NIHITI For Ostland (Lo Bit Landscapes) cd 11.98
We've long been fans of this mysterious NY outfit, whose past records found these guys brewing up a dizzying concoction of warped electro wave, haunting witch house-y minimalist creep, fuzzed out shoegazey ambience, and home brewed big beat crunch, all blurred and smeared into something way more abstract and psychedelic that its constituent parts. But here on their third and most recent, the band dial things way back, and craft a dark, gorgeous slab of introspective, electronic soundscapery, opening the proceedings with thick swaths of gristled, pixelated Tim Hecker like sonic haze. All washed out and dreamy and woozily lysergic, perfectly leading into a stunning Marissa Nadler cover, the already dark original transformed into an even darker lament, all swirling churns of mumblecore drift, heaving swells of black blurred fuzz, over skeletal rhythms, and moaned barely there vox, smeared and subtly processed, a plaintive whispery croon becomes a lush landscape of layered drones drifting dreamily and druggily, a ghostly and spectral electro-ambient threnody, that builds to a near squall of roiling riffs and tangled black melodies, the result still somehow warm and soft and utterly trancelike.
Elsewhere, the group unfurl smoldering cinematic soundscapes, strange slivers of shadowy sound, moaning fragmented melodies, all over a haunting heartbeat like pulse, a sort of slo-mo electronica, laced with strange hummed/sung vocals that remind us a bit of country weirdos the Reveries, who sing with cell phone speakers in their mouths, the same effect here, a wordless warble that ebbs and flows, slipping from near insectoid buzz to deep softly dramatic, barely there croon, and back again, all over slow swooping backwards guitars, and disembodied fragments of guitar melody.
Some tracks, like "Eisenbahnstrasse, January 1st 1946" shed some of the darkness, and blossom into dreamily prismatic swirls, all tinkling chimes, clean guitar jangle, soft psychedelic shimmer, all interwoven with random samples and brief blurts of FX heavy skree, but the sound always seems to drift back into the darkness.
As the record progresses, heavy machine like industrial beat, lumber through fields of clang and clatter and thump, all constructed into a dense driving blast of junkyard groove, the whole thing swaddled in a distant buzz, and slowly building swells of layered static drones, a sort of ultra minimal hypno-hop, like something you migh have heard on an old DHR record, or on one of those Electric Ladyland comps alongside Techno Animal, Spectre and the like. Eventually, the sound slows to a crawl, still beat heavy, but this time a tar pit drag, a lurching, looped lumber, all downtuned thrum, and disembodied voices, and some buried shuffling skitter.
"Sun Shatterer" is a heady sprawl of minimal gloom pop, minor key guitars, chiming through a cloud of woozy sonic warble, weird clipped whispers, tense strings, keening high end tones, what sounds like Hermann Nitsch like brass, which resolve into soft whorls of crumbling distortion and lush waves of fuzzed out feedback, before unexpectedly exploding into something much more in keeping with their old sound, big beats, a sort of post industrial electro wave downer dirge, with clean, dramatic new wave vocals, big melodies, buzzing synths, but all still wreathed in the weird droned out sounds that started the track off, like a noiser, more abstact Interpol maybe...
After a couple brief tracks of creepy, psychedelic ambience, the 30 second "Campfire Ashes" way too short, sounding like it could have blossomed into some dark Demdike Stare style epic, which thankfully is in a way what happens, as that track leads directly into the closer, a nearly nine minute sprawl called "Hymn Division". that lays down a simple pulsing beat, over which Nihiti lay thick swaths of black buzz, dense swirls of ribcage rattling low end reverberations, and finally deep, dramatic minor key melodies, that infuse the song with serious pathos, it's not hard to imagine this as the sound track to the denouement of some twisted, modern, avant indie film, a dizzying expanse of moving, emotional, electronic minimalism, but here drifting towrd maximalism, the tones expanding and exploding in slow motion, the melodies, bright, and eventually blinding, the tones strecthed way out, tense and intense, the coda a sort of Hecker / Nadja dreamdronedrift, but more soft focus here, heady and heavenly.
MPEG Stream: "Siobhan's Song For Jakob"
MPEG Stream: "Ghosts And Lovers"
MPEG Stream: "Eisenbahnstrasse, January 1st 1946"
MPEG Stream: "Sun Shatterer"
MPEG Stream: "Hymn Divisions"

NIHITI For Ostland (Lo Bit Landscapes) lp 17.98
We've long been fans of this mysterious NY outfit, whose past records found these guys brewing up a dizzying concoction of warped electro wave, haunting witch house-y minimalist creep, fuzzed out shoegazey ambience, and home brewed big beat crunch, all blurred and smeared into something way more abstract and psychedelic that its constituent parts. But here on their third and most recent, the band dial things way back, and craft a dark, gorgeous slab of introspective, electronic soundscapery, opening the proceedings with thick swaths of gristled, pixelated Tim Hecker like sonic haze. All washed out and dreamy and woozily lysergic, perfectly leading into a stunning Marissa Nadler cover, the already dark original transformed into an even darker lament, all swirling churns of mumblecore drift, heaving swells of black blurred fuzz, over skeletal rhythms, and moaned barely there vox, smeared and subtly processed, a plaintive whispery croon becomes a lush landscape of layered drones drifting dreamily and druggily, a ghostly and spectral electro-ambient threnody, that builds to a near squall of roiling riffs and tangled black melodies, the result still somehow warm and soft and utterly trancelike.
Elsewhere, the goup unfurl smoldering cinematic soundscapes, strange slivers of shadowy sound, moaning fragmented melodies, all over a haunting heartbeat like pulse, a sort of slo-mo electronica, laced with strange hummed/sung vocals that remind us a bit of country weirdos the Reveries, who sing with cell phone speakers in their mouths, the same effect here, a worldless warble that ebbs and flows, slipping from near insectoid buzz to deep softly dramatic, barely there croon, and back again, all over slow swooping backwards guitars, and disembodied frgaments of guitar melody.
Some tracks, like "Eisenbahnstrasse, January 1st 1946" shed some of the darkness, and blossom into dreamily prismatic swirls, all tinkling chimes, clean guitar jangle, soft psychedelic shimmer, all interwoven with random samples and brief blurts of FX heavy skree, but the sound always seems to drift back into the darkness.
As the record progresses, heavy machine like industrial beat, lumber through fields of clang and clatter and thump, all constructed into a dense driving blast of junkyard groove, the whole thing swaddled in a distant buzz, and slowly building swells of layered static drones, a sort of ultra minimal hypno-hop, like something you migh have heard on an old DHR record, or on one of those Electric Ladyland comps alongside Techno Animal, Spectre and the like. Eventually, the sound slows to a crawl, still beat heavy, but this time a tar pit drag, a lurching, looped lumber, all downtuned thrum, and disembodied voices, and some buried shuffling skitter.
"Sun Shatterer" is a heady sprawl of minimal gloom pop, minor key guitars, chiming through a cloud of woozy sonic warble, weird clipped whispers, tense strings, keening high end tones, what sounds like Hermann Nitsch like brass, which resolve into soft whorls of crumbling distortion and lush waves of fuzzed out feedback, before unexpectedly exploding into something much more in keeping with their old sound, big beats, a sort of post industrial electro wave downer dirge, with clean, dramatic new wave vocals, big melodies, buzzing synths, but all still wreathed in the weird droned out sounds that started the track off, like a noiser, more abstact Interpol maybe...
After a couple brief tracks of creepy, psychedelic ambience, the 30 second "Campfire Ashes" way too short, sounding like it could have blossomed into some dark Demdike Stare style epic, which thankfully is in a way what happens, as that track leads directly into the closer, a nearly nine minute sprawl called "Hymn Division". that lays down a simple pulsing beat, over which Nihiti lay thick swaths of black buzz, dense swirls of ribcage rattling low end reverberations, and finally deep, dramatic minor key melodies, that infuse the song with serious pathos, it's not hard to imagine this as the sound track to the denouement of some twisted, modern, avant indie film, a dizzying expanse of moving, emotional, electronic minimalism, but here drifting towrd maximalism, the tones expanding and exploding in slow motion, the melodies, bright, and eventually blinding, the tones strecthed way out, tense and intense, the coda a sort of Hecker / Nadja dreamdronedrift, but more soft focus here, heady and heavenly.
MPEG Stream: "Siobhan's Song For Jakob"
MPEG Stream: "Ghosts And Lovers"
MPEG Stream: "Eisenbahnstrasse, January 1st 1946"
MPEG Stream: "Sun Shatterer"
MPEG Stream: "Hymn Divisions"

NIKE7UP Lucky! (Light Lodge) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A bizarre missive from this mysterious Texan producer of modern pop pulverizations who repurposes the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Beiber into nearly unrecognizable witchhouse-y goth dance remixes. Takes us back to the likes of Princess Tinymeat, March Violets, Danse Society and other wasted shards of our eighties gothic youth.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, we only have a few and might be awhile before we get more. On dark pink and white swirled vinyl!

