GONZALES, CHILLY Entertainist (Kitty Yo) cd 15.98
God, this sucks ass. Only if you really liked him at the recent Peaches live show will you probably want this. With names like Patric Catani (EC8OR), Bomb 20 and even Peaches given production credits (and even a L'Trimm sample!), you'd hope for a decent record, but the godawful lyrics are just so damn bad.

GONZALEZ, DELIA & GAVIN RUSSOM Relevee (Astralwerks) cd ep 7.98
Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom's alchemic synthesizer excursions invoking 70's Klaus Schulze/Manuel Gottsching/Tangerine Dream's long-form synth-prog efforts get the remix treatment on this single. What you get is an alternate take and 3 remixes of the song "Relevee" from their self-titled full length on DFA. The remixers are DFA (of course), Baby Ford ('80s acid-house, anyone?) and the minimalist house of Carl Craig, whose latest remixes, this and his remix of Rhythm and Sound's "Poor People Must Work" is actually making us enjoy house music. Which, as you well know, is quite a feat around here.
MPEG Stream: "Relevee (Alternate Version)"
MPEG Stream: "Relevee (Carl Craig Remix)"

GONZALEZ, DELIA & GAVIN RUSSOM The Days Of Mars (Astralwerks / DFA) cd 16.98
Somehow missed this when it came out last year. But with Delia & Gavin being recent Arthur Magazine cover stars we figured we should get on the ball. Some of us remember hearing a 12" of theirs on DFA that stood out as it was really like nothing else on the label. These weren't sounds interested in making you dance and shaking your ass, instead they were about creating a trance, a hypnotizing, tranquil and space-bound dreamlike state. The album takes the same approach and even widens and propels its effect. With 5 long songs that will no doubt make you think of the best of Tangerine Dream. So entrancing and mesmerizing. The Days of Mars sort of sounds like trying to travel to outer space in an old helicopter that rises ever so slowly with its rotors going around and around, an analog starship travelling through some druggy digital universe. Taking cues from lots of the best of 70's electronic minded ambient recordings, like the collaborations between Eno & Cluster, as well as the most spaced out moments of pre-Wall Pink Floyd, this is a record that totally nails its sound so well. Something so mesmerizing, empty, and creepy about its presence. There have been times near closing hour where there will be just one person in the store and this will be on and there's just the weirdest tension that begins to permeate the store. Like a film loop of a acid drenched washed out kodachrome shot image that you can't stop staring at. This is the sound of hours after the rave, days of being awake, nights of being in a complete daze. A late night early morning eyes wide shut dreamstate blissout for sure! We are hooked!
MPEG Stream: "Relevee"
MPEG Stream: "Black Spring"

GOODIEPAL Narc Beacon (Skipp) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Goodiepal is an extremely shy young man from Denmark who plays gleefully bent music that teeters on the fringes of experimental electronica (ala Mego) and Scandinavian flavored folk music. A collector of unusually tweaked and jagged sounds, Goodiepal maintains a day job independently contracting sound work from companies like Nokia, Chupa Chups, Hitachi, Carlsberg, Matrix, blah blah blah... Anyway, the music itself disguises a dissonant, troublemaking problem child with wide-eyed innocence as captivating as it is irritating. To confuse even further, he records under aliases like Chupa Chups and Mainpal Inv. and collaborates with the Italian Gamers In Exile and those V/VM pranksters. From dreamy, otherworldly arrangements involving acoustic guitars, resonating chimes, car horns, toy recorders and other wind instruments to a brilliantly conceived acapella track performed through a vocoder, Goodiepal brings back a Jean Jacques Perry or Electric Company (the old TV program, mind you) feel to inspire a new, inventive, and playful electronic music. After I first put this on, I looked again inside the cardboard package to see if there was a toy prize! On Dat Politics' own label Skipp!
RealAudio clip: "Icon Dub"
RealAudio clip: "Lick Lick Flick Flick"
RealAudio clip: "My Robotic Skills Have Failed"

GORILLAZ Demon Days (EMI) cd 17.98
Some changes have taken place in the Gorillaz 'virtual band' ranks since their wildly popular, super vibrant and fun self-titled debut in 2000. That album was a wholly collaborative effort between Blur-man Damon Albarn, man-of-many-hats Dan The Automator, and cartoon illustrator Jamie Hewlett along with contributions from Miho Hatori, Ibrahim Ferrer and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien. For one thing, Mr. Automator has left the clubhouse, leaving Albarn as the lone lord of the musical manor. An immediate clue-in to the contrast between 'old' and 'new' Gorillaz can be read in the album's title and seen in Hewlett's latest Gorillaz' illustrations. He continues to provide the visual representation of the group, but his former palette of playful cartoonish hues have been replaced by the darker tones found in the more mature subject matter of graphic novels -- a suitable match for the headier undertones of the music. On the cover characters' faces there's nothing but grimaces and suspicious scowls. When we heard that Danger Mouse was slipping into the production control seat formerly occupied by The Automator, we were expecting some manner of radical changes in the Gorillaz's actual sound -- perhaps a little wilder approach or sumthin'? -- but it's really not that drastic of a departure from their past recordings. No, the primary difference is in the album's moodier undercurrent. Whereas the conceptual and sonic effervescence of its predecessor offered a sense of escapism, once you delve beneath the shiny pop surface of Demon Days, things feel somewhat more claustrophobic, sinister and foreboding. Guests this time include Neneh Cherry, Martina Topley-Bird, Happy Mondays' Shaun Ryder (!), London Community Gospel Choir, San Fernandez Youth Chorus and even Dennis Hopper! Dig it!
MPEG Stream: "Last Living Souls"
MPEG Stream: "Dare"

GORILLAZ G Sides (Virgin) cd 15.98
Well they certainly didn't make it easy to figure the whys and wherefore of this companion to the proper Gorillaz album. It looks like a bunch of remixes, alternate version, and songs that didn't make it onto the other album. It's decent and listenable, even if the remix of "19-2000" reminds Allan of the Spin Doctors!
RealAudio clip: "19-2000 (Soulchild remix)"
RealAudio clip: "Faust"

