MURRAY, BRENDAN s/t (Students Of Decay) cd 23.00
It's always exciting to get a new disc of droning mystery from soundmaker Brendan Murray. We went pretty nuts for past releases, which is saying something as it takes a lot these days for a drone record to really get to us. And for a drone artist to consistantly hold our attention record after record. Of course we love drones, so as a sound, we're as likely to be entranced by a huge humming piece of machinery as a meticulously crafted chunk of ultra minimalist dronemusic (hmmm, what exactly does that say about us?), but we're of course partial to the artists who can deftly fashion drones into new and fascinating shapes, or who create music using drones as just one of many elements.
Which is precisely what makes Murray's music so special, just that, it's incredibly musical. He's perfctly capable of kicking up a SUNNO)))-like wall of downtuned dirge, or fashion a skeletal bit of hushed murmur, but even then he infuses those all to common sounds with strange melodies, and abstract textures, transforms simple tones and chords into strange sprawling beasts, sounds become actual songs, with melodies and parts, distinct beginnings and ends, each song is a journey, through thick fields of warm hissy blur, caustic crumbling crunch, chiming crystalline shimmer, deep machine-like industrial whir, clangy and clattery abstract angular guitar flecked noise rock, very Dead C here and there, gorgeously murky and lo-fi, and weirdly looped sounding, intense wall of pink noise whir and billowing clouds of near static organ hum. Dark and dense and mysterious and intense, but always so so gorgeous.
While they last, we have the limited version, that comes with a bonus cd-r, featuring a 30 minute live performance recorded last year, a super intense, ultra heavy exploration of some seriously woofer destroying bassiness. Deep rumbling whirs, sprawling into massive reverbeating slabs of black hole low end. Wow.
MPEG Stream: "Sleeprunning"
MPEG Stream: "From The Melted Past"

MURRAY, BRENDAN Scared In My Heart (Twonicorn) cassette 7.98
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Another new one from tape label Twonicorn, a label specializing in "basement new age crawl", finally new music from the highly underrated Brendan Murray, who as we mentioned before we would most definitely rank up there with Coleclough and Chalk as one of our favorite masters of the drone. Former missives from Murray have been of the harsher and heavier variety, gritty and buzz bottomless dronescapes, still ultra minimal but with some heft, bordering occasionally on the heaviness of SUNNO))) or other like minded sonic explorers. But on Scared In My Heart, Murray softens his sound, and offers up two utterly mesmerizing chunks of slow moving soft shimmer. The first, is all hushed ambience, tones that pulse and flutter, but are ultimately smeared into endless drones, allowed to shift and drift, seemingly simple and nearly static, but rife with strange tonal color, subtle dissonance, and all sorts of tangled melody. The second, is like a louder, more active version of the first, the tones sounding more like bells and organs, stretched out and smeared, wavering and warbling, notes beating against one another, all manner of implied motion and abstract melody, minimal but strangely active, intense and emotional, slow burning and quite beautiful.
As with all Twonicorn, gorgeously packaged, pro printed tapes, textured paper sleeves, and of course super limited, ONLY 100 COPIES!! Each tape hand numbered.

MURRAY, BRENDAN Wonders Never Cease (Intransitive) cd 12.98
This is the first release we've had from dronelord Brendan Murray that wasn't either a cd-r or incredibly limited. And it's about time, cuz if you ask us, Murray is just as good as any of our other drone favorites, Coleclough, Chalk and the like. But Murray has his own thing going on. His is not so dark and minimal. Instead, his world of drones is an active one, alive with strange sounds that shimmer and shimmy, that buzz and blur, plenty of melody or at least a melodic sensibility that Murray seems to imbue all his work with. He often delves into near-noise, letting sounds grind and hiss, building industrial clatterscapes, jagged and harsh, and allowing them to settle into a not so obvious drone-like state. And his latest, Wonders Never Cease, manage to touch on all those various sounds and approaches and then some. From soft fluttering barely there drifts, to fuzzy stretches of muted minimal white noise, to dense and aggressive soundscapes of hiss and crunch, to the album's centerpiece, the 20 minute long "Seas", probably the most melodic track we've heard by Murray, strange disembodied melodies play out and then the various notes separate themselves from the melody and drift into the ether, floating weightless in a swirl of minimal low end pulses and distant keening high end shimmer. A twenty minute track that could last for 20 hours as long as we're concerned. The record finishes off with a 4 minute reprise of the opening track, turning its fuzzy bliss into a grinding crumbling slab of bob ambient splendor. Fucking awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Hymn One"
MPEG Stream: "Seize"

MURRAY, BRENDAN & MIKE SHIFLET Sentimental Gentlemen (Sentient Recognition Archive) cd-r 9.98
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Here's the second pressing cd-r of a tour ep that these two New England noise+drone artists self-produced during their 2008 East Coast into Midwest tour. Nope, we never got any of that first edition; and perhaps if you didn't catch them tearing it up in Columbus, Ohio, this one might be new to you as well. We've been longtime fans of Brendan Murray's work, which has steadily developed into a very confident brand of minimalism thanks to such work as Wonders Never Cease and Commonwealth. Shiflet's numerous contributions to the American noise community have been splattered on cd-rs from every nook and cranny you could imagine, including his own imprint Gameboy.
For Sentimental Gentlemen, the two weld together each others aesthetics with remarkable panache. The first track is pretty much what you might expect, as Murray's arching compositional strategies couple with Shiflet's seering tactility, which is somewhat softened from such couplings with 16 Bitch Pile-Up and Carlos Giffoni that nonetheless is graced with an electrocutionist's touch. Shortwave radio static and cracked ether highly charged with electricity hang amidst harmonically unsettled sustained tones that slowly build over 15 minutes with phase pattern flutter. The second piece glibby entitled "How's Your Late 90's?" snaps into an abraded electro-acoustic chunk of clipped signals above a bed of low end sawtooth waves and motorized oscillations, that's much more on par with some of the hand built circuits that Joe Colley has managed to abuse over the years. Great stuff all around, and limited edition to 150 copies to boot.
MPEG Stream: "Early Retirement"
MPEG Stream: "How's Your Early '90s?"