NILSEN BJ & Z'EV 22'22 (Ideal) cd 14.98
Three tracks. Two artists. One solo track each. One collaboration. Each 22 minutes and 22 seconds long. Benny Nilsen provides the first track, and it's a signature piece for him with a long slow ascent of skull-cracked drones. The icy sounds of this piece, its spectral, shadowy allusions are more keeping with his earlier work as Hazard, a grim, post-industrial production of steely ambience. Very nicely done. The same can be said for Z'ev's track, as he's become far more adept with digital production in recent years. His arsenal of percussive strikes is at the core of his solo track, yet Z'ev has deftly smeared much of the metallic reverb and sustained magnetic vibrations into a monstrous low end composition of slow motion explosions crossing paths with Lustmord's Heresy or The Monstrous Soul, minus the death-obsessed imagery. These two tracks are clearly worth the price of admission, but it should be noted that the third collaborative track is pretty pointless. After 17 minutes of silence, the two merely present a room mix of the two of them playing drones and percussion. Eh.
MPEG Stream: BJ NILSEN "1"
MPEG Stream: Z'EV "2"
MPEG Stream: BJ NILSEN & Z'EV "3"

NILSEN, BJ Defeat (Ideal) cassette 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Very limited stock on this one. Defeat looks back to Nilsen's earlier recordings as Hazard, when his frigid dronescapes engineered from field recordings of the Swedish hinterlands to articulate the desolation and cold of that region. Of course, this isn't to say that Nilsen's current collaboration with Stilluppsteypa or the new output for Touch isn't dark, cold, and barren. Defeat is an recording laced with horror-film minor-key melodies that repeat the sparse two or three notes overlapping his trademarked bleak washes of drone, hiss, and shadow. This ominous bit of sound design doesn't seem to rely all that much on the laptop trickery (unlike say Silent Night or This Invisible City), rather the sources of synth and guitars hold their own in producing these black sounds. 40 minutes long and limited to 100 copies. Already out of print from the label.

NILSEN, BJ Draught #1 (Ash International) cassette 7.98
By now, most faithful aQ list readers are quite familiar with Swedish sound artist/field recordist/musician BJ Nilsen, we've heaped praise on most of his records, each a dark delicate balance of strange haunting sonic landscapes, and deftly manipulated sound, drones and textures and abstract explorations of sound, from the macroscopic to the micro, from thick sheets of rumbling low end thrum, to hushed crystalline chimes, to barely there snippets of found sound, to charged stretches of barren electronics.
This super limited cassette gathers up two live performances from back in 2008, both gorgeous examples of Nilsen's delicate and expressive soundscaping. Barely there shimmers, strange animalistic croaks and grunts, shimmering ultra delicate sine wave skree, deep whirling almost industrial sounding thrum, swoonsome stringlike melodies stretched into yet more layered drone, shards of muted glitch and crackling buzz, smeared into gauzy clouds of soft focus haze, the sounds whirling dizzily, druggy and drifty and dreamy, lush almost sci-fi cinematics, draped with softly crumbling melodies, and fragmented streaks of grinding high end, all woven into a surprisingly lush chunk of blown out dreamdoomdronemusic, a bit shoegazey, a little ethereal, but still rife with mechanical whirs and strange bits of found sound, samples and other sonic detritus, that makes it sound a little like a Philip Jeck performance, all warped and warbly. Whew! Fantastic stuff, not surprisingly, and most likely super limited, so grab one pronto!
Fancy full color covers, with some cool Savage Pencil collage/artwork inside and out!

NILSEN, BJ Fade To White (Touch) cd 15.98
BJ Nilsen was a precocious youth, having recorded for the acclaimed Cold Meat Industries with his project Morthound back when he was only a teenager. By the time he was 21, he began working under the name Hazard. While the first Hazard album Lech was a bit of a clumsy attempt at tape loop trickery and elliptical dark ambience, his second album North earned him a well-deserved spot on the Ash International / Touch roster with his shivering gray drones and shadowy, X-Files paranoia. After having recorded 5 albums as Hazard, Nilsen may have dropped the pseudonym for good, although his minimalist signature mastery over electricity and ether remains firmly intact. Like the bulk of his Hazard recordings, Nilsen composed Fade To White from field recordings coupled with some acoustic and electric instruments; and his edits and digital processing thoroughly abstracts all of the original sounds into gliding dronescapes that are at once imposingly monolithic yet always intriguing and welcoming. Aside from a crunchy passage of sodden leaves being mulched underfoot at the beginning of the record, most of the source material for Fade To White is thoroughly abstracted within his majestic crescendos for slow-burning tonal interplay and subtle psychoacoustics. Really fantastic!
MPEG Stream: "Dead Reckoning"
MPEG Stream: "Grappa Polar"

NILSEN, BJ Hazard 06_12_03: Generator Festival, Konzerthaus Wien (Touch) cd 12.98
The man we know better by his much more mysterious monicker, Hazard, steps out under his given name at this live performance, from a series curated by Fennesz in Germany in 2003. The sound though is unmistakenly Hazard. Using field recordings and found sounds, Nilsen gently blurs the edges of those recordings until they become indistinct and blurry, a drone of nature, crackly and warm, subtle and barely there. Not so much a drone record as a drone-y record. Lots of clatter and ambient detritus, footsteps, and passing vehicles, crickets and wind, but over the course of the performance, they shift and flow together until it's a warm and whirring wash of delicate low end rumbles and faraway shimmer. So beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Hazard 06_12_03"

NILSEN, BJ The Invisible City (Touch) cd 15.98
It could be a coin toss as to who's our favorite recording artist on Touch. Christian Fennesz, Phillip Jeck, and Chris Watson are all impeccable musicians working for the legendary label; but BJ Nilsen is the one artist who may be lurking beneath the radar a bit and has NEVER failed to deliver a great record. His work has always been focused on the drone, beginning back in his earlier sample heavy orchestrations as Morthound through Cold Meat Industries and onto his recordings as Hazard through the Touch imprint Ash International. Throughout his career, he's often tapped into the psychic and physical cold of his native Swedish landscape. That was definitely the case for his North album as Hazard and the three alcoholically bent records made in collaboration with Stilluppsteypa for Helen Scarsdale; and it's certainly true for The Invisible City.
A shimmering glow from an aggregate of rasping frequencies opens the album, sounding almost like a chorus of poorly grounded street lights offering their sustained, post-Ligeti plainsong to vacant streets on some cold wintery morning in Oslo. After some exploratory field recordings of bees and sympathetic atmospherics, Nilsen snaps into a frozen blur of softened distortion (e.g. Machinefabriek, Fennesz, and Lawrence English) laced with half-melodic phrases and shortwave transmissions echoing like distant ghosts on "Virtual Resistance." It's a signature move for Nilsen, and it's one that he's masterfully executed. Another great Nilsen strategy: his phased loops with theatrically brooding ambience and tactile field recordings, reappears on that same track which morphs into a shadowy post-apocalyptic smear somewhere between Deathprod and Barn Owl. Digital errata suspended in darkened rooms, barren windswept tones, and haunted field recordings dominate The Invisible City, which stands as another monumental achievement for BJ Nilsen.
MPEG Stream: "Gravity Station"
MPEG Stream: "Phase And Amplitude"
MPEG Stream: "Virtual Resistance"

NILSEN, BJ The Short Night (Touch) cd 16.98
Benny Nilsen is a man perfectly content living in the northern regions of Europe, having grown up in Sweden and living no further south than Berlin. For while the long nights of winter can gnaw at one's soul, the long days of summer are something to look forward to. If his collaborative albums with Stilluppsteypa were the existentially grim albums of drunken wintry behavior, then The Short Night is his portrait of the summer time dreaminess of sunflecked, arctic nights. Having been such champions of Nilsen's work back when he was recording as Hazard for Ash International, we find it a little strange that so many people have qualified The Short Night as 'dark.' True, if you were to compare this album to the lilting work of Colleen or even to fellow label mate Biosphere, The Short Night would appear quite dark; but in the context of Nilsen's entire discography, The Short Night is a dramatically colorful piece of work. Sure, Nilsen's sustained low frequencies and a few moments of growling noise do have their devilish undertones; but throughout the album, Nilsen punctures these impressionist clouds with elegant electronic chorales of ethereal melodies that are surprisingly beautiful for BJ Nilsen. There is a melancholy to Nilsen's work, but melancholy isn't always synonymous with dark, as is the case here. In many ways, Nilsen has found himself trekking into the territories previously ventured by Fennesz and Machinefabriek, creating a transcendent sound through the tension between shoegazing / drone-based driftwork and subtle discordant agitation. This record is highly, highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Front"
MPEG Stream: "Pole Of Inaccessibility"
MPEG Stream: "Viking North"

NILSEN, BJ The Short Night (Touch / Autofact) lp 16.98
Now available on vinyl! However, it's apparently a totally different mix than the original cd version, the review of which (and associated sound samples) we've included below...
Benny Nilsen is a man perfectly content living in the northern regions of Europe, having grown up in Sweden and living no further south than Berlin. For while the long nights of winter can gnaw at one's soul, the long days of summer are something to look forward to. If his collaborative albums with Stilluppsteypa were the existentially grim albums of drunken wintry behavior, then The Short Night is his portrait of the summer time dreaminess of sunflecked, arctic nights. Having been such champions of Nilsen's work back when he was recording as Hazard for Ash International, we find it a little strange that so many people have qualified The Short Night as 'dark.' True, if you were to compare this album to the lilting work of Colleen or even to fellow label mate Biosphere, The Short Night would appear quite dark; but in the context of Nilsen's entire discography, The Short Night is a dramatically colorful piece of work. Sure, Nilsen's sustained low frequencies and a few moments of growling noise do have their devilish undertones; but throughout the album, Nilsen punctures these impressionist clouds with elegant electronic chorales of ethereal melodies that are surprisingly beautiful for BJ Nilsen. There is a melancholy to Nilsen's work, but melancholy isn't always synonymous with dark, as is the case here. In many ways, Nilsen has found himself trekking into the territories previously ventured by Fennesz and Machinefabriek, creating a transcendent sound through the tension between shoegazing / drone-based driftwork and subtle discordant agitation. This record is highly, highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Front"
MPEG Stream: "Pole Of Inaccessibility"
MPEG Stream: "Viking North"