GORILLAZ s/t (Virgin) cd 17.98
Previously import only, now available domestically for like $8 less! Gorillaz is a project of AQ-pal Dan the Automator (Dr. Octagon, Deltron 3030) with guests Damon Albarn (Blur), Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto), Ibrahim Ferrer (Buena Vista Social Club), and Del tha Funky Homosapien! Sounds exactly like you'd think it would (assuming you'd think it would sound mostly like Blur, with little hip hop flourishes), with Dan's funkified hip hop under a layer of Albarn's slightly mopey vocals. (The tracks with Del on the mic are much more successful.) This already sold over a million copies in Europe; way to go Dan!
RealAudio clip: "Sound Check"
RealAudio clip: "Double Bass"

GOTH-TRAD New Epoch (Deep Medi Musik) cd 17.98
We've long been fans of Japanese dubstepper Goth-Trad, aka Takeaki Maruyama, who has been responsible for some of our favorite 12"s ("Back To Chill" still gets regular spins), and who most remarkably is much more than a DJ or laptop jockey, instead playing samplers, keyboards and designing and building his own instruments, creating a sound that while essentially dubstep, incorporates all manner of other electronic musics, jungle, dub, house, techno, and we were expecting to dig this new full length for sure, but were totally unprepared for the killer opening track "Man In The Maze", the first half of which is total haunting soundtrack, all pizzicato strings, soaring swoonsome strings, dark looped piano melodies, woozy basslines, the sort of sound that has you wondering why nobody has tapped this guy to score their movie, so moving and emotional and darkly evocative, for a minute we had fantasies that maybe for this record he ditched the beats all together and created some imaginary soundtrack, but fear not, the beats come in gradually, subtle typewriter chitter, simple pulse, a strange layered sort of handclap, and then finally, the beat drops, skittery and stuttery, mirrored by another pizzicato string melody, the groove woozy and warped and totally incredible, another track we had to listen to about 20 times before we could bring ourselves to move on.
And while the rest of the record is not nearly so cinematic, the tracks are pretty moody and atmospheric, definitely dubbed out, minimal and fantastically abstract, less overtly dubstep than past outings, more a sort of stripped down late night techno, all skeletal and spare, but when the dubstep does drop, like on "Air Breaker", it's fantastically noisy, squelchy and seriously tripped out. The rest of the record is all over the place darkly funky one second, moody and murky the next, skittery and glitchy the next. The other jam here has to be "Mirage", which mixes playful bubbly synths with woozy warbly melodies, glitchy beats and thick layered buzz, laced with bursts of eighties synth swirl and fuzzy low end blurt, somehow super funky, but also weirdly psychedelic. Easily one of our new favorite electronica / dubstep / techno records for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Man In The Maze"
MPEG Stream: "Departure"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmos"

GOTH-TRAD New Epoch (Deep Medi Musik) 3lp + cd 38.00
We've long been fans of Japanese dubstepper Goth-Trad, aka Takeaki Maruyama, who has been responsible for some of our favorite 12"s ("Back To Chill" still gets regular spins), and who most remarkably is much more than a DJ or laptop jockey, instead playing samplers, keyboards and designing and building his own instruments, creating a sound that while essentially dubstep, incorporates all manner of other electronic musics, jungle, dub, house, techno, and we were expecting to dig this new full length for sure, but were totally unprepared for the killer opening track "Man In The Maze", the first half of which is total haunting soundtrack, all pizzicato strings, soaring swoonsome strings, dark looped piano melodies, woozy basslines, the sort of sound that has you wondering why nobody has tapped this guy to score their movie, so moving and emotional and darkly evocative, for a minute we had fantasies that maybe for this record he ditched the beats all together and created some imaginary soundtrack, but fear not, the beats come in gradually, subtle typewriter chitter, simple pulse, a strange layered sort of handclap, and then finally, the beat drops, skittery and stuttery, mirrored by another pizzicato string melody, the groove woozy and warped and totally incredible, another track we had to listen to about 20 times before we could bring ourselves to move on.
And while the rest of the record is not nearly so cinematic, the tracks are pretty moody and atmospheric, definitely dubbed out, minimal and fantastically abstract, less overtly dubstep than past outings, more a sort of stripped down late night techno, all skeletal and spare, but when the dubstep does drop, like on "Air Breaker", it's fantastically noisy, squelchy and seriously tripped out. The rest of the record is all over the place darkly funky one second, moody and murky the next, skittery and glitchy the next. The other jam here has to be "Mirage", which mixes playful bubbly synths with woozy warbly melodies, glitchy beats and thick layered buzz, laced with bursts of eighties synth swirl and fuzzy low end blurt, somehow super funky, but also weirdly psychedelic. Easily one of our new favorite electronica / dubstep / techno records for sure!
MPEG Stream: "Man In The Maze"
MPEG Stream: "Departure"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmos"

GOTO80 Made On Internet (Pinipung) cd 17.98

GOTTSCHING, MANUEL E2 - E4 30th Anniversary (MG.ART) cd 17.98
At last, a nicely done new cd reissue of this renowned early '80s krautrock / proto-techno classic! We've actually never before reviewed E2-E4 because the previous reissues were expensive and kinda hard to come by, though we DID once list a double cd tribute to this record, imported from Japan, featuring tracks by the likes of Rovo, Buffalo Daughter, and Eye from the Boredoms, who took up the entire 2nd disc with his extended mix (wish we still had that, but it's long gone). Better, though, to have this, the actual album that inspired the tribute. Here's some of what we said about it when we reviewed that Japanese tribute disc:
German guitar guru Manuel Gottsching, founder of legendary krautrock pioneers Ash Ra Temple (which morphed into the new-age-ier Ashra), made a few records in the eighties under his own name. E2-E4, recorded in Berlin in 1981, and released in '84, was first and foremost among them. It's rightly hailed as a classic and was a great inspiration for early Detroit techno artists like Derrick May and Carl Craig. The resonant timelessness of E2-E4 has extended beyond many other albums of the era and its influence has continuously popped up in more recent minimalist techno circles - most noticeably within the Cologne scene.
We went on to say that while the reinterpretations on the tribute disc were cool, you should check out the real deal, and now here it is. It's one loooong track, approximately one hour in length, with nine titled and timed subdivisions indicated on the cover (suggestive of a chess match: "Quiet Nervousness", "Queen A Pawn", "Draw"...), that flows and flows and flows, Gottsching's guitar and electronics drifting and dancing beautifully over the continuous, pulsating, subtly-shifting proto-techno beat. It's so very pleasant and airy, also soooo hypnotic and ahead of its time. An hour you won't want to end, once it has lulled you into trance. Listening to this, it's easy to see why the Boredoms' Eye would revere it, and of course those abovementioned Detroit legends too.
This "30th Anniversary" edition comes packaged in a nice embossed miniature lp style sleeve showing off its iconic chess-board cover design.
MPEG Stream: "E2-E4 excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "E2-E4 excerpt 2"

