RADIGUE, ELIANE Mila's Journey Inspired By A Dream (Lovely Music) cd 15.98
Accompanying a sustained minimalist drone from an Arp, Eliane Radigue incorporated segments of the Tibetan singing from Lama Kunga Rinpoche and English vocals from Robert Ashley. This is one of her many pieces in the large scale cycle of works based on the life of Tibetan master, Milarepa.

RADIGUE, ELIANE Triptych (Important) cd 14.98

RADIGUE, ELIANE Vice Versa, etc.... (Important) cd 16.98
Back in 1970, Eliane Radigue ran off ten copies of her final composition for feedback on magnetic tape, each of which included a small handwritten note. She intended for the piece to be played back at any speed and at any duration and either backwards or forwards. Given the smooth polish to her sustained drones that could easily blur into infinity, such instructions to her audience of ten seems quite reasonable, even if the tiny edition of 10 is far from a reasonable amount. Fortunately, the French sound artist Manu Holterbach (whose minimalist work is awe-inspiring in its own right) has been sifting through Radigue's archives and came across this incredibly rare document which Radigue originally released for the Lara Vincy Gallery in Paris as part of a group sound exhibition. For the cd repackaging of this lone composition, Holterbach curated a double disc of various mixes of the original recordings. The first disc being the straight versions of the composition, played back at the four standard speeds of a reel-to-reel tape deck; and the second disc being backwards versions, also played back at those four speeds. The longest version is a little over 13 minutes long, with the shortest being a bit under 3 minutes; and all four mixes exhibit variations in tonal colors and slight oscillating modulations not heard on previous mixes. The first mix is the longest, slowest, and thus deepest plunge into the Radigue drone, which balances an asymmetrical undulation of low end against a static vibration which sits a couple octaves higher than the super-low rumble and pushes a little farther into the distance. As the track develops, Radigue seems to be gradually increasing the tension of these pieces, as if tension were just a knob she were effortlessly twisting, but in fact she's deftly controlling all of the parameters of her feedback loop to cause such effects. The second piece clocks in under a brisk 9 minutes with that irregular hovering sounds more pronounced. The next two pieces are a bit over four and two minutes respectively, each brightening vibrations to a sharp resolution on the finale. Both discs exhibit essentially the same sounds, which might be accentuated if you were to play both discs at the exact same time. A peculiar excerpt, yes, but a wonderful record for sure from one of the finest authors of 20th Century minimalism.
MPEG Stream: "Backward 19"
MPEG Stream: "Backward 38"
MPEG Stream: "Backward 76"

RADIO/GUITAR Thrum (Table Of The Elements) 12" 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another installment of Table Of The Elements massive Lanthinides anniversary series of single sided silkscreened 12"s, this time, from the duo of Barbara Ess and Peggy Awesh, known collectively as Radio / Guitar. I remember hearing a record of theirs a while back, but I certainly don't remember it being as good as this! The first half is a dreamy and otherworldly murkscape of muted guitar, simply strummed with a creepy out of tune Jandek-ian warble, buried beneath a swirling fog of radio static, modulated shortwave, an all manner of transmitter interference, fuzz, hiss and beeps. Occasionally the whole thing locks into an absolutely mesmerising Philip Jeck style loop, all fuzzy and grey. The second half begins as a much noisier affair: radio broadcast snippets and a thick wash of grainy sonic detritus, throbbing and reverberating, while barely-there melodies swell underneath desperately trying to break the surface. This chaos solidifies into a rhythmic pulse, droning and beating, but eventually settling into a rough repeating loop of scratchy radiofuzz, stuttering glitches and melancholy melodies materialising from the ether. Swirling white cloud like formations silkscreened on clear vinyl. Nice!

RADIOSONDE Meter Sickness (Ground Fault) cd 7.98
An action packed album on which Esplendor Geometrico-styled chunky rhythms crash against antique samples of ragtime piano and organ drone. Sorta like a more 'industrial' version of digital pranksters V/VM.

RADIOSONDE Somnambul (7hz) cd 7.98
White hot drones of amplified electric motors and distortion feedback build, shift and scrape. Not unlike the work of experimentalist John Duncan.

RAHDUNES s/t (Sweatlung) cd 10.98
So far our only real exposure to Rahdunes, has been their recent split with krauty drone combo Expo '70 (and a few cd-r's and tapes here and there), but on that split, they definitely demonstrated their ability to conjure up some seriously cosmic sounds.
So here we have the first proper full length cd from kosmiche astral travelers Rahdunes and it's pretty fantastic. And fantastical.
A longform soundscape of garbled guitars, and smeared melody, a forever unwinding sonic tapestry, woven from disembodied ghostly voices, spidery guitar melodies, haunting whirring woodwinds, all dipped in LSD and doused in a suitcase full of fractured effects. Delay collides with reverb, guitars crumble to pieces only to have those pieces drift lazily heavenward, when riffs do surface, they seem to simply hover, looping in on themselves, creating slow shifting sonic latticeworks, through which all manner of synths and sounds intertwine. Most of the tracks darkly meditative, the sounds pulsing and throbbing softly, creating barely perceptible rhythms, the you feel in your bones and seeping into your skin more than you hear it.
Electronics drift through ethereal clouds of distant bagpipe melodies, of buzzing low end rumbles, thick slabs of shimmery black murky splinter into fragments that collide in mid air with impossibly distorted voices, it's like some krautrock band flew to the moon and plugged their guitars into funhouse mirrors, everything woozy and gloriously unhinged, tripped out and drug drenched, what percussion there is, is mostly chimes and bells, and more often than not, those sounds are buried along with everything else beneath undulating layers of whirring spaced out effects, and blurred abstract melodies. Totally and gloriously fucked up, the perfect soundtrack for tripping out, and drifting off.
Total inner space / outer space introspection overload.
Which means we LOVE it. Beautiful oversized gold and green on creme printed packaging, equal parts cave drawings and old quilt. So cool.
MPEG Stream: "Head Of Clouds"
MPEG Stream: "Meeting You Is Like Sucking God's Dick"

RAIME Quarter Turns Over A Living Line (Blackest Ever Black) cd 17.98
This duo of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead, aka Raime, have conjured up this strange and mysterious slab of dark brooding black energy, equal parts minimal electronica, bleak black ambience, abstract techno and avant sound design. Right off the bat, we were reminded of last week's Record Of The Week, Roly Porter's Aftertime, as well as the grim, sinister electronic soundscapes of Ben Frost, not to mention recent techno favorites from Shed, Terence Dixon and Stefan Goldmann. In fact, in some ways, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line is like a bizarre hybrid of all of those. Casting doomic plod as stripped down electronic skitter, reminding us of Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, creating heaving slabs of rumbling crumbling blackened heaviness, that sound like Wolf Eyes score for an orchestra, transforming mutant strains of dub and jungle into creeping expanses of sinister stutter, and stretching dubstep bass warble into droned out layers, and wrapping them around haunting sprawls of cinematic menace.
The record almost plays out like a soundtrack or score, the various pieces blurring into one another, the most disparate, still sonically linked, from the opening rumbles, like some blackened hellish noise-drone, drifting beneath distant keening melodies, laced with shards of grinding glitch, all underpinned by ominous minor key melodies, gradually dissipating, leaving a sprawl of looped skitter, beneath a cloud of ominous chordal thrum the vibe dark and doomy, subtly rhythmic, a little bit dubby, the drumming splintering into near industrial crunch, with the background sounds never ceasing their woozy drift. That drift transforming into the aforementioned Bohren-like creep, minimal and cinematic, which over the course of the next two tracks, begins to slip back into something much more techno, almost jungle sounding, but somehow remains restrained, the rhythmic heft more implied, a muted pulse and stutter behinds warm swirls of melody and dark fragments of caustic crunch.
From there on out, the sound unfurls and expands, slipping from Arvo Part like choral majesty, to harrowing tense rhythm flecked drone, to lush orchestral, industrial shimmer, the various pulses and crashes, groans and clatters, gorgeously rendered, the sound design lush and lovely, while also being harsh and weirdly alien, but all blurred and woven into Raime's haunting moody mesmer.
MPEG Stream: "Passed Over Trail"
MPEG Stream: "The Last Foundry"
MPEG Stream: "Soil And Colts"