NILSEN, BJ Vinyl (Touch) lp 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The last two outings from the Swedish drone composer BJ Nilsen have veered considerably outside of his normal modus operandi; and we certainly have to thank his Icelandic collaborators for steering him down the path of cheeky Euro-disco on the Super Great Love album recorded as Evil Madness. And then there was the masterfully hauntological outing from Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa on Big Shadow Montana. But dating back to his early recordings as Hazard, and even further back to his teenage / Cold Meat Industry days as Morthound, the cold, steel-minded drone has been central to the output of BJ Nilsen. The less than thrilling title of Vinyl returns to the sprawling, isolationist sounds that Nilsen chiselled and honed from various field recordings coupled with the more traditional instruments of guitar and piano. Ghostly tones flicker around floes of ice getting tossed in the surf and cold blasts of wind racing around what could be a forgotten WWII era bunker somewhere in the north of Sweden. Out of all of the natural elements, Nilsen extracts a variety of sustained drones, radioactive tonalities, and muted rumblings that beget metaphors of an existential emptiness. The thrumming low-end frequencies that crawl out of Nilsen's compositions are comparable to those of Thomas Koner, who hasn't made a record this good in many years! Be warned however, that the pressing of this vinyl is not terribly good, as our turntable's needle required a couple extra pennies to stay in the quiet grooves on the B-side of this album. Bafflingly limited to 250 copies.

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPESTEYPA Space Finale (Editions Mego) lp 27.00
This out of print cassette, now available on vinyl!
At the end of the 'alcohol trilogy' that BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa released via Helen Scarsdale, the dark isolationist rumble which dominated the previous two and half records was shattered by a robotic sequence of bleeping analog synth tones which spiralled deep into the void of the arctic night sky. Such a dramatic juxtaposition is not uncommon within the realm of Stilluppsteypa, but less so for Mr. Nilsen. And those Derbyshire / Dockstader / Oneohtrix like tones found on Passing Out (the finale mentioned above) is clearly the jumping off point for Space Finale - an epic 90 minute double lp of analog synthesis, captured, spliced, and cut, all on a Revox 2-channel tape machine. Amidst the vintage synth blips and sustained tones, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa offer another narrative composition that moves from the vacant space station overrun by some unknown alien virus into the lair of the mad scientist who meanders dabbles on his Wurlizter (or some kind of organ, if it's not an actual Wurlizter) in minor key melancholy when not toiling away on an abomination that will somehow destroy the world. Shadowy ambience, fuzzed out tape hiss aggregation, weird dropouts and glitches on the tape that would make Leif Elggren proud, and much much more.
As mentioned above, Space Finale originally came out as a limited edition cassette earlier in 2010, but it was pretty clear that Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa intended this to be a 2lp, as both sides of the cassette were neatly broken into two suites a piece, perfectly suited for vinyl! This too is limited - just 500 - and highly recommend, as with all from this ongoing collaborative project.

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Big Shadow Montana (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) lp 16.98
Collaborations in the experimental scene come and go, so it's so great to see one that has some longevity. This is album number seven from BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa, and the fourth released by the discerning Helen Scarsdale Agency label. Since this trio (Benny plus Sigtryggur and Helgi of Stilluppsteypa) unleashed their drunken drone trilogy through the aforementioned Agency, they've been venturing into all sorts of delirious bouts of murky psychedelic collages and imagined soundtracks. There were the weird ruminations upon a found cassette, turned into a mondo filmscore on Man From Deep River; and then the sci-fi opus of synth meanderings found on Space Finale. Now what may be the best to emerge since that earlier alcohol-inspired trilogy is this, the mercurial and hauntological album Big Shadow Montana. Two long-form pieces make up the album, with the A side standing as a hallucinatory foreshadowing of what is to come on the flip. Here, ghostly drones broadcast directly out of the haunted ballroom from The Shining, flickering with half-received transmissions, bumps in the night, and any number of other worldly sounds. Bits of structure emerge in this slow-motion churning of drone, shadow, and filigree coming across somewhere between the fucked up collages that seem to bring all of the Teenage Filmstars records to a close and the subterranean drone-rock sensibility of German Oak. When the record flips, a cosmic stream of vintage synths slump toward oblivion paralleling what has been done by Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never (both of whom have released work alongside this trio on Editions Mego), but before this can venture any further down the rabbit hole of Schnitzler and Schulze references, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa slip into a faux-exotica guise with cheap Casiotone melodies swaying to and fro through old Les Baxter and Martin Denny records. It's a signature move for Stilluppsteypa, if anyone remembers how they mustered a similar strategy on The Best Possible Yet back in 1997. But the maudlin organ harmonies and percolating tone-bloop oscillations are much more confident here, emerging perfectly out of the drone fog like those organ-led numbers on that Deathprod boxset, only to slip into a twin engine thrum of inner-space expansion. In listening back to the second side of the album, it's clear that the first is a lengthy dub of the second, recast and recontextualized as a percussive ghost. Totally captivating through and through, and with a damn trippy cover sporting a vibrantly hypnotic, candy-colored mandala. Yup, it does have a download card. Yup, it is limited. Yup, it is highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Big Shadow Montana 1"
MPEG Stream: "Big Shadow Montana 2"

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!!!
For a country whose entire population is only half that of San Francisco, Iceland has an exceptionally prolific arts community. One could easily look to the big Icelandic names in pop music (i.e. Bjork and Sigur Ros); but there's also slightly lesser known (but even more adventurous) music from the likes of Johann Johannson, Apparat Organ Quartet, and the entire output of the Kitchen Motors institution. But our personal favorite from Iceland remains Stilluppsteypa, whose dada drunkenness and black humor has developed arctic undercurrents to their increasingly bleak drone-based work. On Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna, the Stilluppsteypa duo of Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson have hooked up once again with the Swedish sound artist BJ Nilsen, perhaps best known for his triumphant elemental drone work as Hazard released through Touch. Sigmarsson sums up the communal idea behind this album as a "love for drones, Scandinavia, and alcohol." Of course, he then proceeds to type a polysyllabic onomatopoetic bunch of drunken text that makes our extend-o-spelling of doom seem trite by comparison.
The previous collaboration Vikinga Brennivin was an homage to the Icelandic firewater of the same name; yet it held a clarity and singlemindedness rarely attributed to alcoholic excess. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna has that same contradictory dualism of conceptually relating to being fucked up without totally losing a grip on reality. Or perhaps these three Scandinavians have gotten so loaded that they drifted into a parallel universe of liquid physics and amorphous gravity. Needless to say, Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna is another masterful album of alchemical drone, that's even darker and more morose than its predecessor. Sonar pulses and crackles of wood break up the jet-black atmospheres of frozen electronic drones, resonant frequencies, and hallucinatory echoes rippling way out on the outer regions of the event horizon for this sonic black hole. At times falling close to the constant spiralling of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste, and times recalling the best isolationism of Thomas Koner. Somber, magnificent, and exquisitely constructed!
MPEG Stream: "Svefnlaus / Somnlos"
MPEG Stream: "Undir Ahrifum / Sundurlaus"
MPEG Stream: "Skuggbild / Skuggamynd"

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Goda Nott (Editions Mego) lp 22.00
The first three records from BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa were a trilogy dedicated to alcohol, and wintery drones, as semi-fictions about getting really drunk sometime in December and nearly passing out in a snowbank while gazing up at the northern lights. Goda Nott is something of an extension of these ideas, except maybe for the alcohol part. Sometime in the winter of 2011 / 2012, this trio found themselves snowed in at Stilluppsteypa's Icelandic studio with no food or water; and no way of getting out until the snow began to melt away. While they did sleep as much as they could to pass the time, they also busied themselves with recording the sounds of the snow, ice, and wind, attempting to monitor what - if any - activity may exist beyond their frozen enclave. The possibility of any existence beyond their own became uncertain, where any rustling of the snow could be a footstep or a resonant tone could be a snowplow. Through their indeterminant amount of time in that studio, they smeared these field recordings into rumbling drones and static tones that mirrored the onset of their collective madness, made audible in the crazy sounding whistling that one of them fastens to the blustery isolationism of the first side of Goda Nott. The second side is even more desolate than the first, rivaling Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion for the most empty, most gasping, most claustrophobic slab of audio bleakness we've ever heard. This is a radical turn away from the melancholy kosmiche electronica of their previous two albums Space Finale and Big Shadow Montana; but they are also rendering something wholly new to the bad-ass dronescaping they mastered early on. So fucking good.
MPEG Stream: "Goda Nott 1"
MPEG Stream: "Goda Nott 2"

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Man From Deep River (Editions Mego) cd 17.98
Man From Deep River is another fantastic album in the ongoing Viking drone collaboration between BJ Nilsen, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and Helgi Thorsson. Where their trilogy for Helen Scarsdale spoke the trials and tribulations of alcoholism through heavy minimalism, this one has a Mondo feel. The album is based upon a found tape from 1975, which served as the guide to their excursions; but even beyond this piece of audio verite, they frame the album as if it were the harrowing sound design for some fucked-up Italian pseudo documentary on any number of unsavory topics. The opening field recording of African mbira players and wood percussionists is tame enough, setting the stage for a narrative beyond their Scandinavian tundra. As these recordings degrade through incrementally increasing reverb, the signature Nilsen / Sigmarsson drone sound oozes forward amidst the chattering of European finches. Things quickly blacken with a Dracula haunting of carnivalesque organ chords played with heavy hands and minor keys. As all of this happens within the first 10 minutes, the album instantly has a very different feel than the alcohol trilogy's isolationism.
Deadly serious, flatlined tones emanate beyond this point, coupled with those same bird recordings which have now been deformed into mutating coos and slow-motion clucks as if refracted through a fun house mirror. Bits of spoken dialogue also creep forward presumably from that aforementioned found cassette, but swimming in deeper than deep reverberation and intermingling with warbling carnivalesque overtures spawned from the almighty drone. After a rasping collage of electrified field recordings, Man From Deep River concludes through a series of spectral arcs of modulating sound radiate the night sky like the northern lights filtered through auditory hallucinogenics. Only during these brief concluding moments do Nilsen & Stilluppstyepa allow for a sense of beauty to emerge from an otherwise terminally unsettling, if blackly psychedelic album.
MPEG Stream: "Part 1"
MPEG Stream: "Part 2"
MPEG Stream: "Part 3"