MURRAY, BRENDAN / PERISPIRIT split (Semata Production / Razors & Medicine) lp 13.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Here's the first piece of vinyl from one of our favorite drone artists - Brendan Murray. Here, he's working with his Boston neighbors Perispirit, whose earlier recordings seem to lean much more toward the power-noise end of the soundscraping underworld, but actually ends up being a worthy compliment.
Brendan Murray offers an interesting twist upon his electrical orchestrations of uneasy minimalism for his contribution to this split. Here, Murray is working with the voice of Noell Dorsey as the only source material. Not all that sure of the background of Ms. Dorsey, aside from a few avant-improv performances in various spots in Boston; and Murray repurposes her voice within a churning insectoid drone which elegantly descends into a soft hum whose calm is disrupted through signal ruptures of Dorsey's cackling. These witchy vocalizations have all of the bloodcurdling empathy of Diamanda Galas, but Murray is more interested in dissembling that voice into a swarm of disquieting drone.
The Perispirit half of the record begins with a lurching splatter of air-compressed noise, broken up with tiny jittery silences and heavily gated signal processing, only to snap into a shadowy, lonesome ambient passage of lilting guitar tones, which gradually acquire a leaden sheen of heavy, downtuned distortion before cutting back to a rupture of those aerated noises from the first moments of the record. Another razor edit back to silence, and Perispirit makes another ramp of guitar-sourced dronescaping through atonal loops and layers of sound, whose density has the rapturous quality of those Chatham / Branca guitar armies, but coupled with some low-impact noisemongering below. Limited to 250 copies, pressed on off-white vinyl, and certainly recommended!

MUSIC NOW ENSEMBLE 1969 Silver Pyramid (Matchless) cd 17.98
The Music Now Ensemble 1969 is a vital missing link between the arcane studies of Cornelius Cordew's Scratch Orchestra and the free-noise continuum of AMM's extended family. This huge collective featured Keith Rowe and Eddie Prevost (both members of AMM) as well as Cadrew, Lou Gare, John Tilbury, Gavin Bryars, David Jackman and dozens of others. But for the Silver Pyramid performance at the Roundhouse in London, Prevost recalls that the ensemble numbered only around 9. This newly-issued recording (mastered from a dusty cassette which captured the room ambience as well as the performance) is a 74 minute organic scraping symphony built out of a very loose improvisation. A sinous droning sound is created via abused cellos, the wistful sustained notes of penny whistles, and Keith Rowe's growling guitar buzz. While Prevost is credited as authoring this piece (mostly because he actually constructed a giant silver pyramid covered in a shimmering material which reflected beams of light in any number of directions!), the director for the night was Keith Rowe, whose improvisational aesthetic of rough hewn striations and gritty drones held a stately authority over the proceedings. An outstanding document that we're lucky to now have!
RealAudio clip: "Silver Pyramid excerpt"

MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA Spacecraft (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
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International collective MEV originated in Rome in the mid-sixties as a vehicle for the live performance of electronic music. Seeking to transform "occupied space" into "created space," the group attempted improvs that might result in any three equally valid outcomes: space would be transcended immediately, "magically;" or only after necessary duration as the result of hard work; or the goal might never be achieved, despite a worthy attempt. In 1970, the ensemble was joined by Steve Lacy. So what does it sound like? Homemade synthesizers, Moogs without keyboards, contact mics galore and a healthy dose of percussion, voice and horns, build into raucous tumult tempered by reflective tension. Certainly for fans of AMM.
RealAudio clip: "Spacecraft"
RealAudio clip: "Unified Patchwork Theory"

MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA The Sound Pool (Spalax) cd 14.98
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MUSIIKKIVYORY Tulemme Sokeiksi (Ektro) cd 14.98
This twisted, genius Finnish DIY oddity back in stock...
Total "Arctic Hysteria" here people! We liked this a lot when we first listened to it, before we even knew what it was. Well, we knew it was Finnish (always a plus), and released on Circle's Ektro label (also a reliable indicator of quality). It's not another "NWOFHM" band though, or even any sort of Circle side project, or even really a band at all. As it turns out, the quasi-Industrial DIY soundscapes of noise and drone created by Musiikkivyory ("Music Avalanche") are the work of one person, Mika Taanila, who was all of 15 years old when this was first released as a homemade cassette - back in 1981! That's right, a Finnish teenager in the early '80s making monstrous noise/drone tapes, contemporaneous with the likes of Maurizio Bianchi. How cool is that? Pretty cool we think.
The 12 tracks here (resurrected from a couple of super rare tapes, circa '80-'81) are a wonderful witches' cauldron of throbbing rhythmic chaos, fractured grinding drones, strange voices, field recordings, and DISTORTION, lots of distortion... it's a playful sort of isolationist music, if that makes sense. And as an evidently artistically inclined kid he had every reason to want to express himself in such a fashion. Imagine being a teen with fears of nuclear war, living up near the Arctic Circle. The dark postpunk music (Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, The Normal, Dome...) you were able to tune in to on the BBC's John Peel show might make a lot more sense than the "normal" happy Christian adults who surround you!
So Mika began messing around with tape recorders, cast-off band instruments, radio static, toys, primitive percussion, etc., and pretty soon had generated enough material to fuel his own bedroom cassette label (of which it's hoped that Ektro will eventually reissue more releases), which issued limited runs of tapes not just by his own Musiikkivyory project but also by other likeminded Finnish friends... and, in fact, one by Italy's M.B. himself! (A reminder that international networking was possible before MySpace came around.)
Ektro has colorfully packaged this in a fashion up to their usual spiffy graphic standards, the cd cover insert folding out into a large sheet with photos and liner notes (in both English and Finnish) on one side, the other a poster depicting one of the original cassette releases at larger-than-life size.
Crude, creative, and compelling, this is quite an interesting surprise, thanks Ektro!! We'd definitely like to hear more from this corner of '80s cassette culture, hint hint.
MPEG Stream: "Tulemme Kreivin Luota [We Come From Count's Place]"
MPEG Stream: "Tulemme Sokeiksi [We're Becoming Blind]"
MPEG Stream: "Deutschland"

MUSIQUE CONCRETE Bringing Up Baby (Fractal) cd 21.00

MUSLIMGAUZE Armsbazzar (Essence Music) cd 17.98

MUSLIMGAUZE In Search Of Ahmad Shah Masood (Nexsound) cd 15.98
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MUSLIMGAUZE Lo-Fi India Abuse (BSI) cd 14.98
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MUSLIMGAUZE Uzbekistani Bizarre And Souk (Important) cd 14.98
Another posthumous release from Muslimgauze, "Uzbekistani Bizarre And Souk" is a caustic album of Arabic percussion contorted to fit into disjointed breakbeats and hypnotic electronic grooves. Originally released as a DAT (yes, a DAT only release!) from Staalplaat about 10 years ago, this disc also features a couple of selections from "Islamaphobia" an comes in a beautifully letter-pressed packagaing. Limited to 1000 copies.
RealAudio clip: "Rouge Amin Fraction"
RealAudio clip: "The Iranian Who Found Allah"

MUTANTEA Sleepy Sounds Electric (Ikuisuus) cd-r 10.98
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MPEG Stream: "Home In The Mountain Valley"