GRAZ Bootleg Babylon (Fukdup) cd 7.98
Latest from Northwestern weirdo electronic label Fukdup, who most famously gave us the awesome grungecore 7" that featured Shitmat covering Nirvana and came packaged in a real flannel shirt! This new one is from Seattle based Graz, who describes his sound as "rapid-fire-amen-infused-mashcore federally certified to crush any party" or as a "glitched out high-speed rave rendition of radio's yesteryear", both pretty much nail it. The beats are all jungly, but not all hyperspeed drum and bass, more often sort of midtempo groovy and funky, and the samples, well, they're all radio hits, past and present Busta Rhymes, Avril Lavigne, Toni Basil, the Archies, Yello and tons more. Those samples sped up, chopped up, layered, twisted up, turned inside out, flipped backwards, slowed down, and strapped to wild unhinged off-kilter beats, rambunctious and chaotic and fun as fuck. Track pulse and throb and pound and bang, housey one second, jungly the next, dipping toes into happy hardcore, dancehall, ragga, rave, drum and bass, and whatever twisted hybrid of all of the above Graz can whip up.
Fun and funky, goofy and pretty much the perfect fractured and freaky and fucked up dance party record.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, packaged with candy bones in the cd spine, and a button!
MPEG Stream: "Flip Flops & Drug Drops"
MPEG Stream: "Avril's Cavalcade Of Rave"
MPEG Stream: "Total Request Mashup"
MPEG Stream: "Junglist Mastiff"

GREATER THAN ONE Kill The Pedagogue (Brainwashed) cd 9.98
When this arrived in the shop, there was a collective cry,"Whoa, Greater Than One? What ever happened to them?" Well, it turns out that the once prolific industrial dance duo ceased to be after Lee Newman died of cancer in 1995. While the pairing of Lee Newman and Michael Wells had a handful of fantastic if agitated Greater Than One albums that graced the Wax Trax! catalogue throughout the late '80s and early '90s, they were also a leading proponent of the bleep techno sound that marked the early incarnation of Warp Records in recording as Tricky Disco. Needless to say, Kill The Pedagogue predates all of that stuff, having been originally released back in 1985 as a self-released cassette. Greater Than One had much more in common with the rhythm and noise collages of Throbbing Gristle and TG's many disciples (esp. Hunting Lodge, Portion Control, and Hula) through distorted tape loops, media samples disfigured through warbling varispeed tricks, and post-Cabaret Voltaire drum machines pushed toward exhaustion with their tumbling patterns of tribal rhythms. Given that the original cassette was a mere 28 minutes long, those fine folks at Brainwashed filled out the disc with MP3s including all of the material from another self-released cassette from back in the day called Lay Your Penis Down plus a bunch of photos and the like.
MPEG Stream: "Kill The Pedagogue 1"
MPEG Stream: "Lay Your Penis Down 1"

GREEN, PETER Macbeth: An Original Score (Rephlex) cd 9.98
British electro-acoustic artist Peter Green is best known for his collaborations with Mike Dred, Virtual Farmer and Laptop Dancing (both on Rephlex). This original score was commissioned by the United Spirits Theatre Company for the latest West End production of Macbeth. Not too impressive, sort of ambient electro-acoustic soundtracky stuff. Mediocre.

GRIDLOCK Trace (Unit) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Having roots in EBM and industrial dance klang, Gridlock's "Trace" settles down into the fertile soil of IDM plowed by Autechre. While not much in the way of originality, this album is a very well done piece of IDM, mirroring the distorto-crunch plodding breakbeats and minor-key half melodies pleading for melancholia found on Autechre's "Amber" and Bola's "Fyuti."
MPEG Stream: "Front"

GRIER, JASON & NITE JEWEL Heart Shaped EP (Human Ear) cd ep 13.98
We weren't familiar at all with Jason Grier, but seeing him teamed up with Nite Jewel on this outing definitely grabbed our attention, as she's for sure one of our favorite left-field hazy dance floor peddlers. Grier gives us a nice peek at how great Nite Jewel sounds in a more uptempo setting. But not to fear, there are still those great valium-on-the-disco-dance-floor moments, like the ten minute syrupy jam "On And On", and the sizzling slow burn of "Midnight Blue". In fact this ep has pretty much perfect pacing, starting off with the more poppy dance jams and then easing into a more atmospheric post-disco comedown. Nice.

GRIER, JASON & NITE JEWEL Heart Shaped EP (Human Ear) 12" 13.98
We weren't familiar at all with Jason Grier, but seeing him teamed up with Nite Jewel on this outing definitely grabbed our attention, as she's for sure one of our favorite left-field hazy dance floor peddlers. Grier gives us a nice peek at how great Nite Jewel sounds in a more uptempo setting. But not to fear, there are still those great valium-on-the-disco-dance-floor moments, like the ten minute syrupy jam "On And On", and the sizzling slow burn of "Midnight Blue". In fact this ep has pretty much perfect pacing, starting off with the more poppy dance jams and then easing into a more atmospheric post-disco comedown. Nice.