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Passing Out (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 15.98
Heavy.
Black.
Drone.
That's the shorthand of what happens on Passing Out, the finale to a trilogy proposed by Benny Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa on the virtues and vices of alcohol blurred into a sinister ambience. But of course, we cannot leave well enough alone; and the longhand version is necessary to position this album at the top of the heap of heavy, black, drone albums that we continue to clamor about. Yes, Passing Out is a fucking brilliant album; and if you were blown away by the previous two entries in this trilogy -- Vikinga Brennivin and Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna -- then you're pretty much obligated to pick this album up as well.
Much like Nilsen's old project Hazard and the previous two collaborative records, the album starts in shadow and stealth with an ominous drone backing windswept industrial field recordings. Ten minutes in, this desolate cold snaps with a blinding shimmer of sustained sound. These are ostensibly lighter tones, but given a malevolent twist. Another agitation of activity fires with some sort of tactile crackling that dissolves into a gaping Lustmord meets Popul Vuh passage with a soft rhythm from some slow motion maracas. Benny tells us that these stoned maracca shakes are courtesy of Oren Ambarchi. He also tells us that Leif Elggren also makes a vocal appearance somewhere on the album; but there's nothing that sounds like the sly narration on The Ghost Orchid here. Soon after, a cyclical growl of spectral guitars recall what Robert Hampson used to be able to sculpt through the guitar on his once mighty project Main; and all of this gives way to ring-modulated percolations with disembodied melodies scratched from old 78s that sound like a transistor radio slowly drowning in a giant metal tank filled with water. Deep resonant vibrations abound, with some creepy breathing in your ear whisperings that may be those Leif Elggren vocals that Benny was talking about. Gradually, all of these deep drones and shadowy overtures glide into a slumbering descent. But the Icelandic weirdoes in Stilluppsteypa couldn't just let the album drift away without their absurdism forcing through the door, as they blurt with a clinical repetition of blooping electronics smashed and grabbed from Raymond Scott circa Manhattan Research. It's an unsettling climax to the album, but one that works brilliantly through Stilluppsteypa's expert use of electro-acoustic black humor. But it's drone that dominates the album, as angelic wash and devilish rumble collude to end this magnificent album. Oblivion never sounded so good.
Passing Out is beautifully packaged with letterpressed and silkscreened artwork. Very nice.
MPEG Stream: "The Scandinavian Tourist (extract 1)"
MPEG Stream: "The Scandinavian Tourist (extract 2)"
MPEG Stream: "The Scandinavian Tourist (extract 3)"

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Space Finale (Mego Editions) cassette 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
At the end of the 'alcohol trilogy' that BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa released via Helen Scarsdale, the dark isolationist rumble which dominated the previous two and half records was shattered by a robotic sequence of bleeping analog synth tones which spiralled deep into the void of the arctic night sky. Such a dramatic juxtaposition is not uncommon within the realm of Stilluppsteypa, but less so for Mr. Nilsen. And those Derbyshire / Dockstader / Oneohtrix like tones found on Passing Out (the finale mentioned above) is clearly the jumping off point for Space Finale - an epic 90 minute cassette of analog synthesis, captured, spliced, and cut, all on a Revox 2-channel tape machine. Amidst the vintage synth blips and sustained tones, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa offer another narrative composition that moves from the vacant space station overrun by some unknown alien virus into the lair of the mad scientist who meanders dabbles on his Wurlizter (or some kind of organ, if it's not an actual Wurlizter) in minor key melancholy when not toiling away on an abomination that will somehow destroy the world. Shadowy ambience, fuzzed out tape hiss aggregation, weird dropouts and glitches on the tape that would make Leif Elggren proud, and much much more. With so many cassette releases being issued as 10-15 minute programs, it's very welcome to come across a full 90 minute tape! Limited to 200 copies!!! We got 20 and they're going fast...

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Vikinga Brennivin (The Helen Scarsdale Agency) cd 14.98
The first edition of Vikinga Brennivin came and went very very quickly, as it came with an elaborate insert cut from actual copper. We are pleased to say the second edition is equally beautiful with sparkly copper colored paper and the same silkscreened design. The musical program is exactly the same as the first. Here's what we said earlier:
The cold winter nights stuck above the Arctic Circle have become the perfect climate for extended bouts of intoxication for many a Scandinavian. As a result, the capacity for the Icelandic duo Stilluppsteypa to consume alcohol is the stuff of legend. Alcohol has soaked into every fiber of their being; but its manifestation in their music (and their personalities for that matter) is closer to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allegory, as a raging alcoholic squirms just beneath the surface of a stoic Scandinavian temperament. Of course, where these two personalities come into conflict is where the art of Stilluppsteypa is realized. A schizoid tension runs throughout Stilluppsteypa's impressive catalogue of terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures; and often this tension is dished out with a smug dollop of black humor and Dadaist absurdity. So, it's hardly unusual to come across Stilluppsteypa celebrating Vikinga Brennivin, the stringent Icelandic alcohol that has undoubtedly killed some of their collective brain cells. Yet it was the stoic BJ Nilsen -- the Swedish electron wrangler whose best known for his work as Hazard -- who invited Stilluppsteypa to collaborate on Vikinga Brennivin. Their resultant collaboration is an existentialist allegory in which the three drunkenly stumble out in a Scandinavian winter night and spiral toward the inevitable point in which they blackout. Lest this be construed as a derelict piece of method acting, the craft that Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa brought to Vikinga Brennivin is impeccable, as the extended dronescapes breath with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
MPEG Stream: "En Dare Kan Fraga Mer An Tre Visa Kan Svara"
MPEG Stream: "Det Ar Bast Att Jag Borjar, Annars Kommer..."

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA Vikinga Brennivin (Limited Edition) (The Helen Scarsdale Agency ) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The cold winter nights stuck above the Arctic Circle have become the perfect climate for extended bouts of intoxication for many a Scandinavian. As a result, the capacity for the Icelandic duo Stilluppsteypa to consume alcohol is the stuff of legend. Alcohol has soaked into every fiber of their being; but its manifestation in their music (and their personalities for that matter) is closer to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allegory, as a raging alcoholic squirms just beneath the surface of a stoic Scandinavian temperment. Of course, where these two personalities come into conflict is where the art of Stilluppsteypa is realized. A schizoid tension runs throughout Stilluppsteypa's impressive catalogue of terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures; and often this tension is dished out with a smug dollop of black humour and Dadaist absurdity. So, it's hardly unusual to come across Stilluppsteypa celebrating Vikinga Brennivin, the stringent Icelandic alcohol that has undoubtably killed some of their collective brain cells. Yet it was the stoic BJ Nilsen -- the Swedish electron wrangler whose best known for his work as Hazard -- who invited Stilluppsteypa to collaborate on Vikinga Brennivin. Their resultant collaboration is an existentialist allegory in which the three drunkenly stumble out in a Scandinavian winter night and spiral toward the inevitable point in which they blackout. Lest this be construed as a derelict piece of method acting, the craft that Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa brought to Vikinga Brennivin is impeccable, as the extended dronescapes breath with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
We've got a handful of the first edition of Vikinga Brennivin which come housed in a jewel case with beautiful aged-copper inserts (as in actual metal, not copper ink) with white silk-screened printing. There's only 300 of the first edition, and the label has sold out of it! We'll let you know when the second edition will be released sometime in April 2005.
MPEG Stream: "En Dare Kan Fraga Mer An Tre Visa Kan Svara"
MPEG Stream: "Det Ar Bast Att Jag Borjar, Annars Kommer..."

NILSEN, BJ & STILLUPPSTEYPA / MILAN SANDBLEISTIFT split (Licht-Ung) lp 24.00
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Holy shit! Is this fucking cool, or what? First of all, it's got a fucking piece of tile mounted to the cover. Second of all, it's limited to a mere 276 copies. Thirdly, some of the copies we got enjoy a delightful bouquet from the industrial strength adhesive used to bind the tile to cardboard sleeve, that may give an additionally psychoactive property to the album. And fourthly it's another brilliant collaboration between our favorite Scandinavian sound artists BJ Nilsen (from Sweden) and Stilluppsteypa (from Iceland), who had blown us away on their previous duets Vikinga Brennivin and Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna.
We're not really sure who Milan Sandbleistift is, but he's authored the other side of this split LP. His contribution is a teethgrinding piece of dirty drone wandering from lonely 8-bit electronic tones like a random piece of gear yanked from one of the Wolf Eyes' suitcases and allowed to growl in futility amidst a cloud of hiss and crackle pushed towards a radioactive self-immolation. It's pretty fucking cool, but even better is the glacial, grim drones from BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa. They've long mastered a twisted, rumbling ambience that's dark and dense, mysterious and haunting, deep and rich, that always straddles the precision of laptop jockeys like Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Stefan Mathieu, etc. and the blackened atmospheres of Corrupted, Earth, SUNNO))), etc.; and their two sprawling tracks on this split LP are marvelous additions to their catalogues of drones that drift across the Arctic Sea on a massive rusted ship between Sweden and Iceland.
STRICTLY LIMITED to 276 copies of which we only got a handful. So once these are gone, they're gone forever.

