 2 x 1" buttons 1.00
Hey, we just got another batch of AQ buttons made up...
Spread the word! Show the world your true aQ colors! COOL COOL COOL aQ buttons, now in 5 different vibrant color combinations. 4 new color combos (blue on pink, red on black, dark blue on blue, and yellowish green on dark green) and a popular one we had previously (brown on yellow).
TWO FOR $1!!! Colors are random, but buy enough and you'll be guaranteed to get 'em all! And of course all feature our spiffy James Gang style logo!! So stylish!

OAKLEY HALL Second Guessing (Amish) cd 14.98
Second album of sunkissed honky-tonk from Brooklyn-based Oakley Hall, featuring a former member of Oneida. Reminiscent of '70s California soft roots rock like Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks or the Anonymous / J. Rider reissues we listed awhile back. Sunny male and female harmonies and lazy day fiddles ride a solid foundation of electric psych-tinged country rock. Only the final track, a great cover of Buffy Saint-Marie's "Cod'ine" (which was also very successfully covered by Dan Hicks earlier group, The Charlatans) points at a darker alt-country vibe we wish there was more of.
MPEG Stream: "Hiway"
MPEG Stream: "Cod'ine"

WOODEN WAND & THE VANISHING VOICE Gipsy Freedom (5RC) cd 14.98
Don't know about you, but when we hear saxophone from a band that is not usually associated with jazz, we cringe a little. We know there are plenty of excellent uses of saxophone on non-jazz related records (Van Der Graaf Generator, Gong, and Terry Riley come immediately to mind), but when the first song on a CD begins with lone saxophone, We just don't expect good things. So what to say about this new WW&VV recording, the latest in a flurry of releases, (their second on 5RC), that keep getting weirder and weirder? Don't rely too hard on first impressions. Especially when the saxophonist is Daniel Carter, outstanding free jazz alumnus and member of the Other Dimensions in Music collective. This is not to say Gypsy Freedom is a jazz record, but rather WW&VV this time around weave some Sun Ra-style free jazz dynamics into its already expansive and wandering palate of clattering rhythms, sad mountain ballads, witchy tribal dirges, and twee space folk psych jams, mixing both instrumental psych excursions with more structured vocal based songs. There's definitely an interesting dark forest vibe here, not so much of the communal drum circle variety but more akin to the feeling of watching The Wicker Man on Special K. But like most WW&VV releases, their experimentation can get so random that they sometimes misfire. Yet, this is only a minor complaint for a band that makes challenging and creative music that is of nature and against nature at the same time. CD includes a DVD of "Don't Love the Liar", the closest WW&VV get to a rock number.
MPEG Stream: "Didn't it Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Love the Liar"

GHOST ORCHID, THE An Introduction to EVP (Ash International (R.I.P.)) cd 14.98
FINALLY, this long out of print, all time unanimous AQ favorite gets re-pressed and is available once again!
The Conet Project from beyond the grave!?! Perhaps that's a good way of describing this baffling, terrifying, occasionally laughable, but always compelling album. It's been out of print for a very long time, and we're pleased to see The Ghost Orchid haunting our shelves once again!
To recap, The Ghost Orchid documents instances of something called "Electronic Voice Phenomenon," the paranormal appearance of strange voices (which at times sing and speak in multiple languages) on magnetic tape when there shouldn't be any voices there at all... Respected parapsychologists have postulated that these voices are those of dead people (i.e. ghosts) or possibly of extraterrestrial origin! Unlike The Conet Project, which cross referenced the audio tracks with written information, The Ghost Orchid presents these recordings with the audio commentary of one of several researchers (Nadia Fowler, Raymond Cass, and Lief Elggren -- the Swedish performance/audio artist and a part time collaborator with the Hafler Trio), explaining the findings. These recordings are the findings of a number of parapsychologists including Dr. Konstantine Raudive, Friedrich Jurgenson, and Raymond Cass.
While there is something wholly terrifying about these recordings, there is an absurd question about these ghostly voices that we have to ask: Why are the majority of these recordings in Latvian? At any rate, The Ghost Orchid manages to be both spooky and silly, and is definitely a fascinating listen from a pure sound perspective regardless of how disturbing and/or amusing you might find the alleged sound source itself. For non sequitur pop culture reference, the sample "You are sleeping, you do not want to believe" which concludes The Smith's "The Rubber Ring" hails from an old recording made by Raudive and can be found in its entirety here. Brilliant!
MPEG Stream: RAYMOND CASS "Out Of This World"
MPEG Stream: RAYMOND CASS "Burned With Force"
MPEG Stream: RAYMOND CASS "Carefully With Nerve Gas"
MPEG Stream: KONSTANTIN RAUDIVE "Breakthrough Side A"