MUTE SOCIALITE More Popular Than Presidents And Generals (Delphine Knormal Musik) cd 11.98
Mute Socialite are a new aural maelstrom featuring Bay Area avant music vets Moe! Staiano, Ava Mendoza, Alec Karim and Shayna Dunkleman. Don't even attempt to define this new group's sound by the words in their moniker. They are anything but mute, and we wouldn't consider theirs to be the most social of musics. It's like a sonic blow to the solar plexus that then proceeds to march on odd time signatures upon your fallen form. The dozen pieces deliver plenty of mighty post-punk churn, no wave spasm and math rock count-that-shit! At once fiercely precise and wildly chaotic. Blistering.
MPEG Stream: "Dirt Never Burns"
MPEG Stream: "A Quiet Execution"

MUTE SOCIALITE More Popular Than Presidents And Generals (Delphine Knormal Musik) lp 14.98
Mute Socialite are a new aural maelstrom featuring Bay Area avant music vets Moe! Staiano, Ava Mendoza, Alec Karim and Shayna Dunkleman. Don't even attempt to define this new group's sound by the words in their moniker. They are anything but mute, and we wouldn't consider theirs to be the most social of musics. It's like a sonic blow to the solar plexus that then proceeds to march on odd time signatures upon your fallen form. The dozen pieces deliver plenty of mighty post-punk churn, no wave spasm and math rock count-that-shit! At once fiercely precise and wildly chaotic. Blistering.
MPEG Stream: "Dirt Never Burns"
MPEG Stream: "A Quiet Execution"

MV & EE WITH THE BUMMER ROAD (MATT VALENTINE & ERIKA ELDER) Mother Of Thousands (Time-Lag) 2cd 21.00
We were (and heck, still are) HUGE fans of avant abstract folk outfit The Tower Recordings. And we've tried desperately to keep up with Matt Valentine's post-TR output, but it's been tough as most of his recorded output has been relegated to ultra limited cd-r's and short run vinyl. So finally, we get a not so limited, and seriously hefty dose of Valentine's new psychedelic folk direction, with his long time musical partner Erika Elder and his new musical sidekicks the Bummer Road.
Two discs, jam packed with dreamy druggy OUT THERE free folk psychedelia. Hints of Tower Recordings past do surface here and there, but the sounds on Mother Of Thousands are way more dense and dizzy. Slippery spacey squiggles float like motes of dust over a warm whirling landscape of mumbled atonal guitar, stuttering alternate tuning strum, super-processed electric guitar whir, wheezing harmonica, lilting falsetto vocals, washed out distorted whirls of crumbling amp buzz, a gorgeously laid back, blissed out afternoon sunlight back porch drug drenched slow motion moonlight abstract folk jam.
The second disc takes all the same elements but weaves them into lengthy minimal buzz drenched ragas. Mysterious sounds swoop and swoon over slowly unfurling melodies, warm layers of harmonica and buzzing steel strings drift over a deconstructed free folk, with disembodied ghostlike voices, gurgling drones, reverb drenched female vocals, the final 20+ minute track is one slow burning meditation equal parts rumbling whir and gentle minor key strumming. Quite lovely.
Valentine and his fellow folkies, Mo' Jiggs, Sparrow Wildchild, Nemo Bidstrup, Tim Barnes and Samara Lubelski take a few moments out to reimagine some killer covers, Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton and Reverend Gary Davis, but soon return to their mesmerizingly freeform drift and drone and croon.
Packaged in a super deluxe, ultra thick gatefold, each cd in a woven Japanese style inner sleeve, the sleeve a mini lp style cd gatefold, with a metallic silver printed insert. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "The Joyous Within"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Mountain"

MV & EE WITH THE BUMMER ROAD (MATT VALENTINE & ERIKA ELDER) Mother Of Thousands (Time-Lag) 2lp 31.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We were (and heck, still are) HUGE fans of avant abstract folk outfit The Tower Recordings. And we've tried desperately to keep up with Matt Valentine's post-TR output, but it's been tough as most of his recorded output has been relegated to ultra limited cd-r's and short run vinyl. So finally, we get a not so limited, and seriously hefty dose of Valentine's new psychedelic folk direction, with his long time musical partner Erika Elder and his new musical sidekicks the Bummer Road.
Two discs, jam packed with dreamy druggy OUT THERE free folk psychedelia. Hints of Tower Recordings past do surface here and there, but the sounds on Mother Of Thousands are way more dense and dizzy. Slippery spacey squiggles float like motes of dust over a warm whirling landscape of mumbled atonal guitar, stuttering alternate tuning strum, super-processed electric guitar whir, wheezing harmonica, lilting falsetto vocals, washed out distorted whirls of crumbling amp buzz, a gorgeously laid back, blissed out afternoon sunlight back porch drug drenched slow motion moonlight abstract folk jam.
The second disc takes all the same elements but weaves them into lengthy minimal buzz drenched ragas. Mysterious sounds swoop and swoon over slowly unfurling melodies, warm layers of harmonica and buzzing steel strings drift over a deconstructed free folk, with disembodied ghostlike voices, gurgling drones, reverb drenched female vocals, the final 20+ minute track is one slow burning meditation equal parts rumbling whir and gentle minor key strumming. Quite lovely.
Valentine and his fellow folkies, Mo' Jiggs, Sparrow Wildchild, Nemo Bidstrup, Tim Barnes and Samara Lubelski take a few moments out to reimagine some killer covers, Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton and Reverend Gary Davis, but soon return to their mesmerizingly freeform drift and drone and croon.
Packaged in a heavy old fashioned deluxe gatefold (you know, the kind that creak when you open 'em) and pressed on super thick 180 gram audiophile vinyl. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "The Joyous Within"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Mountain"

MX Ni Runder Modsols (Lille Kommune) lp 17.98
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aQ pal Phil Franklin turned us on to this mysterious Danish crew MX (believed to have something to do with the two main members obsession with BMX bikes, but that's another story we won't get into), and we were quite surprised and taken by what an amazing and flat out bizarre record this is! This is an anthology of recordings from the past ten years, and we're wondering why we haven't heard of these guys before, but we're so glad we know about them now! Our Danish language skills are lacking, so we can't really tell exactly what is going on or how many players are involved, so of course it leaves the music open to speculation. It sounds like it could be a whole bunch of people, or the careful tape manipulation of just a couple. But the sounds are dirty and lo-fi, recorded on four track and feature mostly short rhythmic compositions of acoustic string instruments (banjo, guitar, and violin), with distorted wheezing accordions, fuzzy pulsating synths, clattering percussion and cultic chanting. Occasionally strange tape manipulated vocals that sound like old folkway recordings of pygmys or some far-off South Asian tribe will appear, along with brain-melting primitive electronics effects. It reminds us a lot of the "ethnological forgery" of groups like Harappian Night Recordings and Sun City Girls, the hippie shamanism of Daniel Higgs and Ur-Dog, as well as the collective free-folk ingenuity of Kemialliset Ystavat. But for all the strangeness and noise, the songs seem more composed than improvised, full of beautiful otherworldly melodies and a stunning sense of DIY psychedelic exotica.
LPs are hand silkscreened on repurposed thrift store record covers. We only have about 8 of these and while we're trying to get more, it might be awhile until we see a restock, so act fast!