RAINBOW BODY, THE Metatron's Cube (The Rainbow Body Sound Lab) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A while back we reviewed a mysterious cd-r from a band called Utsuro Bune, the disc was a head caving slab of single-guitar un-overdubbed black psychedelia, a massive glacial doomdrone, but one that bristled with a unique psychedelic energy, positioning itself closer to say Keiji Haino rather than SUNNO))), or as we described it in the review, some strange hybrid of the two. Well it seems that the man behind UB, Matt Kattman, has ditched the UB monicker, and started a new project, this one, The Rainbow Body, still with a similarly drone-y bent, but this time ditching the heaving heaviness for something more spaced out and kosmische, an eight part song suite that finds Kattman's guitar drifting through clouds of blissed out shimmer, encountering the occasional burst of gristled static, and conjuring up the same sort of galactic drift as aQ faves Expo 70, but The Rainbow Body takes that sound even further out, more ghostly and spectral, most of the tracks floating ethereally, the sound so dreamy and tripped out and softly psychedelic, that on first listen we thought it might have all been synth based, the guitars looped and wreathed in effects and transformed into streaks and smears, blurred expanses of chordal shimmer and disembodied melody. But there's more going on there that just drift and shimmer, Kattman laces the tracks with mysterious pulsations, strange tonal shifts, buried rhythms, woozily tangled loops, occasionally slipping into ominous sci-fi drones, but just as often blossoming into prismatic new age glimmer, and while there are some more sinister moments, where the sound grows moody and mildly malevolent, it's all part of the Rainbow Body's cinematic scope, Metatron's Cube playing out like some strange celestial soundtrack, the score to some mysterious planetarium show, it's the sound of a million stars time lapsed into a sky full of fireworks like streaks, a mesmerizing display of cosmic sonic drift and spaced out dreamdrone mesmer.
Packaged in a sweet full color J-card, with a download coupon for a digital version of the whole tape.
MPEG Stream: "Metatron's Cube 1"
MPEG Stream: "Metatron's Cube 3"
MPEG Stream: "Metatron's Cube 6"

RAINBOW BODY, THE Return Unto Void (The Rainbow Body Sound Lab) cassette 8.98
The second tape this year from one man guitarscaper The Rainbow Body, aka Matt Kattman, who was also responsible for another aQ fave, the crushing blackened doomdrone of Utsuro Bune. But as we mentioned in our review of the last Rainbow Body tape, Kattman has decided to delve into something much more atmospheric and kosmische, using just his guitar and a handful of effects, creating, lush billowing landscapes of hazy, washed out guitar ambience, and slow shifting layers of longform guitardrone bliss out. An eight part songsuite, with each part bleeding organically into the next, the sound here is alternatingly sun dappled and dreamy, droned out and sinister, the sound at times reminding us of a more spaced out new age-y Roy Montgomery, lush languorous chords, drifting weightless in sprawling expanses of layered shimmer, loops tangled into dreamlike swirls of soft focus melody. Cosmic and celestial, wreathed in reverb and echo, notes and chords caught in swirling clouds of muted buzz and raga like thrum, darkly meditative, and divinely mesmerizing, anyone into psychedelic drone music, kosmische new age drift and minimal guitarscapery will want to get lost in the Rainbow Body's woozy, washed out prismatic soundworld.
Packaged in a full color J-card and includes a download coupon as well.
MPEG Stream: "Void 1"
MPEG Stream: "Void 2"
MPEG Stream: "Void 3"

RAINBOW BODY, THE The Dream Stela EP (The Rainbow Body Sound Lab) cd-r 6.98
After two amazing tape releases, The Rainbow Body returns with this super limited (just 50 copies!) ep, which again, like Metatron's Cube and Return Under Void before it, unfurls a gorgeously gristly landscape of blown out guitar crunch and blurred kosmische psychedelia, opening with a heavy, heaving sprawl of crumbling distortion, wrapped around glistening melodies, like a Tim Hecker jam cranked way up and run through a bank of dying-battery distortion boxes, simultaneously noisy and chaotic and utterly dreamy, especially when there's a super sudden shift, and all the distortion drops away, leaving a keening stretch of muted melodic mesmer, all low end melody and swirling shimmering hiss. The rest of the ep plays out similarly, balanced deftly between full on noise, and bleary blown our dreamdronedrift, sometimes harnessing wild squalls of blackened psychedelia and crafting them into droned out soundscapes, other times, unfurling hazy washed of muted melody and blurry celestial shimmer, and still other times, conjuring up dense swells of thick chordal thrum, wreathed in soaring swirls of cosmic dream psych blur. So gorgeous. And as we mentioned, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!
MPEG Stream: "White Pyramid 1&2"
MPEG Stream: "The Dream Stela"

RAIONBASHI In Teufel's Kuche (Absurd / Ignivomous) 10" 17.98
"In The Devil's Kitchen." So translates the German title, the first that we've stocked from Daniel Lowenbruck, who both records as Raionbashi and runs the Tochnit-Aleph mail order service out of Berlin. He's also a long standing member of the Schimpfluch Gruppe whose provocative recordings and performances directly channel the Vienna Actionists such as Hermann Nitsch, Gunter Brus, and Rudolf Schwartzkogler. Where the Austrians were pushing their transgessive acts through art world channels, Schimpfluch has their origins in punk, industrial culture, and (at least for the case of Schimpfluch's Dave Phillips) metal taken to a Dada extreme laced with theatrical ultra-violence. So begin these deconstructed tapes and mangled silences.
Lowenbruck cites that the sources to his Devil's Kitchen include 'noises, instruments, body functions, and apostrophes.' The discernible sounds are a piano being struck by a hammer fist on the lower octave of the keys, a police whistle blowing out the condenser mic on a Walkman, and some downpitched vocal howls that come across as way more demonic than those wolf growlings on Ben Frost's album By The Throat. Between these recognizable elements, Lowenbruck cuts and pastes with monochromatic noises that puncture grey curtains of leaden hiss. Compositionally, certainly hits the mark with the guttural musique concrete from the Schimpfluch Gruppe, somewhere between the machined ruptures of Dave Phillips and the unsettled ambience crafted by the impeccable G*Park; or less self-referentially stated, somewhere between the sound poetry of Henri Chopin and the corroded tape work of Joe Colley. Limited to 500 copies and highly recommended!

RAIONBASHI / DANIELA FROMBERG & STEFAN ROIGK Der Strick / Blowing Up The Master's Workshop (Senufo Edition) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When the fuck is Raionbashi going to release a proper album again? Daniel Lowenbruck (aka Raionbashi) has been releasing his work on various splits over the past couple of years following a 2006 lp on Hanson that nobody seems to have anymore. Even then, much of his output has been released in tiny editions, and this split on Senufo Edition is in an edition of 280 copies. Raionbashi operates within the transgressive art collective Schimpfluch-Gruppe alongside Sudden Infant, Dave Phillips, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, and G*Park, all of which mine the nether regions of the id for intensely claustrophobic collages of grim noise and post-Viennese Aktionism. For this split, Lowenbruck slumps into an occult almost doom-laden piece of ritualist gong strikes that certainly look back to Coil's How To Destroy Angels, but Lowenbruck slowly ramps up a smoldering, hypnotic squallor of discordant strings and uneasy field recordings with snippets of muffled vocals which seem in the midst of an unknown criminal act. Brilliantly creepy.
Daniela Fromberg & Stefan Roigk are multimedia artists hailing from Berlin, although little can be found regarding their intentions beyond their mutually crappy websites that only sport pretty pictures of their un-contextualized installations. Whatever these people are up to, it's a damn effective piece of acousmatic collage work, reflective in classic sound collage techniques found on Nurse With Wound's Homotopy To Marie, through the various bumps in the night and funhouse sound effects turned horrific and nightmarish. Arcane, oblique, haunting, and captivating. Fromberg & Roigk are an excellent foil to Raionbashi's dark ritual, and certainly should muster something else in the near future. Regardless, this is an excellent album of foreboding musique concrete.