GRIMES Geidi Primes (No Pain In Pop) cd 14.98

GRIMES Visions (4AD) cd 14.98
We loved what we heard on Grimes' split 12" with D'eon that we were finally able to review a few lists ago, but our love for Grimes really blossomed when some of us got to catch her/them live late in 2011, in town opening for Austra. We could tell then that they were on the verge of creating something pretty awesome. Visions totally delivers on that promise, Grimes' glorious soft gaze synth driven sound creating not just a hazy atmosphere but producing memorable and mesmerizing pop songs as well.
Like the sounds of Gang Gang Dance and Glasser softly drifting through a smoke filled room, the sounds here manage to be both tender and sexy. While Grimes may too often be pigeonholed as a witch house band, there is something much more bright, melodic and sonically rounded about their sound and approach. Each song has its own distinct vibe and tonal color. Sometimes it sounds like Little Dragon doing the most seductive Blondie song ever and other times it's like Chromatics letting their hair down at an after hours '90s RnB dance party. Airy without being too light, addictive without being too saccharine. Visions definitely transports us to some fantastical sonic otherworld that we're digging big time...
MPEG Stream: "Oblivion"
MPEG Stream: "Circumambient"

GRIMES Visions (4AD) lp 16.98
We loved what we heard on Grimes' split 12" with D'eon that we were finally able to review a few lists ago, but our love for Grimes really blossomed when some of us got to catch her/them live late in 2011, in town opening for Austra. We could tell then that they were on the verge of creating something pretty awesome. Visions totally delivers on that promise, Grimes' glorious soft gaze synth driven sound creating not just a hazy atmosphere but producing memorable and mesmerizing pop songs as well.
Like the sounds of Gang Gang Dance and Glasser softly drifting through a smoke filled room, the sounds here manage to be both tender and sexy. While Grimes may too often be pigeonholed as a witch house band, there is something much more bright, melodic and sonically rounded about their sound and approach. Each song has its own distinct vibe and tonal color. Sometimes it sounds like Little Dragon doing the most seductive Blondie song ever and other times it's like Chromatics letting their hair down at an after hours '90s RnB dance party. Airy without being too light, addictive without being too saccharine. Visions definitely transports us to some fantastical sonic otherworld that we're digging big time...
MPEG Stream: "Oblivion"
MPEG Stream: "Circumambient"

GRIMES / D'EON Darkbloom (Arbutus / Hippos In Tanks) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We had never heard Canadian electro-soul experimentalist Grimes before, but had heard a lot about her, and we have to say, her sound definitely lives up to the hype, her voice spectral and girlish, a sweet high croon one second, a Kate Bush like wail the next, the vocals wrapped in ethereal atmospheric swirls and pulsing electro synths, skittery IDM rhythms, all subtly glitched out, laced with haunting pianos, everything hazy and reverby, a little witch house-y, but for all it's weirdness and experimentalism, it's also seriously poppy, and about as commercial as stuff like this can get without switching teams, like in some alternate universe, this would be all over the radio, and should be. Folks who dig Zola Jesus, Glass Candy, Salem, oOoOO, Cosmetics and the like will dig big time.
D'eon, whose Palinopsia 12" we reviewed a while back, drags things back squarely into some outsider soul / weirdo electronics netherworld, with a gorgeous, hazy softly psychedelic intro, all swooshy new age synths, and spidery barely there guitar, cascading melodies, swoonsome underwater bass, and a melodic refrain that had this sounding almost like a re-interpretation of the Twin Peaks theme, but laced with a skeletal rhythm created by glitchy cell phone interference, that immediately recognizable stuttery static...
But after that, it's back to the fractured fucked up retro soul D'eon does so well, super washed out, kaleidoscopic eighties flashback grooves, Terrence Trent D'Arby like soulful vox, draped over smears of synth shimmer, and warbly loops, an avant IDM soul that seems to gradually blossom into even more crunchy glitched out rhythms, almost jungly at one point, but never shedding its gloriously dated eighties haze. The closer, with its electronic bass, and electro handclaps, definitely sounds like some lost eighties VHS soundtrack, bouncy, soulful, groovy, and fracturedly funky.

GRIZZLY BEAR Shields (Warp) 2lp 31.00
It took some of us a while to come around, but we eventually ended up digging Grizzly Bear's debut, Veckatimest, quite a bit - orchestral pop equal parts Van Dyke Parks and Elliott Smith, lush and lovely, impossibly catchy, dreamily dramatic. So we were definitely prepared to dig this new one, but we weren't necessarily prepared for THIS. Give the opening track a listen (the first sound sample below), and be as baffled by us by GB's new sound, and we mean baffled in a good way, a really good way, in place of their sweetly twee Pitchfork-y pop, is something downright PROGGY, dark and driving, they sound like some obscure Italian prog from the seventies, we hear a little Yes too, some Comus even, everything minor key and darkly tinged, intensely strummed acoustic guitars, the vocals reminding us of Terry Reid, the dense mix rife with blooping percolating synths, driven by bombastic drumming, the sounds stereo panned, swooping from speaker to speaker, there's even some seriously hard rocking fuzz drenched psych guitar, it's total modern retro trip out psychedelic prog. We're curious how fans of the last record will feel about this, but we can definitely tell you we're LOVING it. Sort of the way Malachai reimagined seventies proto metal and fuzzy psych rock, the sound here, at least in places, is equal parts obscure prog and acid folk, a bit modernized for sure, but that opener, wow.
Nothing else on the record is so overtly retro prog, but that vibe does ooze into the rest of the record, giving the whole thing a definite retro feel, the production, the arrangements, the songs, plenty of tripped out experimentation, dark drones, GB's dreamy pop does of course shine through in places, but for the most part, the feel is a bit more haunting and melancholic, and yeah, folky / proggy / sixties / seventies sounding, with some of the songs dipping into early Peter Gabriel and Genesis territory (just check out "What's Wrong"), and others unfurling as almost classic rock sounding ballads, but darkly psychedelic and dramatically brooding (check out the closer "Sun In Your Eyes"), which makes for a cool / strange balance for the overt pop that surfaces throughout. Awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Sleeping Ute"
MPEG Stream: "Speak In Rounds"
MPEG Stream: "What's Wrong"
MPEG Stream: "Sun In Your Eyes"

GROOVES issue #9 magazine 4.95
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Read about Amon Tobin, Christian Fennesz, Mum, Negativland, Suicide, Rosy Parlane, Wobbly, Ikue Mori, Goodiepal, and lots more in this ninth issue of the ever thicker and slicker "experimental electronic music magazine" Grooves. Music *and* gear reviews fill out the pages, making this good reading for both electronica consumers and producers.