NINTH DESERT Zone (Mystery Sea) cd-r 11.00
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**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
There are a handful of cd-r labels out there who are meticulous, not only with the music they choose to release, but with the packaging, the presentation, the ideas and inspiration behind the label, the theme that runs through all of the music, with everything related to their label and the music on it, which is always so inspiring, especially when everyone you know has a limited cd-r label. One of our favorites is Belgian label Mystery Sea, who specialize in what they call "night-ocean drones", and each disc is gorgeously packaged with full color artwork, that matches the artwork on the disc, and it all reflects the music contained within. We get as many copies as we can, but with almost every Mystery Sea releases we get, they tend to disappear quite quickly.
The latest comes from Ninth Desert, whose sound is anything but arid and dry, desolate and warm. Instead, the sounds on Zone are cold, cool, chilly, wintery, lots of glistening high end, the sounds you might imagine would emanate from vast ice fields, or deep snowy caves, not so much rumble and buzz as sparkle and glimmer and glisten. Even at it's most low-end dronelike, the whirs are wrapped in streaks of keening high end, everything is bright and blown out. It's like the sonic version of laying in a huge snow bank, staring at the sun, everything is white and bright, too much for your eyes to handle so everything sort of glazes into strange indistinct shapes, glowing and shifting, like clouds in the sky, or huge slow moving chunks of ice in the sea. These sounds are arctic, almost alien, like wandering on the surface of some strange planet, everything icy and barren, cold winds whir and whine, the sound of the slow moving glaciers a muted creaking, all smeared into dreamy swaths of high end shimmer. So lovely. And so refreshing to experience a soothing, slow moving drone record, that doesn't rely entirely on low end rumble, but at the same time manages to make upper register sounds as soothing and soft focus as their lower ended brethren.
Like all Mystery Sea releases, strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered on the tray card, and gorgeously packaged with striking full color artwork.
MPEG Stream: "Strate"
MPEG Stream: "Marhbe"
MPEG Stream: "Green"

NISENNENMONDAI Tori / Neji (Heartworm Press) 2lp 17.98
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Yay! It's pretty cool that Norway's Smalltown Supersound has put this out, a disc collecting two previously released (in Japan only) eps by this Japanese all-girl avant-rock unit. We'd found out about this band a while back, and had wanted to stock their stuff, but sometimes importing cds from Japan is a daunting task. So our procrastination paid off, as now we have this handy disc, easily available. (It's also pretty cool that the Heartworm Press label has also just issued this on vinyl!) So what's the deal with this band? A mostly instrumental guitar/bass/drums trio who are psychedelically skronky, generating massive walls of distortion underpinned by propulsive no-waveisms. They're not a Japanese "noise" band like Merzbow or Hijokaidan, but certainly get plenty noisy. We could compare 'em at times to the likes of Afrirampo, Lightning Bolt, Melt Banana, Deerhoof, (early) Blonde Redhead... actually Nisennenmodai makes the reviewer's task a bit easier by naming several of the tracks of the Neji ep (2004) which begins this disc after some of their musical heroes, which to a degree they emulate: "Pop Group", "This Heat", "Sonic Youth". The "This Heat" track definitely has the nervous tension and percussive percolations we love about that band, whereas "Pop Group" is ultra-angular and extra-noisy...
The Tori ep (2005) that occupies the second half of this collection continues those themes - in fact, they do one of Neji's songs again, the densely rhythmic "Ikkkyokume", probably a signature track for the band as it so well represents their trance-inducing intensity, love of volume and minimalist song structure. Tori's first track "Kyuukohan" is tightly wound, repetitive number full of crashing cymbals, chiming guitar, and bass throb... building, building, building relentlessly to a massive climax. The next song, "Kyaaaaaa", incorporates yelping vocal shrieks and even more noisy feedback guitar. And so it goes, getting ever noisier, more throbbingly repetitive, a distorted, enthralling onslaught of explosive splatter/scatter rock indeed! We'd love to see 'em live someday, apparently there's crazy costumes and stuff, but that seems hardly necessary given the sheer energy of their music.
The limited double LP version is a handsome gatefold, on white vinyl. It's already sold out at the label, apparently we got their very last copies... act fast!
MPEG Stream: "This Heat"
MPEG Stream: "Ikkkyokume"

NITSCH, HERMANN 17.09.2009 Orgelkonzert, Pauluskerk, Tilburg (Dmr) 2lp 54.00

NITSCH, HERMANN Die Geburt Des Dionysos Christos (Vinyl On Demand) 3lp wooden box 155.00
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Hermann Nitsch might just rank as one of our favorite modern composers, his pieces being huge atonal drone works for orchestras, accompanied by bloody 'aktions', with performers dressed all in white, or nude, faux crucifixions and gallons and gallons of bovine blood. It's precisely the disturbing dramatic elements of Nitsch's aktions that have kept him from ever performing in the US.
A few of his here have gotten pretty obsessed with Nitsch, his recordings always super limited and notoriously difficult to track down, one aQuarian (we're looking at you Andee!) even owns several of boxsets containing complete aktions, which result in upwards of 50 cds.
Like his live aktions, every release is a spectacle, Die Geburt Des Dionysos Christos is no different. Released by the always amazing Vinyl On Demand label, which means outrageous and over the top packaging, this time, it's a gorgeous silk screened and hand stained wooden box, with a hinged top, inside, three lps, each in a deluxe printed sleeve, also a massive gorgeously printed booklet, thick textured paper, metallic inks, the whole nine yards. It would be worth it even if the lps were blank and it was just the object. But thankfully, there is music, but unlike the grand scale aktions, the recordings here are much more intimate. Minimal drone organ recordings, some captured live in a cathedral, others recorded on the organ at his private castle (!) in Austria.
We only got two, probably can't get more. Fans of extreme and mysterious sounds will be blown away, it looks amazing, sounds fantastic, it even smells great, the box and the ink and the printed sleeves, so recommended. And so worth the hefty price tag.

NITSCH, HERMANN Island: Eine Sinfonie In 10 Sätzen (Cortical) 4cd 42.00
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Four cds of intense, grinding drones. Beautiful, but intense and cacophonous. "Like a musical bloodletting" says Andee. Hermann Nitsch is perhaps the most renowned artist spawned from the Austrian Wiener Aktionismus movement producing some of the most brutal and violent art and performance ever. Nitsch always accompanied his Orgien-Mysterien-Theatre performances with walls off orchestral drones--and here they are. Beautiful packaging with performance photos and liner notes by Gunter Brus.

NITSCH, HERMANN Musik Der 80.Aktion (Dom ) cd 14.98
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Hermann Nitsch may be best known for the charged visual documents of his blood soaked performance art pieces, but his musical output is so powerful as to metaphorically out-muscle any of staged crucifixions that are showered in pig blood and honey. One of his more sublime musical scores, "Musik Der 80. Aktion" is a variation on the organ-drone theme with a discordant tonal flow that resurrects the heretical musical notations of the dissonant tritones that the early church banned as "diabolica in musica." Recommended!

NITSCH, HERMANN Sinfonia Punta Campanella in 4 movimenti (Fondazione Morra) cd 38.00
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NJIQAHDDA Aartu Mortaa (Njiijn Arts Productions) 2xcd-r + incense + candle + box 24.00
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Another missive of murky unblack energy from the mysterious Njiqahdda, another project from the man behind E.E.E. Recordings, as well as some of our favorite unblack bands: Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial, but for Njiqahdda, the approach seems to be much different that for the other more traditionally buzzy outfits. In our review for the last Njiqahdda, we described the sound as alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed UN-black metal, which still pretty much applies, but like in those other projects, the sounds and productions are so varied, it sounds sometimes like they were recorded in different studios, used different equipment, it even sounds sometimes like it was played by entirely different bands. Not sure how he does it, but whatever it is, every new record re veals a new facet to his sound, and on this new Njiqahdda, the sound is murky and hypnotic, not so much a buzz as a muddy blur. A main riff that is repeated over and over and over, a chord progression rendered almost dronelike, the vocals a layer of gurgling rumble over the top, the drums only audible as a distant throb or the occasional sizzle of cymbal shimmer. Definitely grim and (un)black, but with that distinct postrock vibe, and a weirdly catchy main melody, the whole thing locked and looped into an endlessly repetitive mantra.
Two tracks on the first disc, muddy and murky and dreamily washed out, almost like some minimal black metal record produced by Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck. Buzzy and beautifully blurred.
The second disc is a single hour long track of deeeeeeep black ambience. A haunting and mysterious expanse of distant whirs and cavernous rumbles, soft shimmer and high end streaks, super spare and sparse, headphones recommended, reverbed voices, the sound of some underground cavern, lightless and devoid of all life, an emptiness, a nothingness, beautifully austere.
Packaged in an oversized black cardboard box, with a candle and incense, a parchment insert, the cd-r's in plain white cardboard sleeves with paste on text on the front and back. Crazy limited. In fact, TOTALLY OUT OF PRINT, this batch made just for us, which means once these are gone, they are gone gone gone...
MPEG Stream: "Aartuu Solmua Orkk"
MPEG Stream: "Mortaa Skaldai Unvettu Oom"