RAIONBASHI / KRUBE. Anatze Zum Taumel (Hronir) lp 24.00
We don't know if there's anything like an official membership form or some sort of fucked-up ritual one has to endure before joining the inner circle of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe, but this Swiss / German collective of malcontent noise makers and tape splicers might just increase their ranks through the diabolical collage work from Krube. Schimpfluch (whose members include Sudden Infant, Dave Phillips, G*Park, Raionbashi, and Rudolf Eb.er) began in the early '90s as an aggressive / primitive hybrid between the Viennese Aktionism of Hermann Nitsch & Rudolf Schwartzkogler and the sharp collage techniques of the French musique concrete pioneers. Performance is often a critical component to the Schimpfluch aesthetic involving all sorts of transgressive theatrics, audience baiting tactics, and maybe a dead fish or two; but the recording output of Schimpfluch and associates has been exceptional throughout their history. Perhaps with all of those performative gestures hidden in the recording process, the resultant squeaks, bangs, grunts, and scrapes begin to disassociate from their origins and become all the more bizarre, more obscure, and more damaged.
This is definitely true for the work of Krube, the project of a German sound-artist by the name of Alexander Schneider. His techniques begin in snipping various sounds from who knows what. The label Hronir tells us its everyday objects, body openings, and non-definable machines; but by the time Schneider is done with his digital razor blade, what's a fart and what's a piston is not terribly discernible. These sound are quickly jettisoned in squadrons of battering sounds that collide with each other in clusters of events that splutter and bristle like a punk version of Pierre Henry's classic Variations Pour Une Porte Et Un Soupir.
Raionbashi's side long composition is comparatively sublime affair, more in keeping with the underappreciated G*Park sound of atonal ambience, creepy as hell field recordings, and generalized disturbances. Daniel Lowenbruck is Raionbashi, and a relatively recent addition to the Schimpfluch-Gruppe, having run the exceptional Tochnit-Aleph label and the rumpsti pumsti shop in Berlin. His track begins with a bellowing piano chord which elongates into a desolate drone, marked with scurrying vermin like noises, backward scrapings, and indeterminate swells of grey noise. That same piano returns throughout the piece with an incremental build of anxious black energy seeping through every quiet gesture and gurgling rupture. Like the work of G*Park, the more you let yourself into the details of this piece, the more terrifying it becomes. Truly exceptional!

RAKE Fighting 2 Quarters And A Nickel (VHF) 2cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another cd-r artifact from the dark and mysterious VHF vaults, this time documenting the live sonic mayhem of Virginia's Rake! Rake were always my least favorite part of the Virginia-UK-VHF free rock axis, but 'Fighting...' is a pretty great collection. Recorded between 1993-97, these two discs showcase Rake's all-over-the-placeness, with blooping bleeping spaced out drones, deconstructed chaotic spaz-rock, stark free-rock ambience, shimmering minor key soundscapes, stoned krautrock workouts, sputtering noisy math rock and wanky, tuneless audience abuse. And as with all of these VHF cd-rs, packaged beautifully with original artwork. And limited.
RealAudio clip: "Milk Bar, Philadelphia, PA"
RealAudio clip: "Duke University Coffeehouse, Durham, NC"

RAKHIM Crimson Umbrella (20 Buck Spin) cd 12.98
Disturbing, verrrrry disturbing.
You might expect that something from Circle and Pharoah Overlord members going under the names Krypt (Jussi) and Rudimentor (Janne) might be sorta metallic (especially after that Krypt Axeripper ep reviewed last list). This silver-on-black screenprinted package certainly looks dark and evil: the illegible logo, the band photo (long hair, spiked armbands), the song titles -- there's just two of them, "Transylvanian Error" (17:45) and "Ultimate Sword" (16.34). And the album title is a nod to Jussi's favorite '80s "metal" act, Jesters Of Destiny.
But we also know to expect the unexpected from our Finnish friends. So while this IS dark and evil, there's not a metal riff in sight. Rather, this duo utilize percussion, voice and effects to create a psychologically sick, rhythmically fucked drone-zone. The two long tracks are black, bottomless abysses both, caverns echoing with monstrous processed vokills and clattering pipe-fights, awash in a dense, drifting electronic miasma.
The label press info references Z'ev (the percussion), Faust (the weirdness), Wolf Eyes (the noise), Darkthrone (the evil) and we hear all that for sure. We'd further compare Rakhim's improvised blackness to black metal experimentalists (and AQ ROTWer's) Abruptum, with some of the screaming sounding like the insane-asylum inmates from a Staalagh record! Maybe like Staalagh on a broken boombox, being played the the corner of a room where spaced-out Circle side project Dr. Kettu are jamming with the Black Boned Angel.
Actually, last year we reviewed an expensive Qbico import LP by Rakhim (weirdly enough, we still have a few copies, if you act fast...) and ever since experiencing the mesmerizing psychedelic murkiness of that debut we've been wanting to hear more.
Disturbing, yes. But we like being disturbed like this!!
MPEG Stream: "Transylvanian Error"
MPEG Stream: "Ultimate Sword"

RAKHIM s/t (Qbico) lp 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
ATTENTION CIRCLE OBSESSIVES AND FINNISH MUSIC FREAKS. THIS IS A KILLER CIRCLE SIDE PROJECT, IT'S LP ONLY, AND IS VERY VERY LIMITED. WE LISTED IT A WHILE BACK, SOLD TONS, AND ONLY JUST NOW MANAGED TO GET A HANDFUL MORE. WE DON'T HAVE VERY MANY LEFT SO ACT FAST!!
Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let's dig in. Circle freaks are obviously gonna want this no matter what, it's a single sided half hour jam from Jussi and Janne of Finnish drone rockers Circle. But don't expect this to sound anything like Circle. Well, okay, it sounds a little like that live Circle record Mountain, droney and dark and minimal. What it really sounds like to us is like Circle side project Dr. Kettu with all the bones removed, leaving some sort of dark and tribal ambient krautrock. Rakhim is a super stripped down primal tribal duo, just drums and vocals and tons and tons of effects, which the duo employ to effortlessly kick up quite a dense druggy fug. Swirling clouds and sonic squalls, a murky dronescape lo-fi and dubbed out, strange guttural grunts, freaky whispers, drums-down-the-stairs clatter, dubby FX, wordless vocal melodies, all doused with reverb and distortion, and tangled up with some abstract percussive tribalism. Some sort of Finnish space aged pagan ritual. Vast expanses of whoooosh and whiiiir and swooooosh over chaotic free jazz drum splatter and subtle shuffling skitter. Very tripped out, druggy, super muddy, mega freaked out sososo psychedelic. Could almost be some long lost, recently discovered Faust jam caught surreptitiously on tape way back in the day. Awesome.
One sided heavy marbled white vinyl, packaged in a cool, very Dead C looking black and white sleeve.