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Cosmic Light of the Third Millennium (Important) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Il Suono Venuto Dallo Spazio (Victo) cd 16.98

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Landscapes Of An Electric City (Ecstatic Peace) 2lp 11.98
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This band is much better than their horrible name would imply. My Cat Is An Alien is the delicate avant-rock project of the Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who have garnered a considerable amount of respect from Sonic Youth. So much so that MCIAA has opened for SY on a number of recent Italian gigs, jammed with Kim Gordon during one of those tours, and got this album released through Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. The brothers open their album very quietly with quiet Slint / Tarentel guitar chords and lots of silence between the repeated stanzas. Equally spartan blurts of synthetic 8-bit noise emerge in congress with the guitars, eventually doubling up with a time-stretched / down-pitched reflection of itself. All of this very slowly gets smeared into a spiralling pattern of cosmic delay and tape-loop mechanisms. This track (or movement as MCIAA calls it) takes up all of side one, and is worth the prices of admission alone. The rest of the album is a bit of a turn downhill. Side two tumbles through a passage of lo-fi noise, sounding like a hand-cranked cheese grater being amplified with an occasional John Fahey-esque splutter behind it all. This lp had originally been released as a CD-R / demo before it was sent to Thurston Moore. The other LP is a one-sided affair with the band spitting out spastic sort-of-no-wave.
RealAudio clip: "Movement 1"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Listen Before Black Falls (Root Strata) lp 14.98
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Ultra limited lp from Italy's masters of spacey sonic drift, My Cat Is An Alien. Released on Root Strata, the label of Tarentel's J.C. Ledesma. The two brothers in MCIAA again set their controls for the heart of the sun, but spend most of their time drifting lazily through space. Simple folk guitar, spread over random percussive clatter, the two tangled and stretched into some sort of amorphous spacey blissy drone. Tones stretch and shimmer, the background a distant whir, with soft vocals, fragile and whispery, so delicate and dreamy. The second 'movement' on the first side sounds a bit like the incidental music from some long lost sixties sci-fi lost in space type program, a soundscape of bleeeps and swooshes, bloops and alien trills, but it MCIAA's universe they are buried beneath a thick unwavering high end guitar drone. This sci fi dronescape continues onto the flipside where it spreads out over the whole side, a feedback guitar drifting weightless through the alien soundscape that is My Cat Is An Aliens peculiar sonic world.
SUPER LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Each copy hand numbered. Packaged in gorgeously silver inked hand screened sleeves.

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Cosmological Eye Trilogy (Last Visible Dog) 3cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here we go again. Remember that really limited cd-r that came out a few years ago, the one that was practically impossible to get, and maybe you bought on eBay for way too much, remember how bummed you were that you missed out on it? You really wanted it. REALLY. So now you have the gun loaded, the rope over the beam in the living room, a bottle of whiskey and a handful of pills on the counter, the note is almost finished. HOLD UP!! C'mon, if we've learned anything by now, as frustrating and annoying as it is, pretty much EVERY cd-r, will at some point be reissued on a much sturdier, longer life-spanned actual compact disc. Especially as there are labels that seem to exist exclusively to re-release albums that have already been released on cd-r. Okay, so maybe that was a bit snarky, but what the heck is the point of a limited cd-r when it will just be re-released in an unlimited version later on? Why not skip the cd-r step and just make a cd to start with? There's nothing entirely wrong with cd-r's, we LOVE cd-r's, we all buy cd-r's like crazy, and you know what? Some records are meant to be limited. A couple hundred copies is all the world needs. But for bands that are popular, with fans all over the world, a cd-r limited to 100 copies is just ridiculous, especially when fans will no doubt be expected to buy the actual cd version (most likely with bonus tracks) later on. We're not complaining (well, we sort of are) because heck, any record good enough to compose, record, and release, probably deserves to be heard by more than 50 or 100 people (not in every case, obviously!), we just wish bands and labels would have the foresight to realize that a handful of copies won't be enough and it's just as simple and cost effective in that case to make real cds! Ok, enought ranting... So we have the The Cosmological Eye Trilogy from Italian free noise siblings My Cat Is An Alien. Most definitely the kind of epic and beautiful music that definitely deserves a wider audience. So kudos to LVD for making these discs available again. The original versions of these discs came packaged with original artwork from Roberto of MCIAA and thus were pretty nice and worth owning, and certainly made a limited run necessary. While the paintings are only present in photgraphic reproductions here, the music more than makes this 3cd reissue worthwhile. MCIAA's musical world is populated by huge expanses of sound, broad minimalist soundscapes woven together with all sorts of guitars: electric alien guitar, astral alien guitar, electric nebulae guitar drone, as well as mini-xylophone, spacee toys, whirlpool, toy mic, percussion, metal sticks, cosmic cymbals, helix cymbals, Plutonian percussions and of course astral percussions. All recorded live with no overdubs, these spaced out sonic explorations are pretty amazing, from clattery, gritty industrialism, with scraping percussion and distorted vocals, to delicate barely there expanses of swoosh and waver, with distant foghorn-like moans, minimal drones, strange machine like whirs, almost inaudible chimes and melodies, to tribal space rituals with swirling blooping bleeping synths slipping and sliding around manic percussion, to strange alien sounding free jazz noise hybrids, shuffling cymbals, lots of dubbed out reverb, peals of feedback, and little bits of clatter and clink suspended in fields of looped fuzz and repeating cycles of hum and drone.
A completely overwhelmingly brilliant assemblage of outer space free jazz drone rock minimalism that will most definitely hit the spot for all you free-ambient-noise-drone cd-r hounds, but will probably also appeal to fans of Acid Mothers Temple style space rock, twentieth century minimalism, "new weird America" (Italy?), and all stops in between.
Packaged in a strange triple fold plastic sleeve that is unfortunately not ideal for keeping cds from getting scratched...
MPEG Stream: "Untitled One"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled Two"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Cosmological Eye Trilogy -Part Three- (Opax) cd-r 14.98
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Cosmological Eye Trilogy -Part Two- (Opax) cd-r 14.98
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The First Flames Of Tommorrow (Opax) cd-r 14.98
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN The Rest Is Silence (Eclipse) 2lp 17.98
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MY CAT IS AN ALIEN Through The Reflex Of The Rain (Free Porcupine) cd 14.98
Another band that seems poised to challenge Acid Mothers Temple to a who-can-release-more-records duel. But much like AMT, Italy's My Cat Is An Alien have somehow managed to keep the quality control pretty high (minus the unforgivable series of limited $100 split lps, that were released on cd not soon after). On Through The Reflex Of The Rain, MCIAA drift even further into deep space psych, with a free drone workout that rivals Total or Sunroof!. Angular guitars over warbly organs, shimmering reverb drenched chords stretched into endless sheets of cosmic vibration, clouds of beeps and bloops drift dangerously close, swirls of tonal color are excited into such a state that the rest of the instruments seem to be drawn toward some distant point of maximum gravity. Blissful and droned out, but at the same time, charged with a ominously crackling energy. Packaged in a beautifully silkscreened blue and metallic gold cardboard sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Through The Reflex Of The Rain (excerpt)"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN When The Windmill's Whirl Dies (Eclipse) 2lp 15.98