NJIQAHDDA Ints / Nji / Verfatu (Njiijn Arts Productions) cd-r 9.98
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The return of the unpronounceably named master of alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed UN-black metal, Njiqahdda, whose last record was a revelation, which is saying a lot as the man behind Njiqahdda also records as Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, and as part of Glaciial, not to mention running the kick ass E.E.E. Recordings label.
But with Njiqahdda, there does seem to be something more organic going on, something less tied to the structures and strictures of black metal. There is definitely plenty of buzz and blast, but there's also lots of krautrock style jamming, psychedelic ambience. The sound is much more lo-fi, murky and muddy, but not in that blackened grim way so much as a strange haunting earthy way.
The opening track begins with some swirling black rumble, and mysterious downtuned drones, but when the song proper kicks in, it's not a burst of blackness, instead it's an effects drenched tripped out hypnorock jam, Butthole Surfers style vocals swirl in a sea of trippy druggy FX, the main riff is looped and repeated, the drums propulsive and inventive, if anything this sounds more like last week's record of the week CAVE, than any black metal we've heard . There are some shrieked harsh vocals, some double kick blast beats, but those are strung beneath clean guitars weaving a seasick shanty, the effects cycling and swirling and adding so much weird texture and so many strange layers, that this honestly sounds like it could be some blackened Circle side project. The track unwinds into a dense field of slowly unfurling feedback and more spacepsych FX.
The second track follows a similar pattern, hewing a bit closer to a distinctly black metal sound, but still, the effects are wrapped around everything, the drums are busy and chaotic, the vocals are weird whispers, doused in delay, and allowed to careen amidst the warped riffage and splattery drumming, part way through, the band locks into a nearly Burzumic buzz, but before too long the song slips back into hushed black ambience.
Track three is the blackest so far, a loping, dirgey, depressive minor key midtempo lurch, the guitars surging and soaring majestically, the drums simple and propulsive, the vocals still weird indistinct clouds of echo and shimmer. Tripped out and seriously psychedelic, but definitely black and buzzy, almost blissed out, not really in a shoegazey way, but more like an effects laden space rock.
Finally to finish things off, Njiqahdda takes the last song and dips back into a soundworld much more grim and black, the riffing much less effected, more a churning buzz, still swathed in effects and keyboards, the vocals hissy wraiths hovering overhead, the cymbals so hot and sizzly, they seem to never decay, adding a whole 'nother layer of high end shimmer, finally giving way to a weird looped abstract riffscape, with guitars, roiling pulsing, flecked with stuttery glitch and random abstract crunch, eventually becoming a soft minimal whisper before blinking out.
Shit yeah. If anyone is pushing the boundaries of black metal, it seems to be the ones not even playing it. Unblack is definitely the new black, especially if you like your grim buzz tripped out and seriously fucked up.
MPEG Stream: "Lvistagnagsetta"
MPEG Stream: "Infertel"

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

NO Moongoon (Drone Records) 7" 6.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Drone Records -- run by Stefan Knappe of Troum and Maeror Tri -- exclusively produces seven inches mostly by emerging artists who specialize in expressive drone work (hence the label name). While there is something to be said for Drone's dedication to unknown artists, the work that comes from the ongoing series tends to be some of the best work from each of the artists' respective catalogues. This definitely includes more familiar names such as Reynols (with their infamous '10,000 Chicken Symphony'), Francisco Lopez, Spear, and Osso Exotico; but also lesser known artists such as Klood and Tarkatak. Drone tends to make small runs of these singles (usually about 250 copies and with handmade covers) and they always go fast.
This is certainly one of the more curious 7"s from the Drone series, as No offers a series of vacant compositions for whispy synthetic trills, nervous vibrations offering the faintest shadow of a melody, and plinking piano reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's "A Missing Sense" or the Robert Ashley inspired tracks from "Automating Volume One." An interesting detour from this series that tends to center around the densely packed layers of dark guitar ambience from Knappe's Troum and Maeror Tri. Limited to 250 copies.

NO + TARKATAK s/t (Dach) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Tarkatak really just needs to release a proper CD, as the project is clearly good enough to warrant putting out at least 500 copies or so. Yet, this collaboration between Tarkatak and No is another CD-R production, limited to 100 copies. Both Tarkatak and No are grim German post-industrial outfits, with Tarkatak following the Maeror Tri / Troum sound (which resulted producing a very nice single for Troum's Drone Records) and No taking more of a power electronic / death ambient approach. Two tracks of deep drones from timestretched field recordings by Tarkakat, two blistering John Duncan-esque noise cuts from No, and a remix of both artists by Tarkatak.

NO COPPER The Beauty And Tragedy Of Ephemerality (self-released) cd-r 8.98
No Copper is the duo of Thaniel Ion Lee (Blood Escutcheon) and Douglas Lucas, who lay down a serious sprawl of abstract sonic ritualism, that is equal parts No Neck Blues Band, AMM and Organum, extended soundscapes of groaning industrial shimmer, of pipe fight like clatter, and bowed metal buzz, all drenched in echo and reverb as if it was recorded at the bottom of a cistern, the guitar emitting bleats of strangled buzz and percussive melodic shimmer, the sound slipping from spare and spacious to dense and chaotic, a super lo-fi modern minimalism, peppered with streaks of drone, and shards of crunch and clang.
The sound occasionally slips into a barely there hushed drift, but just as often locks into a sort of stumbling rhythm, or keening high end skree, the final track is the most 'musical' of the bunch, the sounds blurring into extended drones, building to a gloriously mesmerizing climax of thick undulating thrum, before slipping back into a weird spaced out field of plucks and scrapes, a super abstract coda to an already very abstract collection of freeform soundscaping.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "The Beauty And Tragedy Of Ephemerality"
MPEG Stream: "Comedy"

NO COPPER / TROPICAL TRASH split (self-released) cassette 5.00
Latest releases from blackened soundscaper Thaniel Ion Lee, who we first heard in his guise as Blood Escutcheon, who split a tape with black metal weirdos Cloak Of Displacement, and then released a cd-r (both sadly out of print). He then released a cool boxed cd-r called White (which we just got back in and you'll find listed elsewhere on this week's list), and is back again, now in a duo called No Copper, whose sounds is less droned out and blackened than Blood Escutcheon or his solo record, and more abstract, ritualistic soundscaping, inhabiting a soundworld more along the lines of say No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man or Avarus, long buzzing tones, pounding abstract drums, scrapes and creaks, lush layered drones, raw and lo-fi, minimal, but gorgeously thick and washed out, caustic in places, noisy in others, but all blurred and smeared into a dark landscape of echo drenched reverberations, melodic fragments, rhythmic experiments and black ambient shimmer, all flecked with bits of folky flutter and strange abstract sonic filigree. Fans of Lee's other projects will definitely dig.
The flipside is occupied by an outfit called Tropical Trash, who may or may not also be called the Coconut Crimewave Big Band, but who prove themselves worthy foils for No Copper, with a sound that pushed even further into avant rock territory, a sort of free jazz / avant noise, heavy rhythmic, twisted electronic freakout heavy rock crush (!), the group fusing pounding drums to clouds of swirling glitched out swoops and swirls, before launching into some seriously blown out heaviness, thick churning riffage, pounding drums, all peppered with some bleeping electronics, and a sheen of hazy buzzy soft focus noise, a killer slab of classic electronic flecked noise rock, that definitely has us wanting to hear more! The band soon return to scrabbling and abstract skitter, the rock crush ditched in favor of some experimental abstraction, which is bombarded over the course of the rest of their side with some seriously fierce drum damage,
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Housed in cool hand screened origami style cardstock boxes, each one hand numbered, with a printed insert.

NO FESTIVAL OF LIGHT Officina Gentium Vagina Nationum (Functional / Tesco) cd 15.98
Ignore the occultish references of this disc's meager liner notes, and look beyond the fact that the death-obsessed Tesco label released this, and you'll discover an unexpectedly fantastic release of textural digital-glitch manipulation from the Swedish outfit No Festival Of Light. Streaming electrons gurgle along only to stop to emit hypnotic pulses and swells before continuing in their crunchy gurgling. Fits in nicely with the artists on the Mille Plateaux 'Clicks & Cuts' compilation and in Raster/Noton's 20' to 2000 series.

NO NECK BLUES BAND Aftypiclipse (Sound At One) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of our favorite free rock outfits returns, with a sort of homage to another one of our favorites. This live set from 2006's All Tomorrow's Parties festival finds the No Neck Blues Band offering a sonic hail to brethren in noise, Jazzfinger, or maybe not, who knows what goes on in those guys' heads, maybe they just they just thought writing "For Jazzfinger" on the cover looked cool. And if we try, maybe this NNCK set -does- sound a bit like Jazzfinger, but it also sort of sounds like NNCK. Either way, we're not complaining, since we weren't there, so we're feeling lucky just getting to hear this stuff.
Originally released as a super limited, and now out of print cd-r, the set has been all gussied up, resequenced and re-mastered and is a monster.
The A side seems to be one loooooong track, creaking and groaning and abstract, grinding slabs of low end growl, speaking-in-tongues vocals, random clatter and clank percussion, a foresty folky tribal primal free for all, but eventually the drums kick in, and the band lock into a murky stoned groove, a simple Can-like beat, and a rumbling bass throb, while the abstract skree above continues to swirl and stumble. Guitars moan and wail, detuned angular melodies unfurl drunkenly, vocals whisper and hiss, like it's some sort of disembodied hellish krautrock, which eventually coalesces into a gorgeous high end dronescape, sounding like a more lo-fi hippie Sunroof!, all that creaking and groaning and wailing woven into brilliant bolts of fiery psychedelia.
The flipside begins on more familiar NNCK territory, dense flurries of hypnotic percussion, chanted vocals, shakers and bells, tribal percussion, pizzicato strings, super intense and propulsive. That jam simmers down into a Grateful Dead meets Can groove, super abstract laid back blues, with the band finally living up to their name.
Eventually NNCK explode into a druggy expanse of FX drenched psychedelia space rock, that splinters into some aggro free jazz, and finally finishes off in a blaze of effulgent ur-drone glory.