RAKU SUGIFATTI Futatsu (Improvised Music From Japan) cd 24.00

RALE I Sit By The Window And Watch Walls And Ceilings (Monorail Trespassing) cd 11.98
A deep thrumming drone announces the beginning of William Hutson aka Rale's obliquely titled album I Sit By The Window And Watch Walls And Ceilings. Maybe a reference to Alvin Lucier? Maybe a reference to "I Was No Longer His Dominant" by Nurse With Wound during particularly choice NWW period in the early '80s? There is a conceptual and composition rigor to this album that is considerably stronger than on Hutson's previous recordings, as he's incorporating far more acousmatic and electro-acoustic strategies to accompany the sinister post-noise synthdrone which he mastered earlier on. While the album sports seven tracks, they all blend together into a seamless 51 minute piece marked by passages of distended minimalism, magnetic crackle, spluttering tape noise, and more than a few moments of buried melody dialed into the haunted melodicism of Tim Hecker at his most ephemeral. "Golden Hydra Chokers" snatches transient radiowaves through an ill-advised chain of effects pedals whose crumbling drones lead into the aeronautical soaring of the aptly named "Swimming Beside The Plane" with its unstable tone-float ambience. "Abnatural Burnings" accelerates through a series of tape decks and microcassette recorders spinning wildly to the point of collapse, pocked with bursts of erratic tape noise that terminate in a smoldering, ominous hum which opens up into a dour powerdrone from Hutson's flanging synths that undulates deeper and deeper toward the album's conclusion. Excellent work!
MPEG Stream: "Swimming Beside The Plane"
MPEG Stream: "Abnatural Burnings"
MPEG Stream: "Patterns Hostile To Mundane Analysis"

RALE Some Kissed Charms That Would Not Protect Them (Isounderscore) lp 14.98
Another fantastic slab of hushed drone synth minimalism from William Huston, aka Rale, this time around, two epic sidelong sprawls, the first balancing deep string like swells with absolute silence, building a super dynamic dronescape that is at odds with past recordings, which seemed more crackly and rumbly, tapping into the sort of gauzy dronescapery of Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck, but this is much more controlled. The sounds lush and smooth, the swells literally separated by fields of near silence (if not complete silence), each set of tones seeming to emerge from some bottomless black hole, it's not until nearly the second half, when streaks of high end enter the picture, bell like tones, a hushed field of metallic shimmer that drifts and hovers before being overtaken by waves of warm whir and soft focus buzz, and then finally the crackle and haze come in, a deft merging of synthdrone and field recording, into something warm and wonderful, but slightly ominous, and a little bit alien, the sound moving continuously from washed out melodic blur, to barely there ultraminimal drift.
The flipside is a thick wall of sound, a deep thrum wreathed in textured ambience, which gradually peels away, leaving a warm muted buzz, that fades again to near nothingess, a distant shimmer in a sea of crackling sonic motes, gradually building to something almost industrial, but still woozy and washed out, the crumbles and distorted crunch smoothed into textured drones. The crackles and various bits of noise growing in intensity, until finally the drone follow suit, exploding in a soft cacophony, which itself burns brightly, before fading out, only to burst into sonic flame once again. So nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! In a gorgeous fluorescent blue, silver foil stamped jacket.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

RALE Whispering Gallery (Arbor) 12" 11.98
After a few super limited tape releases (so limited we were unable to get any at all), comes this brand new 2 song 12"s from the Bay Area sound dude William Hutson known simply as Rale, whose abstract modular synth dronescapes should absolutely appeal to all the dronelords out in aQ land.
Exploring similar sonic territory as fellow sonic obfuscationists Philip Jeck, Christian Fennesz, Tim Hecker and the like, Rale unleashes a soft stream of ultra minimal crackle, draped over murky barely there melodies and deep gauzy rumbles, a sound haunting and hushed and super minimal, even a little distantly doomy. The track slowly gains momentum, growing ever more distorted and crunchy, eventually the hushed low end drift is overwhelmed by a super processed stuttery stretch of distorted glitch, which after building to a frenzied coda smooths out into a crumbling crackly drone, that finally fades out leaving just strange disembodied sounds and mysterious voices.
The flip side is a similarly slow burning slab of dronemusic. A deep cavernous drift, softly textured, hushed and whispery, an underground sound, underwater, that sound grows warmer and and deeper and more dronelike before gradually transforming into something more brittle and buzzy, but no less blissed out and mesmerizing.
Some seriously gorgeous, hypnotic and occasionally noisy dronemusic, a two song teaser which has been getting repeat plays since we got it in, and most definitely has us wanting more more more...
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!

RAMESES III Basilica (Important Records) 2cd 14.98
More pastoral beauty from this UK outfit, two discs this time, one of originals, record live and in rehearsal, the other discs, remixes and reinterpretations by Robert Horton, Keith Berry, Gregg Kowalsky and Neil Campbell.
The originals disc is maybe the breeziest and airiest to date, guitars are wreathed in reverb, releasing glimmering notes like blowing the white fluff off dandelions, the notes swirling and drifting, hovering over smooth glassy landscapes of warm whir, smeared synth buzz, minimal muted melodies, warm fuzzy pop ambient style drifts, like some free folk band covering The Orb, lilting free folk, the musical equivalent of dewy grass, autumn leaves falling through from a grey sky, sun dappled hillsides, soft slow shifting clouds, the day's first light, the sun making the moist grass sparkle like diamonds, viewing everything through a frosty pane of glass, rendering everything blurred and dreamily indistinct.
Well worth the price of admission for that disc alone, but there's a whole 'nother record, four long tracks, each of the above mentioned artists re-envisioning the originals. Robert Horton begins with a sprinkle of angelic high end, before bringing in the lows, a series of warm overlapping tones, barely shifting, all intertwined, into one slow organic swell, a near static melody unwinding in slow motion, over the course of nearly 8 minutes. Keith Berry's take is much more gritty, a gentle whirl of fuzzy streaks, muted into dreamlike murmurs, floating within a delicate landscape of glacial lowend and buried melody. Gregg Kowalsky turns his Rameses III source material into something jubilant and majestic, a sort of softened Sunroof!, all bells and chimes and bell-like tones, a glorious cacophony transformed into something less noisy and chaotic and more dense and layered, almost like the sound of a thousand orchestras tuning up stretched into some strange sunlit raga. And finally, Astral Social Clubber Neil Campbell stretches out Rameses III into some blissed out spacedrone, rife with distorted guitars, long drones, high end squalls of feedback, druggy effects, all slithering and squirming just below the surface, a surface which is a seemingly endless Niblock-like drone, the notes and layers beating against one another creating all sorts of subtle rhythms and strange harmonies, simultaneously static and in motion, a roiling writhing inner space ritual.
MPEG Stream: "Basilica (Keith Berry Remix)"
MPEG Stream: "Tigers In The Snake Pit (Neil Campbell Remix)"

RAMESES III Folk Hymns (Firefly Recordings) cd 9.98
An archival release from UK bliss folk drone combo Rameses III, released way back in, well, a long time ago, apparently long before the band started experimenting with tripped out production and field recordings, hazy washes of distortion and delay, and long sprawling dronescapes. Just like the title suggests, these are indeed Folk Hymns, very intimate and hushed, whispery and stripped down, often just acoustic guitar and voice. Plaintive and melancholy, the guitars lazy and sun dappled, the melodies relaxed and gentle, the vocals a bit raspy, definitely world weary, some of the songs are embellished with bits of extra guitar, slide, super subtle atmospherics, distant buzz and the like, but for the most part this is a gorgeously minimal modern folk record. Rameses III fans should still dig, but folks into stuff like Palace, Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron And Wine, Appendix Out, Songs:Ohia, Supreme Dicks, Alasdair Roberts, Sufjan Stevens and the like should definitely check out. Might be a gateway record to trippier and blissier things. We can hope...
We only got a handful of these direct from the band, so no telling how long this will be around.
MPEG Stream: "Where The River Flows"
MPEG Stream: "Leave It All Behind"

RAMESES III Honey Rose (Important) cd 9.98
Such pastoral bliss is on display within the cozy confines of this ep by the UK's Rameses III. One of the prettier discs we've heard all year, these mostly instrumental tracks (there is some hushed vocals on a couple songs) glisten with glimmering guitar ambiance that had us thinking of a slightly twangier Robin Guthrie or Durruti Column or even the wonderful instrumental guitar albums of Tom Verlaine. Timeless and mellow like a late summer sunrise. Makes so much sense that this was music recorded for a film, as it's so easy to close your eyes and visualize wide open landscapes of long winding roads, huge blue skies and fields of shimmering wet green grass. So so nice...
MPEG Stream: "Theme 1"
MPEG Stream: "Theme 2"
MPEG Stream: "Theme 3"