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / KEIJI HAINO Cosmic Debris Volume III (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
This one probably doesn't need much of a description at all, as fans of Japanese psych legend / guitar god Keiji Haino tend to be on the obsessive side, and c'mon, how can you resist and exclusive 21 minute track, with the very Haino-esque title: "Whither Goes It? / That Which Canst Not But Be Described / As My Prayer / Nowhere Held In Common / Lunatic, Unknowable". The answer is, you probably can't. Especially if you dig Haino at his most freaky, cuz this track, or series of tracks, finds Haino in full on Merzbow mode, unleashing a furious tripped out torrent of wild blown out sonic tangles, squalls of heavily processed psych weirdness, hard to say whether it's actually guitar, but if it is, Haino has twisted it into something else entirely, the sound super heavy and textured, rife with all manner of fragmented melodies, twisted effects, and crumbling weirdness, at least for the first 12 or 13 minutes, at which point, those sound all disappear, leaving just pounding drums, and Haino, howling maniacally, a strange psychedelic drum vocal dirge, that is soon surrounded by still more clouds of wild psychnoise and twisted effects, the strange FX wreathed drum plod dirge, pounding resolutely to the end of the track, with Haino down there somewhere ranting like some crazed shamen.
The My Cat Is An Alien track is downright tame by comparison, and when played in succession with the first two volumes in the series, and taking note of the similar song titles, reveals itself as a single massive multipart track spread out over these 4 discs, the track here starting off delicately, before quickly exploding into a woozy ambient haze, a thick fog of buzz and shimmer, beneath which chimes tinkle, vocals croon, percussion pounds, again with MCIAA seeming to look to Haino's side for inspiration, a strange shamanistic ritual, the high vocals blurring into the high end drones, creating a strangely hypnotic stretch of soaring Sunroof!-like ur-drone.
WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Crashes Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: KEIJI HAINO "Whither Goes It? / That Which Canst Not But Be Described / As My Prayer / Nowhere Held In Common / Lunatic, Unknowable"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / MATS GUSTAFSSON Cosmic Debris Volume IV (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
On volume four, My Cat Is An Alien continue their multi-part Cosmic Debris epic, unfurling another stretch of hazy vocal driven drift, bits of guitar twang submerged in a sea of looped shimmer, of minimal percussion, of high almost falsetto vocalizations, the sound ethereal and dreamlike, a cloud of twisted effects gradually surfacing and overtaking the sound, until finally, the track becomes a swirling cacophony of clatter and buzz and howl and skree, a dizzying chunk of blown out psychedelia for sure.
MCIAA teamed up with jazz legend Mats Gustafsson, whose track here, is gorgeously restrained, starting off with a hushed low end pulse, which is soon joined by more melodic pulsations, a blurred patchwork of electronic signals, low and high, a fantastically austere sprawl of Raster-Noton like rhythmic minimalism, which waits until the last 5 or 6 minutes to let loose, adding what could be processed horns, but could just as likely be a bank of home brewed effects, the original pulsing electronics now buried beneath a wildly psychedelic barrage of feedback and buzz, rumble and skree. So cool.
WE HAVE ONLY SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Burns Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: MATS GUSTAFSSON "I Have Not Set Any Time Limits For The Attempt"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / PESTREPELLER Solar Anarchy / As Wolf (A Silent Place) picture disc lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Never managed to get any of these when it first came out, a split picture disc lp with Italian psych folk duo My Cat Is An Alien, and the oddly named Pestrepeller, a duo featuring none other than legendary artist Savage Pencil. The MCIAA side find the brothers Opalio at their noisiest, kicking up a serious din unlike anything we've heard from them, getting downright Merzbowian at times, sheets of high end lots of clatter and clank, there are occasional bits of tranquility amidst the chaos, with looped liquid effects and tangled up faux field recordings, processed vox, and all manner of warped shimmer, but those moments quickly blossom into another gout of blown out psychedelia.
Pestrepeller take the opposite tack, reeling in their noise rock tendencies and unleashing a sidelong sprawl of rumbling drones, blurred guitar dirges, and softly psychedelic ambience. Opening with some thick SUNNO)))-like downtuned churn, wreathed in streaks of feedback, the sound quickly shits and transforms into an industrial thrum, rife with pulsing low end, lush swells of muted crunch and keening fragmented melodies, lots of hum and hiss, haunting and mysterious, an epic soundscape that manages to be musical on its own, but definitely has a distinctly cinematic vibe as well.
Comes in a heavy PVC sleeve sealed with a full color printed sticker. The picture disc features original full color MCIAA art on one side, Savage Pencil on the other. AND WE ONLY HAVE FOUR COPIES OF THIS, the label folded, these are the last copies we'll ever be able to get! If you order it, wouldn't hurt to list an alternate...

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / STEVE RODEN Cosmic Debris Volume II (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
On volume two, My Cat Is An Alien seem to be composing with their 'collaborator' in mind, their sound definitely reminiscent of Steve Roden's minimal field recording / found sound / soundscaping in mind, at least initially, although MCIAA's take is much more raw and primitive, lots of creaks, and random room noise, mysterious about-to-crack vocalizing, the tinkling chiming of what sounds like a tiny xylophone, brief fragmented bits of melody, eventually blossoming into a swirling morass of groaning guitars, warm sweeps of melodic shimmer, plenty of murky industrial buzz, layered and droney, and again slipping into that sort of abstract trip out we can't get enough of, like Avarus meets No Neck Blues BandÉ
Steve Roden offers up two tracks, both as always hushed and lovely, the first a lengthy bit of minimal dronemusic, peppered with percussive thumps, and wreathed in short wave broadcasts, while the main drone, ebbs and flows, funereal and stately, a dark smoldering drift, that is gorgeously minimal and meditative. While the second, shorter track, finds Roden essentially playing guitar, a lovely bit of folky minimalism, the notes glistening, warm and lustrous, multiple melodies intertwined, unfurling gradually and dreamily, eventually joined by the buzz of a recorded voice, as if recorded on an old microcassette recorded, which soon pulls the guitar itself into that otherworld, the sound transformed into something tinny and barely there, as if it were some intercepted broadcast, delicate and mysterious.
WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Waves Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: STEVE RODEN "E-Bows And Rainbows"