GROUND ZERO Conflagration (CreativeMan Disc) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The second in a series of three, this features remixes of Ground Zero's Consume Red disc. Bob Ostertag, Violent Onsen Geisha, Gastr del Sol, Stock Hausen & Walkman and others participate.

GROUND ZERO Consummation (Creativeman Disc) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The third volume of the three-part "Consume Ground Zero" project--this is the one which consists of "remixes" derived from volumes one and two, submitted by the general public and selected for this release. An international line-up of names neither you nor I have probably ever heard of before (Art Karaoke, Stomach Oh-Yeah, DJ Smallcock, Xonk, etc.) except of course for celebrated AQ-pals Matmos who also make an appearance here. Japanese digipak import.

GROUND ZERO Gig - Last Concert (Amoebic) cd 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
March 8, 1998 was the date of the final performace of Otomo Yoshihide's turntable/improv-jazz outfit, Ground Zero, with a huge ensemble backing him (Sachiko M, Hirose Jyunji, Kikuchi Naruyoshi, Okura Masahiko, Chino Syuichi, Masuno Tatsuki, Nagata Kazuano, Nasuno Mitsuru, Uemura Masahiro, Yoshigaki Yasuhiro, and Kondo Yoshiaki). The first two tracks are Ground Zero's speed-jazz-noise assaults pretty close to Painkiller and Naked City playing at the same time. While the last is the breathtakingly hypnotic Consume Red of super slow moving turntable rumble with almost Egyptian-reed-like flares of horns.

GROUND ZERO Null and Void (Tzadik) cd 15.98
Otomo Yoshihide, the Japanese sampling dynamo, leads this 6-piece band in some creative jumpcuts.

GROUND ZERO Plays Standards (DIW) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yay! After being out of print for the last couple of years, this fantastic album has finally been reissued! Unfortunately it's not a domestic reissue, so the price tag is still import-high. But it's well worth the $, being one of our very favorite discs by Otomo Yoshihide's amazing sampling/noise/jazz outfit Ground Zero. This one's all covers, Ground Zero interpretations of tunes as far ranging as Massacre's "Bones" to John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March", Omoide Hatoba to Burt Bacharach... Includes liner notes in both English and Japanese explaining Otomo's reasons for doing each song. Great album, great band. If you missed it the first time, get it now!!
RealAudio clip: "A Better Tomorrow + I Say A Little Prayer "

GROUND ZERO / BASTARD (Pandemonium) 7" 3.99
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
GZ: One long, live track. Heavy on the sampling mayhem and turntable fuckery.
B: Truly bizarre, repetitive, turntablized hypno-rock.

GROUP RHODA Out Of Time - Out Of Touch (Night School) cd 14.98

GROUP RHODA Out Of Time - Out Of Touch (Night School) lp 16.98

GROUPER Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill (Kranky) lp 14.98
Now repressed and back in stock on vinyl!!
With the release of Grouper's newly revealed record, The Man Who Died In His Boat, Kranky has also reissued what is arguably Liz Harris's best record, Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, from 2008, on cd and lp (though we're already out of lps, dang it). Which makes sense since both records are psychically entwined together like lost twin sisters - more on that in the new album's review elsewhere on this list. It's the first time Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill has been reissued on cd, so we're glad it's finally available again and hopefully it will stick around for awhile. Here is what we originally said about it in 2008:
Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill opens with an entirely characteristic yet coy swell of effected elemental smear, crumbling delicately yet forcefully, until giving way to what is, to date, and here is the coy part, Liz Harris' most songwriterly and structured album. As opposed to the rich swaths of drone that up until now defined her sound, Harris has shifted from the abstract towards a more distinct and figurative sound. True to the title, the record unfolds like a sort of mysterious and morbid fairytale, innocent in its clear and elegant melodies, yet creepy and highly abstract in its more droney and sublime interludes. For the most part, her guitar playing is laid bare, removed from the dense fog of effects that typically occlude them. And what we discover is actually a pretty strummy record, with plenty of clean guitar articulation though certainly the aroma of her previous tech heavy approach remains in what is relatively speaking still pretty effected. At times she even reverts back to the gorgeous icy crunchy string attack of some previous efforts. With so much space liberated in the absence of drones, we also get to hear her stunning voice. Furthermore, the occasional audible lyric creeps to the surface, one standout fragment being "Love Is Enormous", a somewhat shockingly affirmative sentiment from an otherwise darkly mysterious and abstract persona. From start to finish Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill lulls you into its graceful murmurings and hypnotic thrumming. An exquisite addition to an already compelling discography. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Disengaged"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Water/ I'd Rather Be Sleeping"

GRY WITH FM EINHEIT AND HIS ORCHESTRA Public Recordings (FM 4.5.1) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
New project from FM Einheit (the muscleman / technician who left Neubauten a few years ago) Gry Bagoien and Einheit have collaborated to create a German cabaret version of Portishead full of tensely building left-field electronica. Gry whines and whispers with all of the theatricalities of Beth Gibbons with bossanova flares and Peter Thomas-like brash horns. Plus there are a handful of special guests: Funkstorung, Pan Sonic, Terranova, and Alexander Hacke.