NO NECK BLUES BAND At 6am We Become The Police (Locust) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Vinyl only soundtrack to the forthcoming No Neck Blues Band dvd, featuring we can only guess judging from the album cover, naked dudes and weird bits of machinery. But really, nothing about these guys should surprise us anymore. They've been following their own idiosyncratic trajectory from day one, and unlike most bands, they seem to grow further and further out with every new record. At 6am is another gloriously clattery, abstract rhythmic workout, tribal, primitive, feral, but spiritual and otherworldly. It's of course all about the drums, percussion, thumps,and pounds, and rattles and crunch, and clang and bang, but woven into long dark undulating dreamscapes, ominous and haunting and mysterious, lots of dark magic going on, creaking moaning guitars, bits of squeak and creak, streaks of feedback, disembodied voices. In fact, on listening to this, were more inclined to think the picture on the sleeve isn't from the movie, but is just a regular old No Neck performance. That's exactly how this sounds, like naked writhing bodies lit by flickering firelight, masked drummers, a strange symphony of shadow and light.
Elsewhere, long form low drones are introduces, fragmented chords, muted muffled voices, all smoothed out and blurred into stretches of dark ambient free folk shimmer, but always with a distinctly dangerous vibe, heavier on the shadow than the light, squalls of free jazz like percussive clatter lead into moaning choruses, Henry Flynt like fiddle freakouts. One of the tracks begins like a No Neck / Avarus forest drum jam, but slowly evolves into something almost space rocky, lots of effects, warbly guitar melodies, delay, drifting bits of tinkle and chime, fragments of African drumming that drift in and then fade out again, and then finally, the last track is a strangely lo-fi soundscape of brittle tones and abstract percussion, long shimmery high end drones, and muted old timey sounding ambience, until the band lock into a gorgeous outro, that sounds a bit like a gamelan, but all distorted and jazzy and atonal. Awesome as always! Definitely harkening back to the NNCK sound of old, in fact this stuff IS old, from the archives, ferinstance two of these tracks were recorded (but not used) for the soundtrack to 1997's Gummo, and Lord knows they would have been perfect, dark and creepy and abstract and twisted and gorgeous.

NO NECK BLUES BAND CINo 51 (Kelippah) lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Got a tiny handful more of these in, last chance...
Another new lp from this avant rock free-psych collective, hot on the heels of their already out of print YTIU, which we reviewed a couple lists back. This is a continuation of sorts, culled from the same sessions, and while not quite as limited, definitely limited enough that once we run out we won't be able to get more. So won't go into too much detail about this one, needless to say, folks who bought YTIU are definitely gonna want this one too, and anyone who missed out on the first one still has a chance to nab one of these. Two sidelong tracks, the first one playing out more like a multipart songsuite, the sound swinging wildly, beginning with wheezing organs and buzzing guitars, loose, super abstract drumming, dirgey and atonal, flecked with sci-fi FX, tripped out and weirdly dubby, blossoming into a sort of looped mesmer, drifting through fields of glitch and static, the sound shifts and becomes a droned out Eastern style raga, buzzy and trance-y, before shifting once again, stripped way down, just gnarled melodies, and skeletal rhythms, mostly hi-hats over a dense smoldering cinematic drone, laced with murky percussion and a thick woozy low end.
The flipside feels more like a single track, starting out super spare, again very abstract, in the distance moaning strings, reverbed percussion, psychedelic guitar buzz, unfurling snake charmer melodies, about halfway through the sound seems to grow more detuned and deconstructed, beginning a slow build, the an explosive last few minutes, a surprisingly heavy space-psych freakout, that quickly becomes glitched out, as if the tape player was malfunctioning, that sort of Faxed Head, old worn tape, busted tape deck sort of weirdness, the sounds seeming to ooze and melt and gradually grind to a halt. Cool!
Super limited, these are the last copies we'll be able to get, the covers are hand painted with paste on artwork. The covers are all bent, due partially to them being handpainted we think, and thus, a few of the records are VERY slightly warped, it's barely noticeable, and doesn't effect playback at all as far as we can tell (then again, it's NNCK, so it always -sounds- warped), but these are the only copies we'll ever get, so if you're super anal, or the record collector nerd type, you might wanna pass...

NO NECK BLUES BAND Clomeim (Locust) cd 14.98
The label goes on and on about how this latest No Neck Blues Band record is a watershed moment, a defining release in their oeuvre, a new sound, a clarity of vision never heard before on past releases, but we have to say we simply don't agree. At this point NNCK are in a privileged position, one they most assuredly earned, a position of power for sure. They just do what they do, theirs a sound that borrows from many sources, but that is distilled into something utterly unique, so yeah, they do what they do, but they do it better than ANYONE else. Period. Maybe that's what the label was actually trying to say before they got bogged down in artspeak. Regardless, this is another fantastic NNCK missive, one that sprawls across lots of genres and sounds, but manages to stay together by force of will and the innate talent of the players who have been honing their craft in this setting, with these players for nearly 15 years. And it shows.
The record begins like the rock band equivalent of an orchestra tuning up, guitars twang and detune, percussion clanks and thumps, everything drifts aimlessly, but as the track progresses, the various pieces seem to slowly flow together, a female voices surfaces, and croons over the settling chaos beneath, eventually leaving the chaos to sort itself out, a bit like a more serene forest folk combo, accordions wheeze (or is that a harmonica), guitars shimmer and squiggle, the drummer offers up washes of cymbals and eventually a slow simple stripped down groove, and without even realizing it, the whole mood and sound has shifted, and we're in some twangy meandering moody krautrock slowjam, that builds gradually to a seriously psychedelic crescendo, before the next track explodes with a flurry of skronky horns and maniacal vocalizing (a la Yoko), and woozy slide guitar, that track eventually builds to a strange sort of jazz metal blowout, pounding drums, growled demonic vocals, the slide still slithering all over and those Yoko like vocals still going crazy, definitely the toughest track on the disc. But maybe the most interesting.
The rest of the disc slips seamlessly from slow burning outrock sprawl, to propulsive space rock groove, to super minimal scrape and thunk, to wah wah guitar drenched soft pop balladry, to glimmering abstract free jazz freakout, to super tripped out psych rock weirdness, to gorgeous swirling soft focus dronemusic, but the thing is, within those various sounds, NNCK, twist everything all up, adding all kinds of sonic detritus, haunting noises, mysterious rumbles, ghostly voices, droning buzz, swirling ambience, adding extra layers, uncomfortable harmonies, taking perfectly pretty melodies and pulling them apart, in lesser hands, the whole structure would crumble, but NNCK possess only greater hands, perfect to hold it all together, and shape and stretch and form those sounds into something distinctly and utterly No Neck.
MPEG Stream: "Silurist"
MPEG Stream: "The Coach House"
MPEG Stream: "Ministry Of Voices"

NO NECK BLUES BAND Clomeim (Locust) 2lp 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!
The label goes on and on about how this latest No Neck Blues Band record is a watershed moment, a defining release in their oeuvre, a new sound, a clarity of vision never heard before on past releases, but we have to say we simply don't agree. At this point NNCK are in a privileged position, one they most assuredly earned, a position of power for sure. They just do what they do, theirs a sound that borrows from many sources, but that is distilled into something utterly unique, so yeah, they do what they do, but they do it better than ANYONE else. Period. Maybe that's what the label was actually trying to say before they got bogged down in artspeak. Regardless, this is another fantastic NNCK missive, one that sprawls across lots of genres and sounds, but manages to stay together by force of will and the innate talent of the players who have been honing their craft in this setting, with these players for nearly 15 years. And it shows.
The record begins like the rock band equivalent of an orchestra tuning up, guitars twang and detune, percussion clanks and thumps, everything drifts aimlessly, but as the track progresses, the various pieces seem to slowly flow together, a female voices surfaces, and croons over the settling chaos beneath, eventually leaving the chaos to sort itself out, a bit like a more serene forest folk combo, accordions wheeze (or is that a harmonica), guitars shimmer and squiggle, the drummer offers up washes of cymbals and eventually a slow simple stripped down groove, and without even realizing it, the whole mood and sound has shifted, and we're in some twangy meandering moody krautrock slowjam, that builds gradually to a seriously psychedelic crescendo, before the next track explodes with a flurry of skronky horns and maniacal vocalizing (a la Yoko), and woozy slide guitar, that track eventually builds to a strange sort of jazz metal blowout, pounding drums, growled demonic vocals, the slide still slithering all over and those Yoko like vocals still going crazy, definitely the toughest track on the disc. But maybe the most interesting.
The rest of the disc slips seamlessly from slow burning outrock sprawl, to propulsive space rock groove, to super minimal scrape and thunk, to wah wah guitar drenched soft pop balladry, to glimmering abstract free jazz freakout, to super tripped out psych rock weirdness, to gorgeous swirling soft focus dronemusic, but the thing is, within those various sounds, NNCK, twist everything all up, adding all kinds of sonic detritus, haunting noises, mysterious rumbles, ghostly voices, droning buzz, swirling ambience, adding extra layers, uncomfortable harmonies, taking perfectly pretty melodies and pulling them apart, in lesser hands, the whole structure would crumble, but NNCK possess only greater hands, perfect to hold it all together, and shape and stretch and form those sounds into something distinctly and utterly No Neck.
MPEG Stream: "Silurist"
MPEG Stream: "The Coach House"
MPEG Stream: "Ministry Of Voices"

NO NECK BLUES BAND Dutch Money (Sound@One) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of three new NNCK releases, this is one of two new limited lps, released on the band's own label and packaged in beautifully hand assembled sleeves. Dutch Money is sparse and spare, extended washes of summery thrum forming warm limpid pools of sound under simple tribal rhythms, haunting flutes, and strange electronic transmissions from the ether. Dreamy and hypnotically static, organs warble, guitars stutter subtly, shakers offer some restrained rhythmic grit, and occasional Morricone-ish spaghetti western harmonicas, wheezing squeezeboxes and some hollow rattling that sounds strangely like Yahtzee dice add to the sonic swirl.