MY CAT IS AN ALIEN / TEXT OF LIGHT Cosmic Debris Volume I (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
My Cat Is An Alien, the Italian duo of brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who recently graced the cover of UK new music mag the Wire, are crazy prolific, releasing an amazing number of cd-r's and limited vinyl releases over the years, and in addition, the duo definitely have a thing for collaboration, their discography rife with splits, the From The Earth To The Spheres series, which found the band partnering up with lots of aQ faves: Thuja, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Christian Marclay, among others, then there's this series, the first four of which we have here, originally released as super limited lps, each one housed with an actual original painting done by one of the brothers, but later re-released on cd, and finding the band once again sharing space with some pretty cool outfits: Text Of Light, Steve Roden, Keiji Haino and Mats Gustafsson. These are not however collaborations, instead, each artist took one side of the original lp, with MCIAA doing their thing on the other, the results pretty fantastic.
MCIAA offer up a sprawling bit of abstract primitivism, sounding like Avarus or Anaksimandros, lots of rhythmic clatter, instrumental haze, swirling heavily effected vocals, looped and sent spinning into a tripped out bit of foresty free folk weirdness, their are squalls of spacey FX, birdcall like trills, almost like some strange field recording, but the group layer and blur those sounds and build them into a strange Sunroof!-y sort of high end crystalline ur-drone, still shot through with murky muted melodies and tribal clatter.
On this installment, NYC outfit Text Of Light, featuring Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Alan Licht and others, counter with their own bit of clattery drift, theirs a bit more dense and abstract jazzy, like a supercharged, noisier Necks, the percussion wild and frantic, underneath heaving layers of buzz and thrum, and the occasional wailed vocal buried in the mix, the sound seeming to mellow out as the track progresses, dialing back the noise, replacing it with clouds of blurred feedback, and the occasional clatter of junkyard percussion, the sound very soundtracky, which makes sense, as if memory serves, this group was formed to do just that, accompany films with a new improvised score. Cool stuff. Sadly, WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN COPIES OF THIS, and the label is now defunct, which means, we can not get more of these EVER!
MPEG Stream: MY CAT IS AN ALIEN "Everything Falls Like Cosmic Debris"
MPEG Stream: TEXT OF LIGHT "033103 Paris"

MYLES OF DESTRUCTION That Boy Has Problems (Gruntled) cd-r 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Myles of Destruction is a one man (well sometimes two man) band from Philadelphia, who play a sort of lo-fi, bedroom recorded, queer positive, metal. Sort of. Thanks to Brian Turner at WFMU for turning us on to this. Just vocals, bass, drum machine, and occasional cello (the sleeve exclaims: 'NO GUITARS USED ON THIS RECORDING') collide haphazardly to make a super aggressive, super bizarre, metallic, and ultra dorky weirdness. Think, maybe, Warlock Pinchers, Atom and his Package, Metallica, Emperor, and the Magnetic Fields...all at the same time. Cool and bizarre and decidedly fucked. Includes a 'metal' version of Cyndi Lauper's 'She Bop'. Now the Aquarius fantasy 'Monsters of Metal' festival would feature Metallica Drummer, Anton Maiden, Carnival in Coal, and Myles of Destruction!

MYRMYR Fire Star (Under The Spire) lp 22.00
With the new Myrmyr album we'll be briefer than we would like to be because it's incredibly good, but super limited. We have 10 copies and only 250 have been made, so we're not sure we can get more, so act fast! The stunning vinyl debut of these two former Mills College music grads, Marielle Jakobsons (Date Palms, Darwinsbitch) and Agnes Szelag, was recorded during a snowstorm on Shasta Mountain. We were smitten with their first release, The Amber Sea, and here on Fire Star, they have honed down their focus of post-classical orchestrations into a more finely textured array of nuance and mood. It's hard to tell who is doing what. It sometimes sounds like there are a dozen players performing, or it could be a lavish manipulation of tape loops and electronics, but the effect is quite beautiful. Starting out with plucked strings and bell tones that eventually melt feverishly into intense drones that smolder and swell revealing hidden passages of lush orchestrations that slip seamlessly in and out of the aural field. Four tracks of gorgeous mesmerizing beauty. Don't Hesitate!

MYRMYR The Amber Sea (Digitalis) cd 12.98
Not to be confused with the field recordist Murmer or the improv-drone Murmur or even the dubstep Murmur, this Myrmyr hails from Oakland and features Marielle Jakobsons (aka Darwinsbitch) and Agnes Szelag. Together they present fragmented orchestrations of post-classical arrangements alongside minimalist avant-folk gestures and a restrained use of electronics. Strings of all sorts are central to Myrmyr, whether that be cello, violin, cymbalon, harp, or ukulele, as they compose elongated passages which billow out of a cinematic post-classical sensibility and blossom into occasional shanty arrangements which allude to Baltic folk traditions. In moving between the more academic aspects and more folk stylizations, Myrmyr also incorporate male and female vocals into their arrangements. The occasional use of clanking bells and playful clatter of objects does offer some parallels to a few of a more abstract elements of the Finnish freakfolk community, but more often than not, Myrmyr's studied compositions glide more towards the work of Hildur Gudnadottir and Max Richter, rather than Lau Nau. Very nicely done!
MPEG Stream: "Jurata"
MPEG Stream: "First Seed"
MPEG Stream: "The Sea Returns"

MYRNINEREST Jhonn, Uttered Babylon (The Spheres Four) cd 14.98
Not our favorite Current 93 related release ever, despite the presence of James Blackshaw here along with C93's David Tibet.

MYSTERY BRINKMANN / PLEASUREHORSE split (Load) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Pleasurehorse is one Shawn Greenlee, rhythmic power electronics maestro with one previous disc on Vermiform as well as the excellent "Dropdead: Reconstructed" 12" on Load, currently on bass duties in the newly reformed Six Finger Satellite. Think Merzbow with beats. Mystery Brinkman aka Mr. Brinkman (duh) used to be in Providence duo Forcefield (remember their split 7" with Lightning Bolt?), here presenting similar cut-up sonic collages, albeit with a more playful, thrift store quality. Comparable to post-performance era Hanatarash. The first in a series of split 12"s from our friends at Load.