GUENTER, MARKUS Doppelgaenger (Sending Orbs) cd 25.00

GUENTNER, MARKUS 1981 (Kompakt) cd 15.98
We just can't get enough of this "pop ambient" stuff. This is exactly how the future will sound. And how the distant past must have sounded. And how right now would sound if we could just listen close enough. After a somewhat disappointing second album, Guentner returns to form with another gorgeous batch of crystalline ambient pop. A couple tracks are Kompakt gems of perfectly pulsing narcoticized dancefloor throb, but the majority are dreamy and whispery, drifting and abstract explorations into inner space. Crackly and fuzzy, warm and languid, everything with a dreamy sheen, slanted rays of the sun diffused into warm yellow clouds, every movement setting off a chain reaction, molecules bumping into one another, the sound of a trillion colliding molecules becoming a distant buzz that swells into warm waves of gentle whispers and barely there rhythms. Fish in the sea and birds in the sky move in perfect synchronicity, creating a simple insistent pulse, that suffuses every living creature, as we soon find that gradually we all begin to move in concert with this hidden heart beat. Rain drops ring like chimes as they hit the ground, each one a different size and color and note, like a million bells ringing at once, becoming a huge warm chord that just sort of spills over the horizon, spreading slowly until we're all floating weightless atop a slowly shifting sea of sound, letting ourselves blissfully sink to the bottom.
MPEG Stream: "Wanderung"
MPEG Stream: "Wenn Musik Der Liebe Nahrung Ist"

GUENTNER, MARKUS Audio Island (Ware) cd 14.98
Following the electro-ambient hush of "In Moll" which was released on Kompakt in 2001, Markus Guentner hits us with another album of pleasant tech house grooves that beefs up the drum machine and the Moroder-esque arppegiations for ample dancefloor booty shaking, but doesn't entirely remove the silken 'pop ambient' sub-genre that Kompakt has been pushing for the past 18 months or so. While a few of the tracks are pretty standard in their four-on-the-floor drum machine progressions, Guenter mixes things up with occasion nods to electro revivalism and to Shitkatapult shuffletime grooves, as well as an Ibiza house cover of Talk Talk's "It's A Shame"!!!
MPEG Stream: "Sunset"
MPEG Stream: "Such A Shame"

GUENTNER, MARKUS In Moll (Kompakt) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Squelches and whirrs nestle in rolling hills of fuzzy dreamy drones as clicks and pops struggle for air beneath a downy blanket of suffocatingly gorgeous billowy clouds of synth wash. Sound good? It does.
It's German electronica artist Markus Guentner's debut cd for the Kompakt label. For those of you who don't know, the Kompakt label has developed an almost timeless aesthetic, not unlike the 'heroin house' sound of Chain Reaction. The Kompakt sound is an application of the often invoked but rarely successful working model of 'ambient techno'. A good example of this sort of thing that AQ-customers probably know about ('cause we sell so many of 'em) is the Wolfgang Voigt project Gas. His minimalist techno releases (in particular the Gas album "Konigsforst") are some of the few electronica albums that all Aquarians can agree on and strongly endorse.
In creating "In Moll," Markus Guentner has done more than his part to fill the void created by Voigt's unusual absence, with a disc that captures much of the feel we liked so much about the Gas records, a sort of dreamy melancholy that manages to be both wistful and hopeful, lonely and warm. Jeff thinks it has a real "change of seasons" vibe, that harkens, again, to Gas. And while the Gas comparison is surely accurate (if you haven't caught our drift already, let's state: fans of Gas should pick this up without a second thought!), Guenter does add his own flair to Voigt's signature sound though, creating a more varied and more dynamic soundscape than Voigt's pastoral hum and thump.
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 3"
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 5"
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 7"

GUENTNER, MARKUS In Moll (Kompakt) 2lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another of our staff-chosen Records of the Week with a vinyl version now also available. Here's what we said in AQL#126 about this fabulous record: Squelches and whirrs nestle in rolling hills of fuzzy dreamy drones as clicks and pops struggle for air beneath a downy blanket of suffocatingly gorgeous billowy clouds of synth wash. Sound good? It does.
It's German electronica artist Markus Guentner's debut cd for the Kompakt label. For those of you who don't know, the Kompakt label has developed an almost timeless aesthetic, not unlike the 'heroin house' sound of Chain Reaction. The Kompakt sound is an application of the often invoked but rarely successful working model of 'ambient techno'. A good example of this sort of thing that AQ-customers probably know about ('cause we sell so many of 'em) is the Wolfgang Voigt project Gas. His minimalist techno releases (in particular the Gas album "Konigsforst") are some of the few electronica albums that all Aquarians can agree on and strongly endorse.
In creating "In Moll," Markus Guentner has done more than his part to fill the void created by Voigt's unusual absence, with a disc that captures much of the feel we liked so much about the Gas records, a sort of dreamy melancholy that manages to be both wistful and hopeful, lonely and warm. Jeff thinks it has a real "change of seasons" vibe, that harkens, again, to Gas. And while the Gas comparison is surely accurate (if you haven't caught our drift already, let's state: fans of Gas should pick this up without a second thought!), Guenter does add his own flair to Voigt's signature sound though, creating a more varied and more dynamic soundscape than Voigt's pastoral hum and thump.
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 3"
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 5"
RealAudio clip: "In Moll 7"

GUENTNER, MARKUS Regensburg / Remix (Kompakt) 12" 9.98
Four track ep by Markus Guentner, who brought us the lovely "In Moll" lp last year. Two tracks are remixes of the title track, by the dominating forces on the Cologne scene, Wolfgang Voigt and Michael Mayer.

GUERRERO, TOMMY A Little Bit Of Something (Mo Wax / Beggars Banquet) cd 14.98
San Francisco's Tommy Guerrero finds himself on Mo' Wax for "A Little Bit Of Something." And he's right at home, as this album recapitulates the blunted trip hop sound that put Mo' Wax on the map in the mid-90s with lots of groovy Spanish guitar licks and mellowed basslines. As pretty, mildly quirky, and downright inoffensive as the Margaret Kilgallen cover art.