NO NECK BLUES BAND Ever Borneo (Seres / Sound@ One ) lp + 7" 31.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've noticed that in lots of our reviews we make reference to the No Neck Blues Band. Assuming, of course, everyone would know exactly what we were talking about. But then we discovered that we had only really reviewed two of their previous records, one with only a single sentence! Certainly, it seems, not enough to warrant so many comparisons. What neglect for a band to whom we constantly refer! But this dearth of reviews is mostly due to the scarcity and limited nature of most of their releases. Currently, there is only one double cd available, a reissue of a release from a few years back as well as a sort-of-bootleg lp. And now this new vinyl package.
For us at AQ, the name No Neck Blues Band has become synonymous with the sort of stumbling/free/improv/space/psych/drum-circle/hippy/tribal free jams that we love so much (Avarus, Kemialliset Ystevat, Anaksimandros, Thuja, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Jackie O Motherfucker, etc.). NNBB is a loose collective of hippies, shamans, musicians and hangers on that seem to be able to effortlessly conjure up wild, free and totally mesmerising jams reminiscent of the ESP Records roster, the thudding primitve, dirge-psych of German Oak, and the spaced out psychedelic krautrock of Amon Duul. In the past we described their sound as "loose & stumbling, trippy neo-kraut, free 'sort-of-jazz' improvised jams, drunken drones and hypnotic hums" and that sound hasn't changed too much. If anything it's gotten a little poppier, albeit in the loosest sense of the term, and a little more structured. But it's still some of the best transcendental, tribal, droning, rhythmic, hypnotic free sort-of-rock we've ever heard. NNBB have never been ones to skimp on packaging and this time around is no different: a thick slab of vinyl housed in a gorgeous, cloth bound lp sleeve (like an old hardcover book) with embossed text and pasted-on image on the cover. Also comes with a bonus 7" from a 'related' group called Mount Analog, although to my eras, the two songs on the 7" fit perfectly with the sounds on the lp. Also comes with two pages of NNBB rants. Curious and typically indecipherable.
A bit price-y for sure, but as with all NBBB releases, it's limited, will soon be out of print, and considering how little of their stuff is readily available, fans of all of the above mentioned bands as well as folks into all things tribal/hippy/pschedelic will be kicking themselves if they miss out.

NO NECK BLUES BAND First Kingdom of the Ghost (Sound@One) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of three new NNCK releases, this is one of two new limited lps, released on the band's own label and packaged in beautifully hand assembled sleeves. First Kingdom is all about rhythms, with percussion and drums driving these extended tracks. Starting off with a wild and wooly howl fest, all demonic wailing and tribal chanting, things quickly settle into more familiar NNCK territory, a dense miasma of rhythmic bliss, shimmering and pulsing, with rattles and shakers, clacks and clatter, rumble and skitter, all woven tightly into a head nodding, primitive drum jam. At one point the fog clears and a simple 4/4 beat emerges, a steady wooden clomp over Eastern guitar melodies and rumbly guitar thrum, sounding like Jewelled Antler recording for Kompakt or a some sort of ancient forest gnome techno.

NO NECK BLUES BAND Intonomancy (Sound@one) cd 13.98
It's been a surprisingly prolific and action packed few months for the otherwise NOT-prolific and as-underground-as-can-be No Neck Blues Band. Good for us. And them too I guess. First was the super elaborate and expensive Ever Borneo lp/7" we listed a few weeks back as well as a super limited live lp and the reissue of one of their old double cds. This week brings a reissue of their out of print Revenant cd and this here brand new full length. Phew. Must have run out of weed or something. What else could explain such productivity?! No Neck Blues Band, for those just tuning in, are a loose collective of East Coast noisemakers (whose members also do time in AQ faves Sunburned Hand Of The Man as well as AQ not-faves Suntanama) who are the ultimate in hippy-psych-trance-free-drone-folk. Taking liberally from classic Krautrock, seventies folk, free jazz, and noise rock, NNBB have a knack for turning all of these disparate elements into smooth and cohesive, rhythmic and hypnotic, and totally fucking gorgeous free-jams. This new record may just be their best yet. Dreamy and drone-y and completely mesmerising. Washed out tones stretch out over rickety frameworks of hand drums and simple percussion, bells and chimes, while guitars tentatively weave their way through the murk, leaving trails of wispy melody and shimmery thrum. Propulsive rhythms struggle under a dense fog of thick chords and moaning synthesizers while delicately strummed guitars flit from note to note, weaving a lush and soul soothing soundscape. Hippy tendencies are downplayed throughout, resulting in a way more cohesive, way more 'musical' offering than No Neck's usual hippy-trance-caveman-freakouts (which I love, don't get me wrong). Fans of classic and modern krautrock, Finnish psych-folk (Avarus, Kemialliset, etc.), Jewelled Antler, and all things drone and clatter should buy this NOW.
MPEG Stream: "Witch"
MPEG Stream: "Open That Grass Can"
MPEG Stream: "Flor Yet Slolemn"

NO NECK BLUES BAND Languid Red Marchetti (Planazaum) lp 30.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Awesome archival release from one of the most referenced bands on this here aQ list. Whenever we need to describe something abstract and clattery, stumbly and mysterious, percussive and otherworldly, rhythmic and fractured and psychedelic, we'll often invoke this long standing New York based free form sonic institution. And this disc is a definite reminder of why we were so immediately taken with this band when we first heard them close to 15 years ago.
Languid Red Marchetti was recorded in 1994, close to the birth of the band, and features a stripped down quartet, and the sound is raw, feral, super abstract, very percussive and atmospheric, all clang and clatter and scrape, buzz and rumble and skree, a cacophonous exploration of time and space, what sounds like disparate bursts of crunch and creak, woven into an almost lyrical expanse of sound. Sometimes hushed and sinister, other times angular and primitive, the record ebbs and flows, drifts gorgeously between two extremes, spending most if its time right in between, a lush jagged world of rhythm and sound, noise and texture.
Any one into NNBB will definitely be all over this, especially if you miss the No Neck of old, performing in squats, with busted up old gear, wrapped in old blankets, wreathed in shadows, dimly lit spaces, magical mystery conjured from the ether, every performance some sort of alchemical ritual, some ancient rite, like something you might stumble on in the forest, an ages old musical communion with nature, or the spirits, or the darkside, an abstract avant improv filtered through some grimy, fractured junkyard punk rock, totally transcendent.
A bit pricey, but NNCK records are almost more art than sound, as much visual and tactile as sonic, Languid Red Marchetti is no different. limited to just over 300 copies, housed in a printed full color inner sleeve, a gorgeous full color spot varnished jacket, includes a thick paper insert with some truly dense liner notes.

NO NECK BLUES BAND Letters From The Earth (Very Friendly) 2cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Loose & stumbling, trippy neo-kraut, free 'sort-of-jazz' improvised jams, drunken drones and hypnotic hums. Accidentally and occasionally breathtaking. Plus a good helping of pipe fight!
This is the reissue of the album originally issued on Ser/Sound@One.

NO NECK BLUES BAND Live At Ken's Electric Lake (Locust) 2cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

NO NECK BLUES BAND Nine For Victor (Victo) cd 16.98
Of all the bands we reference in other bands' reviews, the No Neck Blues Band has to be the most frequently mentioned. For a while there, this ever mutating collective had such a distinct sound, that whenever another band tried to do some sort of free, tribal, pagan, ritualistic, percussion based free jam, we couldn't help but compare them to the godfathers of the tribal drum circle Ur-drone space jam, the mighty No Neck.
Even today after countless releases, tons of tours and a whole bunch of worshippers at the altar of NNCK (Sunburned Hand, Avarus, etc...), No Neck still effortlessly outdo most of their contemporaries, a free noise, what-the-fuck folk, tribal improv juggernaut, able to spin delicate webs of soft sound as easily as a Crash Worship worthy drumjam free for all.
Nine For Victor is a live set recorded back in 2005, and wanders wantonly through all of the various sounds No Neck dabble in, deftly making them all flow seamlessly. Throbbing underwater bass, wheezing spaghetti western harmonica, electronic bleeps and bloops, fuzzed out synths, long stretches of Terry Riley like high end piano flutter, underpinned by barely there percussive shuffle and muted guitar strum, spaced out cinematic drones with keening high end melodies, weird creaking percussive clatter, angular jazz piano, dense clouds of shakers and drums, cricket like percussion, a clattery rattling near-drone, krautrocky slowjams with wild lead guitar and buzzing basslines, all tangled up and interwoven, overlapping, creating a ramshackle but surprisingly cohesive whole.
MPEG Stream: "The Cacao Grinder"
MPEG Stream: "Lady Vengeance"