MYSTIFIED Cold Telemetry (Small Doses) cd-r 8.98
One of a handful of new releases from Small Doses, a micro-label that is quickly becoming one of our favorites, every disc both sonically and visually stunning.
This one is from a group/person called Mystified, the sound is a shimmering dark ambience, crafted from haunting drones and processed electronics. Mysterious metallic reverberations, soft industrial whir, abstract almost-melodies, insectoid buzz, smears of muted crackle, and crumbling distorted hiss, deep rumbles, reverbed percussion, thick squalls of slowed down grinding digital glitch, soft billowing clouds of gauzy low end smear, each track a single sound, or series of sounds, stretched and blurred into long streaks of gorgeous and ominous dark minimalism. Dreamy drones, soft focus blackened rituals, post industrial clatter, raga like buzz, expansive high end skree, all very subtle, haunting, mysterious and strangely pretty.
More super cool packaging, a thick printed card, with a printed textured diamond glued to the front, so one half of the diamond folds over and holds the cd in place. Each cd is hand numbered on the underside of the diamond, LIMITED TO 88 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Telemetry"
MPEG Stream: "Rocket USA"
MPEG Stream: "PerCuss"

MZ.412 Infernal Affairs (Cold Meat Industry) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "Infernal Affairs I"
MPEG Stream: "Vredens Skvadron"
MPEG Stream: "Point Of Presence"

N.RACKER Flock Intoxicant (Pre-Cert Home Entertainment) lp 22.00
The latest weirdo outsider electronic offering from the Pre-Cert Home Entertainment label, run by Demdike Stare and Andy Votel, comes from the mysterious N. Racker, supposedly a pseudonym for someone too famous to actually name, but who can tell with Pre-Cert's predilection for misinformation. Regardless, this is a good one, maybe our favorite Pre-Cert jam yet, ostensibly based on "an imagined alternative history of a sinister, pre-industrial pestilence among the ovine population and the people who work in wool processing, ending in complete devastation and dereliction" and sounding like a cross between "SUNNO))), The Haxan Cloak and Morricone/Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza", we can't speak to the subject matter, but the sonic description is really not that far off.
Moaning scraped strings underpin abstract percussion and mournfully melodic shimmer, which bleeds into some seriously creepy lullaby like melodies, that immediately remind us of the theme from Resident Evil, creepy and cinematic, more moaning strings, totally ominous horror movie music, with some awesome bursts of thick distorted buzz, that almost becomes krautrocky at one point. The A side ends with some droned out drift, all buzz and static and squelch.
The flipside introduces some more creeped out orchestral shimmer, lots of low end and some Morricone-ish melodies, grinding cello buzz and lumbering bass thrum, which splinters into some super abstract musique concrete, sapced out and spare, a dark sprawl of abstract ambience that slowly sinks into some woozy warped underwater burble, laced with tinkling chains, and gauzey swirls of sinister shimmer.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES.

NACHIKETA Good Night Persimmon (ESO) cd-r 4.98
Our (and perhaps your) introduction to the Bay Area artist Nachiketa comes in the form of a 52 minute instrumental track titled Good Night Persimmon. Nachiketa takes us through gentle, hushed passages that ebb and flow with string plucks, lulling drones and an occasional mist of staticky flutters. Calming loveliness.
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"

NACKT INSECTEN Reality Bridge (Blackest Rainbow) lp 21.00
This is the first we've heard from Scottish soundscaper Nackt Insecten, even though there have apparently been loads of limited cd-r's and tapes that came before, a fantastic melange of minimal repetition a la Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and more modern spaced out psychedelic minimalism like Sunroof! and Astral Social Club, Our Love Will Destroy The World and Axolotl.
Pulsing drones, lush layered overtones, thick synth swells, a sort of ur-drone raga, the rhythms crunchy and distorted, a blistery haze of humid sound that dissipates into angelic drifts. Kosmische folk rife with tinkling chimes, shimmering melodies, all very mesmerizing and meditative and new agey. Spidery acoustic guitars intertwine with slow shifting slabs of low end throb, soaring ad blissed out and richly effulgent. Chugging synths churn and roil, wreathed in clouds of distorted prismatic buzz, a hypnotic minimalism that culminates in the synthy sci fi soundtracky final jam, thick buzzy tendrils of electric guitars wind themselves around pulsing eighties synths and a soft cacophony of percussion, a heady, lysergic melding of Sunroof! and Majeure, Astral Social Club and Zombi, taking the Carpenterish soundtrack sound so popular these days and grafting it to a more minimal cosmic otherworldliness. Killer stuff.

NADJA Autopergamene (Essence Music) cd 14.98
We reviewed the super deluxe, ultra limited, pricey boxset version of this, the latest full length from our favorite doom-drone / doom-gaze duo, Nadja, a while back, released on one of our favorite labels, Brazil's Essence Music, who in the past have brought us incredible releases from Acid Mothers Temple, Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, Boris, Merzbow, and Rapoon. We sold out of those right quick, but fear not, we now have the standard version, still in its own fancy package, still sonically kick ass, easily one of the best Nadjas yet for sure, just minus the box, some of the extras, and minus the $75 price tag!
If you're a Nadja fan, you're definitely gonna want one of these, sure all Nadja records are pretty great, but this one is incredible, an hour long three part epic, the heaviest, most lush and orchestral and intense record we've heard from these two yet. The opening track, clocking in at 25 minutes, begins as a hushed bit of dreamy drift, all gauzy and washed out and shimmery, layered melodies, shifting and swirling and so lovely, very Pop Ambient in fact, until about 12 minutes in, when the drums kick in, the guitars explode, but it doesn't simply get heavier, or louder, it sounds orchestral, huge moaning melodies, what sounds like strings or horns, epic and kaleidoscopic, the sound living and breathing, prismatic and totally warm and glowing, a heaving chunk of blissed out dreamlike heaviness.
The second movement is more traditionally heavy, a chugging churning slab of lumbering doom, the pounding drum machine and buzzing riffs, wreathed in a swirling cloud of hiss and buzz and Technicolor effulgence, a sort of incendiary Godflesh style industrial crunch, with buried howled vocals, and constantly shifting patina of glitched out effects and electronic buzz, which gives away to the 26 minute closer, beginning with super spare acoustic guitars, which drift into a shimmering field of prismatic glimmer, eventually exploding into another slab of blown out orchestral epic dream doom, totally majestic, and almost choral sounding, wrapped in sheets of staticky buzz, the sound getting more and more fierce and intense and threatening to blow your speakers, total chaos and catharsis, blissful but ultra intense, finally, relenting, and leaving gorgeous sonic vapor trails, laced with buried boy girl vox, a dreamy understated coda, to a seriously epic bit of orchestral buzz drenched bliss. So great.
MPEG Stream: "You Write Your Name In My Skin"
MPEG Stream: "You Write Your Name In Your Blood"