V/A Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk & Pop Music Vol. 1 (Sublime Frequencies) cd 14.98
Repressed and BACK IN STOCK! Yay!
What? Another collection of Cambodian pop? But you just listed two volumes of Cambodian Rocks? (And, get ready for two more in that series!) It's true, Cambodian music seems to be the flavor of the moment on the obscure world music scene. But bear with us, as this one deserves all the attention afforded the Cambodian Rocks series... and then some. The history of Cambodia's flourishing and rich music scene was -- like the greater culture and society of the country in general -- cruelly severed in the early seventies by the Khmer Rouge during their "cleansing" program. All our favorite performers, anonymous until Khmer Rocks' own collections were recently released, were undoubtedly victims of the Khmer Rouge during this period. In the following years Cambodians who fled the country set up communities around the globe and among the other parts of their culture they treasured, the music of these lost performers was not forgotten. Throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties the scattered communities set up recording studios and continued to produce music just as amazing as those lost golden years. Enter Mark Gergis (of Neung Phak / Mono Pause and the man who brought us I Remember Syria). From 1999 to 2004 Mark diligently scoured the Asian branch of the Oakland Public Library, checking out each and every Cassette of Cambodian music produced in the period from the early seventies to the present. Many of the cassettes were unfortunately unlistenable; not merely because they'd been played thousands of times, or left on hot car dashboards, but because they were being slowly bulk erased by the library employees themselves as they would unwittingly pass them over the magnetic security system used to prevent book theft. Even with the best intentions of the public library as a repository for culture, Cambodian music was slowly being erased one cassette at a time. Of course there was no public outcry, at this point people had moved on to the newest thing (no doubt something recorded by one person with an electronic keyboard and other MIDI gear). It seems to happen everywhere: recent history is wiped clean for whatever happens to be hot at the moment. So it was that Mark culled together a collection of songs that are as amazing as they are rare. One thing particularly striking about many of the tracks is that, unlike what you'll hear on the Cambodian Rocks collections (all of which were actually recorded in Cambodia), they include both traditional Cambodian instruments alongside western instruments. There are tracks with Khan (the inimitable mouth organ of Southeast Asia) playing alongside electric guitar (which is often times being played in the style of a traditional Cambodian stringed instrument), saxophone, drums, electric bass and organ. Some of the combinations and bizarre genre bends are truly off the wall -- such as the track, unfortunately to remain untitled for now, a proto-metal Cambodian pop ditty featuring echoey and brash female vocals and a Queen-era guitar solo. While there are a few of the more modern pop tunes -- of the primarily keyboards and drum machine variety -- here, none are of the overly westernized Asian pop that is so ubiquitous these days. There are also 6 tracks of older tunes that were recorded in Phnom Penh between the mid-1960's and the early 70's (one of which was overdubbed by an American operated studio with a drum machine beat!) This is a truly amazing collection, certainly the best disc to be released by Sublime Frequencies to date, and Byram's top pick for 2004 thus far. Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Blue Basket"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown [track 12]"
MPEG Stream: "Unknown [track 15]"

JESU Heartache (Dry Run) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This debut ep from Justin Broadrick's (of Godflesh) new outift Jesu has been a bit tough to keep in stock, and since when we originally had it we loved it so much we made it Record Of The Week, and since we finally managed to get more, we figured we'd relist it so those of you who missed out the first time can get another crack. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week recently, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
MPEG Stream: "Heart Ache"
MPEG Stream: "Ruined"