RAMESES III I Could Not Love You More (Type) cd 15.98
South London's daydreaming guitar trio are back with a brand new offering of gorgeous electric guitar wash and hazy ambient epiphany, this time on everyone's favorite big time of the small time label, Type. I Could Not Love You More finds Rameses III perfecting their regal, monolithic sound, and we couldn't be more thrilled! Majestic chords and metallic shimmer rise from the blurring horizon, heart-wrenching melody and cinematic richness pour into the sky with a radiant ooze. Pastoral soundtracks stretched out and slowed down into time-lapsed images of rising tides and exploding stars, blissfully huge and epic while always grasping on to a forward moving narrative, through quiet grasslands of fingerpicked, Takoma style acoustic guitar to swelling waves of glistening tones that grow and radiate on the verge of feedback.
While even some of our favorite modern ambient music relies on layers and layers of digital processing, Rameses III maintains a certain acoustic integrity by layering strictly live instruments. Electric guitars, electric pianos, and mellotrons produce a warm, ethereal wash that brings an otherworldly depth to their sound, a depth that digital processing could never recreate.
Ghostly and melodic, mysterious and heavy, ambient and thoughtful, I Could Not Love You More is no doubt the trio's finest work and a perfect addition to the Type catalogue, highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "We Shall Never Sing of Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "No Water, No Moon"
MPEG Stream: "I Could Not Love You More"

RAMESES III I Could Not Love You More (Type) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
South London's daydreaming guitar trio are back with a brand new offering of gorgeous electric guitar wash and hazy ambient epiphany, this time on everyone's favorite big time of the small time label, Type. I Could Not Love You More finds Rameses III perfecting their regal, monolithic sound, and we couldn't be more thrilled! Majestic chords and metallic shimmer rise from the blurring horizon, heart-wrenching melody and cinematic richness pour into the sky with a radiant ooze. Pastoral soundtracks stretched out and slowed down into time-lapsed images of rising tides and exploding stars, blissfully huge and epic while always grasping on to a forward moving narrative, through quiet grasslands of fingerpicked, Takoma style acoustic guitar to swelling waves of glistening tones that grow and radiate on the verge of feedback.
While even some of our favorite modern ambient music relies on layers and layers of digital processing, Rameses III maintains a certain acoustic integrity by layering strictly live instruments. Electric guitars, electric pianos, and mellotrons produce a warm, ethereal wash that brings an otherworldly depth to their sound, a depth that digital processing could never recreate.
Ghostly and melodic, mysterious and heavy, ambient and thoughtful, I Could Not Love You More is no doubt the trio's finest work and a perfect addition to the Type catalogue, highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "We Shall Never Sing of Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "No Water, No Moon"
MPEG Stream: "I Could Not Love You More"

RAMESES III Jozepha (Barl Fire) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
You know something is fishy when limited cd-r's start getting reissued as... LIMITED CD-R'S!!! What the heck?! Once makes sense, nothing wrong with a limited cd-r, but reissuing an out of print cd-r on cd-r AGAIN just makes us wonder why the heck it wasn't a real cd in the first place. Especially if it's so good that it requires multiple reissues. That said, at least we can be thankful that this gorgeous gem is still available at all. Originally released in 2004 on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label Jozepha is a practically perfect suite of songs, glistening and delicate, sweet and melancholy, steel string acoustic guitars, simple slide, even some subtle harmonica, lovely melodies drifting and intertwining, meandering lazily, soft sunlight filtered through the leaves and branches overhead, a cool breeze. A little bit country, a little bit pop, but mostly a totally timeless, dreamy instrumental journey with no particular destination, just floating along like big soft clouds, warm chords swirling like autumn leaves, simple melodies, dropping one note at a time, like raindrops on a sunny day. Quite possibly the sweetest, dreamiest, driftiest, swooniest record we've heard in ages. And frustratingly, this is again EXTREMELY LIMITED. Comes packaged quite smartly in an exquisitely embroidered sleeve!
MPEG Stream: "For Elsie (Cherry Blossom Falls)"
MPEG Stream: "The Silent Union Goes To War"

RAMESES III Matanuska (Music Fellowship) cd 15.98
BACK IN STOCK!!
First proper actual cd full length from this blissy UK free folk crew, after a clutch of (now out of print) cd-r's and a collaborative disc with the North Sea. Matanuska begins as a gloriously blissful late afternoon, sunshiney slab of fuzzy, buzzy, muted pop ambience, sparkling and glimmering, there are guitars, but they aren't plucked or strummed so much as spread like a thick glaze over the speakers. Within this gorgeous sun dappled soundfield, are tangled up bits of found sounds, distant ringing bells, rumbling thunder, as well as subtle layers of drone and shimmer adding mystery and depth to each track.
The rest of the record however is not so sunshiney, the mood is much more dark and shadowy, lit by moonlight, rumbles and whirs swirled into lush late night crawls, acoustic guitars draped over slow serene swells of sound, the buzz of steel strings muted and drawn out into simple shimmering ragas, the vibe is definitely sorrowful, melancholy, with minor key melodies drifting through intricate webs of abstract Appalachia, wheezing layered drones spread out like a late afternoon fog, amidst chirping birds and distant bits of conversation, a slowly shifting bit of minimal dreamdrone that brightens subtly as it works its way though the disc.
The record finishes up with the sun peeking out from behind the clouds, like that glorious first day of Spring, the birds once again singing, the shimmering sounds soaking up the sunlight, a drifting drone, warm and glowing, a hopeful dreamy sound that blossoms like a flower after a rainstorm, the hushed buzz growing fuzzier and fuzzier, almost like a fading memory. So nice.
MPEG Stream: "Before The Rains Fall (For Ed Cooke)"
MPEG Stream: "The Great Campaigner"

RAMESES III Parsimonia (Barl Fire) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As frustrating as superlimited cd-r's can be, you really can complain when faced with music this dark and mysteriously lovely. You can wish that someone would have the foresight to know when a record was amazing, and thus might press more than 130 copies, but again, we're happy that 130 more people get a chance to hear this record. The UK three piece known as Rameses III have been quietly laboring away for 5 or 6 years now, having released cd-r's on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 267 Lattajjaa and handful of others. Their sound is hushed, a whispery drone, disembodied guitars, the sounds of running water and bird calls, bowed strings, shimmering ambience, a slow melodic churn through dark mysteries and warm soft soundscapes. Parsimonia was originally released on Foxy Digitalis way back in 2004, this reissue adds some spiffy new artwork and like we said, gives 130 more people the chance to enjoy some gorgeous late night drone and shimmer. Which actually means 30 AQ customers as this is frustratingly already out of print and we took all the copies the label had left. The sound on Parsominia is just more of what we've come to love about Rameses III, soft subtle soundscapes cobbled together from natural sounds and delicately crafted drones, never better exemplified than on the title track, a nearly 12 minute track of warm melodic swells, broadcast across a spring meadow, birds chirp, families laugh and talk, the wind rustles the leaves, all the while a huge shimmery cloud of muted rumble and soft focused sonic swirl drifts dreamlike through the trees. The rest of Parsimonia is equally drifty and dreamy, incorporating chiming bells, gentle finger picked steel string guitar and mumbly murky feedback into sweet sweet swells of mystical and transcendental sound.
LIMITED TO 130 COPIES, OF WHICH WE GOT 30. IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT SO ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD (or until some other cd-r label decides to press up 100 more, arghh!)
MPEG Stream: "When The Bomb Drops, Hold Me Close"
MPEG Stream: "Three Ghosts (U.F.O.)"