GUERRERO, TOMMY Junk Collector (Mo'Wax) cd ep 8.98

GUERRERO, TOMMY Soul Food Taqueria (Mo Wax) cd 14.98

GUIDO Anidea (Punch Drunk) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's hard to put our finger on what exactly it is about this record from UK electronic / dubstep producer Guido that has us so obsessed, but all it took was a single listen, and we were hooked. We haven't been able to stop listening to it since.
The first three tracks are pretty much perfect, not quite dubstep, not quite electro, but super melodic, a little skittery, playful and weirdly soulful, The opener pairs a spare beat to a dreamy minor key melody, letting the song develop slowly, the notes sounding like pizzicato strings, the vibe spare and skeletal, but very cinematic, synth stabs surfacing in the background, while little melodic flurries swirl around that main melody and that stuttery beat. "Orchestral Lab" might be even catchier, with its main squelchy synth melody, totally irresistible, almost anthemic, and then when the track switches gears, and gets all moody and minor key, it sounds again like the weirdo synth soundtrack to some super dramatic sci-fi space opera, laced with soaring strings, and then some cool dubby dubstep bass counterpoint, giving it some groove and heft, but then it slips right back into that main melody. The third track "Woke Up Early" just seals the deal, beginning with a sputter of stumbling beats, before a woozy squiggly synth melody gets all tangled up in there, and some fizzing spacey swirls of hiss and shimmer, lurching along, sun dappled, a little psychedelic, a lot groovy, stuff like this is often to light for us, but this is so goddamn good. The only real bummer is, that these first three songs are so awesome, we've barely made any further headway onto the rest of the record. There are definitely worse problems, and giving the rest of the record a quick once over right now, reveals that there's most likely more favorite tracks to come, more ridiculous sonic obsessions, including a handful of vocal driven tracks that rule, fuzzy and buzzy and skittery and a little spacey, the vocals chopped up and wrapped around the lurching beats, the record closes with a fierce chunk of late night dubstep, driven by some seriously thick bass wobble, an ominous and dark bit of stutter step that pretty much matches the opening trio in terms of complete radness. And be sure to stick around, there's a secret track tucked away at the end.
Another new electronic favorite for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Anidea"
MPEG Stream: "Orchestral Lab"
RealAudio clip: "Woke Up Early"

GUILTY CONNECTOR A Conspiracy of the Mankind (Planet-Mu) 7" 6.98

GUILTY CONNECTOR Beats, Noise, and Life (Planet Mu) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "New York Shibaki Terror Conversation (Culture Shock Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Nishi - Ogi Punk Waste (Dedicated To Struggle For Pride)"

GUILTY GHOSTS Veils (Words + Dreams ) cassette + cd-r + silkscreened canvas bag 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Weirdly enough, we first heard Guilty Ghosts on some mysterious witch house / drag compilation someone made for us, that track a haunting bit of morose skeletal downer guitar pop, all chiming 4AD guitars over skittery clipped rhythms and soft focus swirls of hushed dreamlike shimmer, not to mention swoonsome strings, listening to that track again now, has us wondering why exactly the rest of the world hasn't caught on to Guilty Ghosts. It's the sort of thing a label like Matador or Fatcat or XL should be flipping out over.
But for now, GG, aka Tristan O'Donnell, is going the DIY route, releasing his own tapes and cd-r's, and we managed to get a handful of the deluxe version of his most recent full length, which does in fact include that mixtape jam we loved so much back in the day, and we're happy to report that the whole record is brimming with more of the same, lush expanses of layered guitars, softly tangled melodies, warm swirling buzz, looped breakbeats, the sound melancholic and wistful, the drum driven jams sounding like a darker, more mysterious underground lo-fi shoegaze pop version of the Happy Mondays, while the more guitarscapey tracks remind us of the Durutti Column, and when the vocals come in, it's total shoegaze dreampop bliss. Just check out "Everlasting Evening", which is the sort of jam we wish would go on forever, a thick swirl of guitar buzz, beneath strummed acoustic guitars, underneath ethereal streaks of tangled psychedelic melodies, buried mysterious samples, and some gorgeous angelic female vox, it's definitely easy to see why GG would be embraced by the witch house camp, but the sound is so much more lush and composed, O'Donnell's sights set somewhere much higher, these tracks expansive and cinematic, with tracks like "Everlasting Evening" reminding us of MBV and Portishead and the like.
The whole record unfurls like a dream, the lush swirling tangle of guitars all on its own would be enough to have us smitten, but the occasional vox, and the various rhythms, the ever shifting drones and textures, all deftly woven into gorgeous sonic dreamscapes, and be sure to check out "Begotten", tucked away near the end of the tape, which just might be our favorite jam here, haunting and lovely, like the brooding slow building soundtrack to some heart wrenching scene in an arty big budget blockbuster, we're surprised someone hasn't snapped this up for some Christopher Nolan trailer or something. So awesome. And obviously totally recommended!!
This limited version includes both a tape, with a printed J-card, a sticker AND a bonus mix cd, which offers up a ton of cool and super varied GG beloved jams, all gathered up in a screen printed canvas drawstring bag.
MPEG Stream: "Begotten"
MPEG Stream: "The End Of Akira"
MPEG Stream: "Everlasting Evening"
MPEG Stream: "Late Night Voyages"

GUISHER Hide Your Cold Dome (self-released) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We weren't sure what to expect from a Scantily Clad side project, but it certainly wasn't this! But we like it. In fact we sort of LOVE it. Unlike the cosmic synth drone of Scantily Clad, Guisher specializes in a dizzying, short attention span collection of home brewed lo-fi cut and paste, slice and dice, collaged, sample heavy, hyper rhythmic loopscapes. Sped up soul samples, snippets of songs off the radio, are slathered in crumbling distortion, then assembled into strange stuttery beatscapes, waves of white noise swallow up the proceedings, only to spit out fragmented shards of pop on the other side.
The sound is awesomely raw and primitive, like some caveman Art Of Noise at times, but the structures and rhythms are often surprisingly complex, and downright groovy at times, while pulverizingly noisy at others. The sound is pretty fantastic, slipping from DJ Shadow like moody skitter to weird world music collage to barely there short wave static in the same track, only to weave some sort of analog assembled electronica on the next track, all lumbering rhythm surrounded by flurries of tangled melodies, and weird swooping backwards effects. And so it goes, a head spinning kitchen sink concoction, a blast of crunchy electric guitars, shards of yacht rock, blasts of static and slowed down voices one second, warm and warbly, shuffling sort-of-electronic woozy rhythmic groovescape the next. So great! And apparently all recorded while on prescription drugs, which definitely might explain everything...
SUPER SUPER LIMITED. ONLY 55 COPIES, partially because the packaging is so deluxe, an oversized photocopied booklet with tons of fold out pages, secret panels, a little multi paneled triangular booklet in the middle, and a foldout poster, all in a plastic bag, each one individually sewed shut with multi-colored thread.
MPEG Stream: "Cuddle Consent"
MPEG Stream: "Chewed Popcorn"
MPEG Stream: "Spine Bottom Dimples"