KONONO NO.1 Congotronics (Crammed Discs) cd 16.98
Back in stock! Probably the biggest "hit" record here at AQ of the past year. We're super excited that they'll be coming to San Francisco to play at the Jazz Fest in November, by the way! Here's our review of Congotronics from when we first listed it back in January:
So here it is! Hard to believe it's finally here -- some of us have been waiting forever for this record, or at least ever since we discovered a tiny, super compressed, thirty second long sound clip on the internet over a year ago. In all of half a minute, we became OBSESSED. Completely captivated by this band's totally alien, lush, organic 'world music' weirdness. We eventually tracked down a (great) live record by Konono No.1, which we listed here a few weeks back, and then after tons of internet sleuthing and a bunch of emails we finally managed to get in touch with someone at the Crammed label in Belgium who was willing to sell us this brand new studio album directly, since they are without US distribution. Phew! So was it worth it? Hell yeah! Anyone who heard that infamous sound sample (which was from this album), or who got to hear the live record, knows that this band is totally amazing, and indeed this record is beautiful, wild and wonderful, chaotic and festive, totally perplexing but completely mesmerizing. For those who missed out on the live record (which we've also just restocked!) or are new to the wonders of Konono No.1, here's the story: twenty five years ago, Konono formed in Kinshasa (the capital of Zaire), performing their own version of traditional Bazombo trance music, incorporating the then-unwanted distortions of their haphazard homemade sound system. They left the bush and settled in the capital where they were forced to compete with the harsh sounds of the city: cars, trains, buses, shouting, etc. So with very little to work with they fashioned pick-ups, microphones, loudspeakers and amplifiers from stuff they could find on the street -- old car batteries, pots and pans, magnets, even branches. Their main instrument is the likembe, a kind of thumb piano. Konono features three of 'em (bass, medium and treble) and the sound of the electrified and amplified likembe is what defines their sound. Accompanied by dancers and percussionists, the likembes wail and drone, buzz and moan, totally overblown and distorted, sounding a little like sixties fuzz guitars, turning a glorious high life jam into something much more strange and wonderful. Super rhythmic, and thick with the buzzing melodies of the likemebe's, Konono weave a massive sound. It's the wildest weirdest street party you've ever been to. Throbbing with energy and emotion, rambuctiously rollicking and totally infectious. Seven lengthy tracks that all sort of bleed and fuse into one epic world-psych jam. The African high life Hawkwind? So so great!
Check out this video clip:
http://www.crammed.be/craworld/movies/konono_promo.mov
MPEG Stream: "Lufuala Ndonga"
MPEG Stream: "Masikulu"

AAVIKKO History Of Muysic (Muysic For Peoples) cd 14.98
At long last, back in stock!! Here's our review from list 207...
Fuck. That's always a great way to start any decent review here at Aquarius. Fuck Yeah! That's even better, and certainly more appropriate for a disc we've been lusting after for so long. Aavikko is one of those elusive bands that we never seem to be able to keep in stock long enough to escape becoming a mere legend and a fading memory. The problem seems to reside in a lifetime of poor distribution and lackluster label attention. But now Aquarius has secured a direct pipeline to the band in the hopes of rectifying this shortage. Aavikko, for those who've yet to experience their magic, are easily the reigning kings of "electronic instrumental rock" (their own genre?). Hailing from Finland -- that in and of itself should be a clue -- Aavikko have honed a lo-fi electro-punk sound that's oft imitated, but never equaled. Using only cheap electric organs (most notably the Yamaha PSS Home Organ), drums and archaic analog recording technology, Aavikko compose Slavic disco, garage surf punk with rumba beats and insanely catchy pop tunes that bring to mind soundtracks to 8-bit videogames of yesteryear. History Of Muysic is an impressive collection of both no longer available Aavikko classics and unreleased tracks dating back to the group's inception in 1995. The latter includes their first rehearsal demo, outtakes from the Derek! ep sessions and their theme for the Kumman Kaa TV series (which has become one of the most popular ring tones in Finland!), among others. In the long lost and now out of print category, we're most excited by the inclusion of the eight tracks from the first, self-titled Aavikko 7". These are a veritable holy grail of primitive electronic rock and expose imitators for the slick hi-fi hucksters they really are. Probably recorded direct to cassette, you can even hear the tape drag and occasional drop outs. Fellow lovers of Bjorn Olsson will be excited by this and all analog anomalies indelibly pitted into the digital realm. All under three minutes in length, the tracks on the eponymous debut are tight and gritty pop ditties, completely trimmed of fat: the words 'overproduced' and 'Avvikko' will never be found in the same sentence but for this one. Also included on this anthology is the entire Oriental Baby CD, their collaboration with Mono Pause "Of Stomping Men", an unreleased live recording off of the beloved WFMU in NJ, their contribution to the Team Yamaha compilation and last, but in no way least, their most recent single, for the first time on CD, the amazing Eye of the Leopard with Kabar. Really folks, do yourself a favor...
MPEG Stream: "Alas Volgaa"
MPEG Stream: "Seikkailu Villi"
MPEG Stream: "Eye of the Leopard"