RAMLEH Hole In The Heart (Dirter) 2cd 23.00
Most folks probably know Ramleh mostly for their connection to sonic contemporaries and brothers in noise Skullflower, both having emerged from the same scene and both having released records on the infamous Broken Flag label (run by Gary Mundy, the main man of Ramleh). But Ramleh was always its own unique beast, a constantly evolving sonic terror, beginning life as a power electronics combo, before blossoming into something more in line with what might be called noise rock. But the line that marked that shift was never clearly delineated, with elements of pre- and post- bleeding both ways, infusing the group's sound with strange elements that definitely made Ramleh stand out amongst their noisy contemporaries.
Hole In The Heart was originally released on Broken Flag as a super limited cassette, in 1987, and is here fleshed out with extra sounds culled from a cassette release called Nerve released the same year, and listening to this again now, we're reminded how ridiculously prescient the sound of Ramleh was, predicting sounds that are all the rage now, from glacial downtuned dirgery a la SUNNO))), to tripped out druggy ambient free noise (about a million floorcore bands), strange post industrial dirgescapes (Wolf Eyes?), to blown out industrial metallic crunch (about a million more bands), it's a sound that is definitely of its time, but also sounds like it could be some super limited microlabel cd-r release of today.
Opener "Bite The Bolster", is all slow smoldering drones, distant shimmer, processed ghostly vocals, lo-fi for sure but lush and strangely dramatic and lovely, leading straight into "Do Not Come Near" that does SUNNO))) better than SUNNO))) themselves twenty-odd years earlier, a heaving, grinding crumbling mass of gnarled buzz, laced with streaks of feedback, buried melodies, muted pulses, fractured almost-rhythms, some of it sounds downright dubby, albeit blown out and noise drenched, hypnotic and washed out and crushing.
Which is then followed by the epic 25 minute, 6 part "Redcap", a sprawling multi movement noise jam, which begins with a weird bleated doomic plod, only to explode into a squall of swirling whirling hiss and buzz, distorted vox, and wild tangled feedback, not that far removed from Our Love Will Destroy The World or Birchville Cat Motel. Loops, and haunting melodies, the track lurches and lumbers, slipping from all out assault, to dark stuttery drift and back again. Part three is a massive slowed down metallic dirge, processed vocals stretched out into a grinding drone, while the (surprisingly catchy) main riff pulses in the background, eventually splintering into angular loops, topped by a soaring super distorted psych guitar wail. The next part falls somewhere between Godflesh and Wolf Eyes, a crushing synth flecked distortion drenched plod, with billows of echoey vox, a motorik pulse at its core, doomy, but also sort of blissed out. A brief burst of twisted tweaked riffage and what wounds like pipe fights and broken glass, opens up into the final part, beginning with a churning muted loop, and shards of effected feedback, sounding a bit like an industrial WOLD, this muddy musicbox sort of looped melody happening way down in the mix, while a soft cacophony of high end and swooping distorted vox careen and collide in the space above, at first it sounds like a sort of abstract free noise freakout, but the vocals get more and more melodic, and the song takes a new shape a twisted bit of depressive noise pop, a bit like the Dead C, before blinking out.
"Spear Flowers" begins as a gnarled tangle of super distorted riffs, again weirdly melodic, swirling and collapsing inward, eventually transforming into a looped hypnotic drug jam, repeated mantra like vocals, crunching grinding electronics, buzz all over the place, loads of feedback, totally mesmerizing, and again, sounding like it could be from today.
"Hole In The Heart" is total in-the-red ramshackle pop infused noise rock, like a heavier, more lush Dead C, the main melody sweet and catchy, but slowed down and buried in hiss and buzz, lilting and dreamy for all its abject aggression. "Product Of Fear" is a gorgeous guitarscape, layered buzz, washed out glimmering warmth, humid and haunting, and really really pretty, which leads you softly into "Grazing On Fear 2" which is also pretty, in its own way", but is also a cacophonous blow out, twisted atonal organ, and churning distorted white noise, eventually lurching into a cool skipping, stuttery outro. And finally, the nearly 25 minute "True Religion", an expansive soundscape of processed guitars that again is strangely pretty, very much in the vein of Jesu or Nadja, the guitars blown way out, but the melody is lilting and melancholy, a sort of soft doom, but wrapped in muted crunch and crumbling buzz, before slipping into a strange fractured interlude, before emerging on the other side some sort of slow motion noise pop dirge, epic and triumphant, finishing off in an explosion of grinding white hot / black hole skree.
Absolutely essential for pretty much everybody, but specifically, folks into Nadja and Jesu and SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Skullflower, and anybody who likes super heavy droned out noise, pop infused shoegaze industrial metal bliss out, and crushing power electronic dreamdronedirge. Reissue of the year so far, hands down.
MPEG Stream: "Bite The Bolster"
MPEG Stream: "Do Not Come Near"
MPEG Stream: "Redcap Part II"

RAMLEH Too Many Miles (Dirter Promotions) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN PRINT!!!
Much has been written here about the recent work of Matthew Bower and his beautiful improv skree in Sunroof (paralleling the massive proliferation of likeminded acts Vibracathedral Orchestra and Birchville Cat Motel); but people often overlook the fact that he began making music in the early '80s as a part of the Broken Flag camp - a loose collective of British power electronics technicians and noise rockers, that recorded under the monikers Skullflower, Total, and Ramleh. While Bower was principally the 'figurehead' of the first two and fellow Broken Flag waver Gary Mundy took hold of Ramleh, most of the recording was done with a revolving door membership. Between Skullflower and Ramleh, the Broken Flag camp had produced a noxious arsenal of sludgy noise rock with grim guitar pyrotechnics, crashing upon pummelling rhythm sections, village-idiot basslines and thuggish percussive blasts. These days, the awe-inspiring Skullflower albums Form Destroyer and Birthdeath are virtually extinct (even, the cd compendium Ruins is impossible to find); but fortunately, the old Ramleh stuff is finally available again via this collection of singles. Hopefully this will help keep Broken Flag from dissappearing in the dustbins of musical history.
The formulas for Ramleh (and Skullflower for that matter) were incredibly simple: hammer out a basic rhythm as heavy and as loud as possible, then layer on the angriest and most dissonant blasts of post-Blue Cheer psychedelic freaks outs. Throughout the '80s, Ramleh and Skullflower were pigeonholed as a part of Industrial Culture - due to their power electronics side projects and associations with Whitehouse; yet as Too Many Miles now indicates, this work has much more parallels with the explosive dirges of Neurosis or the incendiary stoner rock of Boris. Really fantastic stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Eightball Corner Pocket"
MPEG Stream: "Welcome"
MPEG Stream: "Black Moby Dick"

RAMLEH Valediction (Second Layer) cd 15.98
It should be noted that the British label Second Layer released a Skullflower album entitled Malediction only to be followed up by a Ramleh album with the title Valediction. Given the cross pollination of ideas / band members / history between these two seminal ensembles of drugged-out, bleakly rendered psychedelic noise / anti-rock, it's hard to read the similarities of these titles as a mere coincidence.
The good news about Valediction is that this in NO WAY resembles the regrettable 10" that Ramleh produced in 2009, even as this album is technically the first full album by Gary Mundy and Anthony DiFranco since 1997 (the Ramleh we made a Record Of The Week last time was a reissue of a couple '80s era cassettes). Valediction qualifies as a return to their power electronics aesthetic that they built around the likes of Whitehouse and helped promote through their Broken Flag label, originating back in the early '80s. Here, squalls of hiss, noise, distortion, and compressed low-end rumbles blast forth with a hurricane fury, exhibiting the same misanthropic disdain for humanity as found in the early recordings but coupled with an oozing psychedelic panache that could only emerge from the many years of exacting the heavy psych noise-rock of albums like Works III or Boeing. "Valediction VI" is much more a propulsive track, with a punk bassline chugging through a thick wall of churning distortion while Mundy issues a chanting vocal stream of indecipherable words through a guitar pickup (or maybe it's a megaphone, who really knows with how wonderfully shitty it sounds), ending with a searing chunk of Merzbow-like noise. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Valediction II"
MPEG Stream: "Valediction VI"

RANALDO, LEE Countless Centuries Fled Into The Distance... (Table Of The Elements) 12" 17.98
Another in Table Of The Elements' new series of one sided etched 12"s. A series focusing on the electric guitar. Last time we had Oren Ambarchi, this time we have Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, who starts out his 12" sounding quite a bit like Sonic Youth in fact. Noisy crashing chords, chaotic and off kilter, over a super high pitched sonar like beep, weirdly hypnotic until it explodes into a full on psychedelic skreekout.
The second track begins with an amazing tripped out, warbly warped guitar groove, which gives way to a weird high end drone doused in fucked up effects, so woozy it almost makes you dizzy just listening, and reminds us a bit of a fucked up set of bagpipes.
The final track begins with an echo-y almost-industrial space-y surfy riff, that shifts suddenly in pitch, creating mysterious melodies, super haunting and hypnotic, but this track too soon gives way to a massive amp blowing, speaker melting chunk of freaked out Japanese style noise-psych. Whew.
Pressed on opaque swirled turquoise vinyl. One sided, the other side with a super bad ass etching by Savage Pencil, housed in a thick vinyl sleeve, and of course, as always LIMITED!