GUITAR Tokyo (Onitor) cd 15.98
We'd venture a guess that Guitar aka Michael Luckner is not a man of many words. He chose the name of the common musical instrument as his moniker, and makes uncommonly dreamy instrumental music from a broad palette of processed guitar sounds that offer a healthy nod to My Bloody Valentine. On his latest album which he's titled simply with the name of a major Japanese city, he's got Japanese vocalist Ayako Akashiba adding some honey-sweet murmurred vocals to three of the tracks. The music has a hazy translucence as if each track (vocals included) were painted in watercolor with a smattering of heavier brushstrokes applied with koto and programmed beats. Lovely!
MPEG Stream: "Red & White"
MPEG Stream: "Tokyo Memory"

GUM TAKES TOOTH Silent Cenotaph (Tigertrap) cd 14.98
This recent Record Of The Week, BACK IN STOCK!!
Imagine a band that sounded like a bastard mix of UK-via-Texas, multiple drummered noise rockers Shit And Shine, grinding bass and drum duo Lightning Bolt and legendary weirdo drug rock combo Butthole Surfers. Then imagine the sort of din such a band could and would kick up and mix in all manner of mangled and freaked out electronics. Finally, imagine all of that noise being conjured up essentially by a single drum kit. And thus you have UK duo Gum Takes Tooth, which is essentially a drummer, whose drums are wired up to a dizzying array of home brewed electronics and tone bent circuit boards, with a second member tweaking and fucking with the sound in real time. 43 minutes of electronic-ed drumming might not sound that appealing to some folks, but don't make the call until you get an earful of the sounds these two whip up. Sure at times it's raw and rhythmic, noisy and chaotic, but the sounds here are all over the map, from super charged This Heat style rhythmic workouts, to blasting almost grind metal like blow outs, minimal FX fueled ambient drifts, to tripped out sci-fi psychedelia, murky, meandering distorto slow-core to frenzied noise drenched prog and pretty much every conceivable stop inbetween. Add in some Merzbow style noise, a little Psychic Paramount drum heavy post rock heaviness, some world music like tribalism, and stir it all up, and voila.
Opener "Young Mustard" is a pretty good sampling of what these guys are capable of, offering up a wild frenzy of tribal drum pound, weird processed vox, swirling electronics and FX, which eventually explode into some seriously aggro Lightning Bolt style, blast beat driven, downtuned grind, only to blossom into some Six Finger Satellite like synth-drum craziness, before the whole thing devolves into a abstract stretch of minimal clatter, random bloops and bleeps, swirling electronics, all beginning a slow build, the tribal drums swooping back in, slowly goring more distorted and intense, until finally fracturing into what sounds a bit like the Ruins crossed with Man Is The Bastard, thick blown out buzz low tones, pounding drums, howled processed vox, all woven into a seriously crushing electro-dirge.
"Tankjott" is another good one, starting out with some rapid fire kick drums, some gurgly vox, some squiggly electronics, building to a lurching, stuttery groove, soon more electronics, and more of that heavy bass buzz swoop in, and it's some sort of metallic krautpsych groove, with all manner of buzzes, strange twisted vocals, electronic pulses, before exploding into another fried and buzz drenched rhythmic workout, sounding to us like a way more chaotic / noisy / electronic version of MITB offshoot Geronimo, definitely the heaviest track here, sounding almost metal, but via Hawkwind and This Heat and Melt Banana and all blurred into some impossibly mesmerizing electrometal krautgroove, WAY too short at 7+ minutes.
And in between those two tracks, plenty of hypnotic, cyclical, rhythmic noise, progged out heaviness, stuttery drum heavy buzz and psychedelic noise rock, usually all at the same time, "Strychnine Motive" probably the most traditionally song sounding, but it's really relative, while "The Earth's Mantle Colonised" takes that same sort of sound and trips it WAY out into some sort of psychedelic space rock, the vocals chopped and processed, plenty of spacey squiggles and weird chanted vocals, the whole thing still drum driven big time, "Nomad/Monad" sounds like some bastardized gamelan orchestra, or a punk rock electronic noise version of Konono No.1, all looped thumb piano like melodies, tangled up and barraged by all manner of strange sounds, and then finally, record closer "Hermaphrodite And Nourishment" which does in fact feature a member of Shit And Shine on second drum kit, and while we were expecting a super frenzied drum heavy blowout, instead, it might be the pretties song on the record, all moody and loping and melodic, laced with ringing Tibetan bowls, crooned softly distorted vocals, squalls of feedback, and the cool thing is it never really explodes or freaks out, instead, it's just gorgeously mesmerizing and hypnotic, droned out and tribal, the perfect sort of sonic come down at a record that spends much of its time at a serious musical fever pitch.
Probably one of our most exciting recent musical discoveries (thanks Jason P.!), and with every listen this record continues to confound and delight and reveal more of the weird shit that seems to constantly be going on just below the surface, and odds are if you like any/some/all of the above mentioned bands, imagine them all mashed together and distilled into some wildly and gloriously twisted hybrid, and we imagine you'll probably be as knocked out as we were.
MPEG Stream: "Tankjott"
MPEG Stream: "The Earth's Mantle Colonised"
MPEG Stream: "Young Mustard"
MPEG Stream: "Strychnine Motive"

GUMI, SHINJU Mixing A Ghost (Shadow) cd 15.98
Who cares who Shinju Gumi is? Whoever they are, they've got mixes by Kid Loco (same as on the "Press Play" comp), Solex, Tarwater, etc. Dubby pop triphop electronica...