UFOMAMMUT Godlike Snake (Beard of Stars) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Having your head dipped in some sort of molten hallucinogenic liquid...or steamrollered by a flying saucer.... or headbanging with Lovecraftian gods somewhere far out in the ocean of space... that's our meagre attempt to colorfully describe the experience of enjoying this slab of psychedelic stoner doom rock, the 1999 debut disc from Italy's UFOmammut! Chances are, though, that you have some idea already about this might sound like, 'cause UFOmammut's other album, the mighty Snailking, was immediately crowned as an Aquarius Record of the Week when it came out last year, and is still a steady seller hereabouts. Hopefully you already got one of those. This too, we've had before, but it's been out of print for quite a long time and only just got reissued. We figured that since folks liked Snailking so much, and Godlike Snake was just as good, and could easily have been missed out upon the first time around, we shouldn't pass up the opportunity to relist this and make it a Record of the Week as well now that it's back in print. After all, the whole reason we were so instantly amped on Snailking when it came out was in part 'cause we'd been waiting for it for, literally, years, after being blown away by the band's first album, this one. Our review of Godlike Snake ran something like this: "...this stoner rock band is a good 'un, taking a way spacier route to the Dopethrone than most. Wonderfully heavy and mesmerizing, with loads of effects, Moog, and (pardon the expression) "fat" churning drone-grind-groove... A new fave for us in the stoner/doom realm... Especially recommended for those that miss the old Monster Magnet sound, or relish the idea of a heavier Hawkwind." Listening to it now (which a bunch of us have been doing *every day* in the store), we're if anything EVEN MORE into it. Something we hadn't noticed before was how some tracks come across like Godflesh or early Killing Joke melded to Hawkwind. Crushing and enveloping and sooooooo good. It's like Electric Wizard gone spacerock, or an industrialized Dead Meadow.
As with its original incarnation, this includes a trippy video track for the song "Where?" for those with computers. It's now packaged in a standard jewelbox, instead of a cardboard digipack, but the artwork remains pretty much the same. If you like heaviness like we do, don't miss it this time!! Definitely to be considered an AQ doom/sludge/psych ESSENTIAL.
MPEG Stream: "Satan"
MPEG Stream: "Snake"

UFOMAMMUT Godlike Snake (Beard of Stars) lp 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
AT LONG LAST, NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!! Doom/sludge/psych lovers and collectors, rejoice! Here's what we had to say about this album when we made the reissue of the cd version an AQ Record Of The Week last year:
Having your head dipped in some sort of molten hallucinogenic liquid...or steamrollered by a flying saucer.... or headbanging with Lovecraftian gods somewhere far out in the ocean of space... that's our meagre attempt to colorfully describe the experience of enjoying this slab of psychedelic stoner doom rock, the 1999 debut disc from Italy's UFOmammut! Chances are, though, that you have some idea already about this might sound like, 'cause UFOmammut's other album, the mighty Snailking, was immediately crowned as an Aquarius Record of the Week when it came out last year, and is still a steady seller hereabouts. Hopefully you already got one of those. This too, we've had before, but it's been out of print for quite a long time and only just got reissued. We figured that since folks liked Snailking so much, and Godlike Snake was just as good, and could easily have been missed out upon the first time around, we shouldn't pass up the opportunity to relist this and make it a Record of the Week as well now that it's back in print. After all, the whole reason we were so instantly amped on Snailking when it came out was in part 'cause we'd been waiting for it for, literally, years, after being blown away by the band's first album, this one. Our review of Godlike Snake ran something like this: "...this stoner rock band is a good 'un, taking a way spacier route to the Dopethrone than most. Wonderfully heavy and mesmerizing, with loads of effects, Moog, and (pardon the expression) "fat" churning drone-grind-groove... A new fave for us in the stoner/doom realm... Especially recommended for those that miss the old Monster Magnet sound, or relish the idea of a heavier Hawkwind." Listening to it now (which a bunch of us have been doing *every day* in the store), we're if anything EVEN MORE into it. Something we hadn't noticed before was how some tracks come across like Godflesh or early Killing Joke melded to Hawkwind. Crushing and enveloping and sooooooo good. It's like Electric Wizard gone spacerock, or an industrialized Dead Meadow.
Italian import and limited.
MPEG Stream: "Satan"