RANDOM s/t (Kyouei Ltd.) cd 9.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Managed to get a handful more of these weird and wonderful records...
It had to happen. It probably already has happened actually, but we love the weird, and the random, and we figured you probably would too. This is a Japanese import, not sure exactly who the artist is, but it's 99 tracks, each a rich lustrous tone, some deep and bell like, some soft and sonorous, some high pitched like a sine wave. All you have to do is set your cd player on random and away we go. A soft, subtle ambient journey, that ends up sounding a bit like Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel, only a bit though. It also sort of sounds like Tibetan bowls, or chiming bells, or soft ambient Japanese music (which I guess it is). Soft and lovely, and most importantly RANDOM. 99 seperate tones means the number of possible songs is an astronomical 9.33262154 x 10 to the 155th! And that's if you only let each tone play once... So even though the disc is actually only about 8 minutes long, set to shuffle it turns into 8 million billion trillion minutes! Or more!
Anyway, this seems to work best if you import the disc to iTunes, set to shuffle and with a decent crossfade, then just sit back and drift off, let the gorgeously soft and shimmery, sweet and serene ambience wash over you.
MPEG Stream: "One"

RANDOM INC. Jerusalem (Ritornell) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Stephan Meissner is a mainstay of the Mille Plateaux clicks 'n cuts crew via his work in Autopoesies and his solo projects Random Industries and Random Inc. "Jerusalem" is his latest work, the resulti of four years of gathering and editting sound material, specifically related to the complex and often volatile relationship between Jews and Palestinians in Jerusalem. Meissner's meditation on this city's cultural make-up plays upon the geographic rhizomes of neighborhoods and holy sites, which clearly do not follow easily definable boundaries. The city's geography itself acknowleges an extraordinary history of the continuous influx and dispersion of numerous persecuted peoples. While Meissner's micro-sampling technique has the potential to recombine all of the musical elements of both Arabs and Jews into a homogeneous synthesis, he instead opts for a neo-historical approach, co-opting the 20th Century's narrative of that land which saw the power shift from Arabic to Israeli. The first half of the album steps into the empty space left behind by Muslimgauze in a digital appropriation of Arabic percussions, choral chant, and guitars within an electro-glitch setting, but slowly the timbres morph from the warmth of the Arabic to the melancholy of Klezmer with doleful passages for violin, accordion, and clarinet. Meissner keeps a dutiful distance in his recombinant history using only the glitch as his signature, which may rearrange the syntax of the appropriated musics but does not alter the historical narrative to which the musical elements refer.
RealAudio clip: "Untitled Track 20"
RealAudio clip: "Untitled Track 6"

RANDOM INDUSTRIES Selected Random Works (Ritornell) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Random Industries is the work of Sebastian Meissner (ex-Autopoieses). For "Selected Random Works," Meissner has constructed 99 very short digitally sharp pieces - mostly of crystalline glitches and stochastic / erratic rhythms, but others have incidental melodies that inconsequentially pass through soap operas. As you can probably guess, the idea is to set your cd player to random and let the machine construct new patterns each time you hear it. There are some post-digital / post-structuralist ideas mentioned in the liner notes about creating non-linear space and the subversion of interactivity through indeterminancy... all fine ideas, but ones that can not possibly be found on this disc. First of all, the random function of the cd player will simply collate the 99 pieces into different patterns... not reconstruct the fluidity of time. A cd player is not a time machine, no matter how many drugs you take. Second, all of the 99 pieces have a very similar timbre (quite charming and glistening), making it impossible to not listen to it as mere fragments of a larger whole. Pay no attention to the theoretical silliness, as this is a fine collection of powerbook glitch fuckery.

RANGERS Pan Am Stories (Not Not Fun) cd 13.98
As many of the various lysergic pop weirdos and lo-fi audio alchemists move toward poppier and less fucked up sonic climes, it's nice to know we can count on Rangers, aka Joe Knight, to keep the warped alternate dimension FM radio druggy eighties retro pop whathefuck fire burning bright, this latest record another collection of glammy lo-fi pop that in some other world would/could/should have been all over classic rock radio in the future. The opener, in different hands, could very well have been a dreamy bit of blissy pop, if say Big Troubles in their current incarnation had a god, we can picture it all shimmery and crystalline, but here, it's raw, and fuzzy, murky and lo-fi, the sounds careening from speaker to speaker, the effects in-the-red, the sound crumbling and distorted, swaths of swirly synth drifting alongside the buried reverby croon, but all the noise and damaged 4-track malfunctioning can't disguises that Knight definitely knows his way around a pop song. But just so you don't get too comfortable, he follows it up with the 13 minute long ADD short attention span "Zeke's Dream", which does start out all James Ferraro style drug pop weirdness, but then it keeps getting weirder, swirling distorted vocals, the guitars getting crunchier, and then it's almost like someone switched the channel on the radio, the song transforming into more of a slow jam, this one peppered with strange sci-fi streaks, and blown out echoey vox, and then it happens again, and becomes a gloomy dirgey ballad, that sounds like it's melting inside the speakers, or Knight has 6 different people gradually detuning each string on his guitar, and then it happens again, the song becomes a John Carpenter synthscape, that morphs into a bit of krautrock style kosmische musik, but there are voices and electronic squiggles everywhere, but it's not over yet, some police sirens signal the shift to the final movement (?), a warped lounge-y bit of fuzzy groove, that ends in a gorgeous bit of psychedelic tangle. And we're only two songs into the record. But that gives you an idea of what's to come, more twisted druggy pop, more warped home brewed psychedelia, and whatever it is that is born of merging the two.
Most definitely recommended for fans of James Ferraro, Ariel Pink, John Maus, and all the other similarly warped lysergic pop alchemists out there...
MPEG Stream: "Zombies (Day)"
MPEG Stream: "Zeke's Dream"
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Cows"
MPEG Stream: "John Is The Last Of A Dying Breed"

RANGERS Pan Am Stories (Not Not Fun) 2lp 29.00
As many of the various lysergic pop weirdos and lo-fi audio alchemists move toward poppier and less fucked up sonic climes, it's nice to know we can count on Rangers, aka Joe Knight, to keep the warped alternate dimension FM radio druggy eighties retro pop whathefuck fire burning bright, this latest record another collection of glammy lo-fi pop that in some other world would/could/should have been all over classic rock radio in the future. The opener, in different hands, could very well have been a dreamy bit of blissy pop, if say Big Troubles in their current incarnation had a god, we can picture it all shimmery and crystalline, but here, it's raw, and fuzzy, murky and lo-fi, the sounds careening from speaker to speaker, the effects in-the-red, the sound crumbling and distorted, swaths of swirly synth drifting alongside the buried reverby croon, but all the noise and damaged 4-track malfunctioning can't disguises that Knight definitely knows his way around a pop song. But just so you don't get too comfortable, he follows it up with the 13 minute long ADD short attention span "Zeke's Dream", which does start out all James Ferraro style drug pop weirdness, but then it keeps getting weirder, swirling distorted vocals, the guitars getting crunchier, and then it's almost like someone switched the channel on the radio, the song transforming into more of a slow jam, this one peppered with strange sci-fi streaks, and blown out echoey vox, and then it happens again, and becomes a gloomy dirgey ballad, that sounds like it's melting inside the speakers, or Knight has 6 different people gradually detuning each string on his guitar, and then it happens again, the song becomes a John Carpenter synthscape, that morphs into a bit of krautrock style kosmische musik, but there are voices and electronic squiggles everywhere, but it's not over yet, some police sirens signal the shift to the final movement (?), a warped lounge-y bit of fuzzy groove, that ends in a gorgeous bit of psychedelic tangle. And we're only two songs into the record. But that gives you an idea of what's to come, more twisted druggy pop, more warped home brewed psychedelia, and whatever it is that is born of merging the two.
Most definitely recommended for fans of James Ferraro, Ariel Pink, John Maus, and all the other similarly warped lysergic pop alchemists out there...
MPEG Stream: "Zombies (Day)"
MPEG Stream: "Zeke's Dream"
MPEG Stream: "Sacred Cows"
MPEG Stream: "John Is The Last Of A Dying Breed"

RAPOON :D-Lem: (Gracia-Territori Sonor) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
:D-Lem: is a documentation of the live performance Rapoon (aka Robin Storey) gave during the 1999 LFM Festival in Barcelona, and is the closest that he has come to sounding like :Zoviet France: since Storey left the anonymous collective. This dark looping hypnodrone with post-industrial clatter that could easily fit on :ZF:'s "Mohnomishce" or "Just An Illusion" (titles that highlight the best work from :ZF:, just so you know).