NADJA Autopergamene (Essence Music) box 75.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A brand new full length from our favorite doom-drone / doom-gaze duo, Nadja, and it's on one of our favorite labels too, Brazil's Essence Music, who in the past have brought us incredible releases from Acid Mothers Temple, Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, Boris, Merzbow, and Rapoon. But this is not the regular release. We are honored to be the only place in the world, other than the label itself, to be selling the super limited, deluxe, handmade boxset version, limited to just 149 copies, already completely sold out, except for a handful saved just for us, and for you. These are pricey, but they are incredible, gorgeously and lovingly assembled, with TONS of extra stuff, and there are less than 10 copies left, so get one before they're gone. More on the record proper in a second, but we figured we'd best explain what all comes in the box, in fact first there's the box itself, hand painted and decorated using several techniques, collaged, stitched and an intricate ink layering painting process. The box is gorgeous, but inside, you'll find the standard edition of the album, lavishly assembled in a custom 6-panel digisleeve housing a set of 6 cards set with beautiful watercolor paintings and artwork by Portuguese artist L. Filipe dos Santos. PLUS, as a bonus, an alternative DOUBLE cd-r set comprising the album (same version/mastering) and a DTS 5.1 version of it - this one mastered/mixed by Anders Peterson and including an exclusive remix - housed in a 6-panel package with a striking and utterly different artwork by Iremir Oscar and Essence head honcho Uirajara Resende PLUS an inedit live recording from earlier this year, also on cd-r. That's FOUR discs instead of just the one. PLUS, honoring the album's theme - skin and blood - there's also an individually painted and hand-assembled 16-page book - each page is totally unique - and strange souvenirs, like a pen-like object and a large painted band that holds the whole set together.
WOW. Like we said, there are less than 10 of these left, we are taking PRE-ORDERS for these, they are NOT in stock, once we know how many we need, we'll order them from Brazil and should have them within a week to 10 days. So if you order this with other stuff, your order will ship minus the Nadja box, which will ship by itself, or if you are a regular mailorder customer, probably in your next order, but you will be charged for it NOW, if you want one don't dawdle.
And if you are a Nadja fan, you're definitely gonna want one of these, sure all Nadja records are pretty great, but this one is incredible, an hour long three part epic, the heaviest, most lush and orchestral and intense record we've heard from these two yet. The opening track, clocking in at 25 minutes, begins as a hushed bit of dreamy drift, all gauzy and washed out and shimmery, layered melodies, shifting and swirling and so lovely, very Pop Ambient in fact, until about 12 minutes in, when the drums kick in, the guitars explode, but it doesn't simply get heavier, or louder, it sounds orchestral, huge moaning melodies, what sounds like strings or horns, epic and kaleidoscopic, the sound living and breathing, prismatic and totally warm and glowing, a heaving chunk of blissed out dreamlike heaviness.
The second movement is more traditionally heavy, a chugging churning slab of lumbering doom, the pounding drum machine and buzzing riffs, wreathed in a swirling cloud of hiss and buzz and Technicolor effulgence, a sort of incendiary Godflesh style industrial crunch, with buried howled vocals, and constantly shifting patina of glitched out effects and electronic buzz, which gives away to the 26 minute closer, beginning with super spare acoustic guitars, which drift into a shimmering field of prismatic glimmer, eventually exploding into another slab of blown out orchestral epic dream doom, totally majestic, and almost choral sounding, wrapped in sheets of staticky buzz, the sound getting more and more fierce and intense and threatening to blow your speakers, total chaos and catharsis, blissful but ultra intense, finally, relenting, and leaving gorgeous sonic vapor trails, laced with buried boy girl vox, a dreamy understated coda, to a seriously epic bit of orchestral buzz drenched bliss. So great.
We WILL have the standard version, keep your eyes peeled for it on a future list, or ask us to reserve you one, but those of you who want the QUADRUPLE DISC HANDMADE DELUXE BOXSET, now's the time...
MPEG Stream: "You Write Your Name In My Skin"
MPEG Stream: "You Write Your Name In Your Blood"

NADJA Belles Betes (Beta-Lactam Ring) cd 15.98
One of our favorite Nadja records, previously only released on vinyl, finally available on cd!!
As we've mentioned in past reviews, it gets harder and harder to know what to say about Nadja and Aidan Baker records. Not just because there are so many of them, but because they all mine similar sonic territory, and heck, they all sound fantastic. This latest limited lp release is no different.
Baker, half of the duo that is Nadja (but you knew that), also has a strange habit of re-recording old songs, which drives completists and obsessive fans up the wall. Such is the case with Belles Betes, 4 solo Aidan Baker tracks, here reimagined and performed by Nadja, which basically means tracks that tended toward the minimal and drifty, get some crunch and buzz, pretty shimmer transformed into blessed out crush. And like we mentioned above, these tracks are fantastic, different enough from the originals that they're well worth owning. Probably most of you know what to expect from Nadja at this point, but just in case, the sound here is dripping with thick crumbling distortion, washed out weary vocals, muted machinelike percussion, a pounding Godfleshian post industrial metallic shoegaze, falling somewhere between M83 and Jesu, warm, thick, lustrous, epic, but somehow simultaneously melancholy and mournful.
The standout track might be "Green And Cold", the title track from a Baker disc we sold tons of, here the song becomes a bit of marginally new wave-y slowcore, spare and spacious, moody and haunting, and maybe the creepiest and mysteriously lovely Nadja jam yet.
MPEG Stream: "Beautiful Beast"
MPEG Stream: "Green & Cold"

NADJA Belles Betes (Beta-Lactam Ring) lp 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As we've mentioned in past reviews, it gets harder and harder to know what to say about Nadja and Aidan Baker records. Not just because there are so many of them, but because they all mine similar sonic territory, and heck, they all sound fantastic. This latest limited lp release is no different.
Baker, half of the duo that is Nadja (but you knew that), also has a strange habit of re-recording old songs, which drives completists and obsessive fans up the wall. Such is the case with Belles Betes, 4 solo Aidan Baker tracks, here reimagined and performed by Nadja, which basically means tracks that tended toward the minimal and drifty, get some crunch and buzz, pretty shimmer transformed into blessed out crush. And like we mentioned above, these tracks are fantastic, different enough from the originals that they're well worth owning. Probably most of you know what to expect from Nadja at this point, but just in case, the sound here is dripping with thick crumbling distortion, washed out weary vocals, muted machinelike percussion, a pounding Godfleshian post industrial metallic shoegaze, falling somewhere between M83 and Jesu, warm, thick, lustrous, epic, but somehow simultaneously melancholy and mournful.
The standout track might be "Green And Cold", the title track from a Baker disc we sold tons of, here the song becomes a bit of marginally new wave-y slowcore, spare and spacious, moody and haunting, and maybe the creepiest and mysteriously lovely Nadja jam yet.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, packaged in a super thick book bound lp sleeve.