RAPOON :Just Say The Faith: (Soleilmoon) cd 14.98
Even though it's been a decade since Robin Storey left the seminal post-industrial ensemble :Zoviet*France:, he hasn't really extended himself beyond his last few outings with :Z*F: (including "Just An Illusion" and possibly "Shouting At The Ground"). In :Zoviet*France:, he mastered the technique of multitracking tape loops, often of murky recordings from non-specific ethnic percussion, and then splattering them with a profuse amount of dub delay to create very effective hypnotic drones. ":Just Say The Faith:" find his current project Rapoon softening the edges of all of the looping rhythms to give a less foreboding and dreamily celestial ambience to his sounds. Unfortunately, in lightening the mood, Rapoon verges on a soundtrack for commercials about soothing bath salts and exfoliating sugar scrubs, or for the next Peter Gabriel multi-media experience. Originally, this album was released as a vinyl only limited release, but now gets a CD-reissue with a few extra tracks.
RealAudio clip: "Fuck The Wire"

RAPOON Alien Glyph Mythology (Soleilmoon) 2x10" 53.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

RAPOON Fires of The Borderlands (Release) cd 14.98
Robin Storey, founding member of :Zoviet*France: and sole proprietor of Rapoon, finds the source material for his mesmeric drone music in the tones emaneted from tablas, Egyptian reeds, digeridoos, and a plethora of ethnic instruments. From the dots of sound he pulls from the instruments, Storey (like his predecent work in :Z*F:) builds lulling compositions with hypnotic rhythmic patterns and rich textures of drifting sound. "Fires of the Borderlands" is one of his most somnambulant pieces and is quite good.

RAPOON From Shadows Sleep (Essence Music) cd 16.98
While the Essence Music press release doesn't make this proclamation, any self-respecting :zoviet*france: fan will be able to recognize the source material for Rapoon's From Shadow Sleep. Essentially this album is a remix of the source material taken from two of the finest :zoviet*france: recordings of all times -- the diptych centerpiece of "Ascend The Fall" and "Caught In The Square" found on the album Just An Illusion. That 1990 :zoviet*france: album was essentially a solo record by Robin Storey, who later split from :zoviet*france: rather acrimoniously and formed Rapoon, a project whose work has been fairly hit or miss.
True to the old adage: when Rapoon has been good, he's been very very good; but when he's been bad, he's horrid. From Shadows Sleep find Storey in top form, partially because the source material is so exquisite -- back from when he was dealing with convoluted tape loop machines, time-lag accumulators, and the best non-Dub use of delay pedals of all time. These aerated sounds tinged with metallic resonance cobble together swelling masses of hypnotic drift, underscored by a brooding atmosphere. Sonorous pings and aggregates of swirling tape hiss spackle Rapoon's mighty drone which ends up being both unsettling and transcendent at the same time. Given how many are dabbling in the fine art of grizzled dronescaping, the back catalogue of :zoviet*france: should be required listening. But given that nearly all of those recordings of alchemical ritualism are out of print (thanks to that unfortunate acrimony mentioned above), this Rapoon album is the next best thing. Very highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Darkness Of Ages"
MPEG Stream: "The Pit Under The Castle"
MPEG Stream: "The Pigmen At The Window"

RAPOON From Shadows Sleep (Essence Music) cd / 3" cd / box 58.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is the super limited, ultra deluxe box set version, that includes tons of extra art and inserts as well as a bonus 3" cd-r)!! Most likely already out of print by the time you read this...
While the Essence Music press release doesn't make this proclamation, any self-respecting :zoviet*france: fan will be able to recognize the source material for Rapoon's From Shadow Sleep. Essentially this album is a remix of the source material taken from two of the finest :zoviet*france: recordings of all times -- the diptych centerpiece of "Ascend The Fall" and "Caught In The Square" found on the album Just An Illusion. That 1990 :zoviet*france: album was essentially a solo record by Robin Storey, who later split from :zoviet*france: rather acrimoniously and formed Rapoon, a project whose work has been fairly hit or miss.
True to the old adage: when Rapoon has been good, he's been very very good; but when he's been bad, he's horrid. From Shadows Sleep find Storey in top form, partially because the source material is so exquisite -- back from when he was dealing with convoluted tape loop machines, time-lag accumulators, and the best non-Dub use of delay pedals of all time. These aerated sounds tinged with metallic resonance cobble together swelling masses of hypnotic drift, underscored by a brooding atmosphere. Sonorous pings and aggregates of swirling tape hiss spackle Rapoon's mighty drone which ends up being both unsettling and transcendent at the same time. Given how many are dabbling in the fine art of grizzled dronescaping, the back catalogue of :zoviet*france: should be required listening. But given that nearly all of those recordings of alchemical ritualism are out of print (thanks to that unfortunate acrimony mentioned above), this Rapoon album is the next best thing. Very highly recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Darkness Of Ages"
MPEG Stream: "The Pit Under The Castle"
MPEG Stream: "The Pigmen At The Window"

RAPOON Navigating By Colour (Soleilmoon) cd 19.98
The oversized beautiful first edition of Rapoon's "Navigating By Colour" features a dozen oversized postcards of Robin Storey's paintings (imagine Diebenkorn infused with a fictional tribal symbolism), but it's the sound which makes this album perhaps his best work since working with Zoviet France. Not nearly as tinted with pseudo-ethnic percussive elements as his other records, fragments of electronica (a particularly nice deconstruction of LTJ Bukem's archetypal "Amen" junglist break into something nothing not at all drum'n'bass-esque) and medieval chants join Storey's masterful useage of ever shifting dark passages of looping drones.

RAPOON What Do You Suppose? (Staalplaat) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"What Do You Suppose?" is a conceptual departure from the curatorial duties of Rapoon's Robin Storey (ex-Zoviet France) whose previous releases have been anthropological collections of looping drones culled from fictional non-Western cultures. Sampling heavily from a symposium on the nature of alien lifeforms, Rapoon's previous ambiguity has been anchored heavily in conspiracy theory, but retains his musical expertise in delay happy percussive drones.

RASHOMON Ashcan Copy - Film Music Vol. 3 (Paradigms) cd 11.98

RASHOMON The Ruined Map (Film Music Volume 1) (Mirrors) cd 14.98
Another disc we've been meaning to list for ages. The first release from Rashomon, the new project of Matt Thompson, former and founding member of UK prog combo Guapo. Rashomon incorporates much of what drove the music of Guapo, avant prog, psychedelic rock, soundtrack music, even metal into their sound.
But Thompson is approaching this new music from more of a filmic angle, the sounds much more cinematic, which should have been obvious from the name of the project, the record's title, and even the songs, each bearing the name of a classic film. Might be a bit pretentious in other hands, but this is the guy who founded Guapo, his prog cred is solid as a rock, as is his instrumental prowess, and it's obvious listening to these songs.
How the music here relates to the various films, is a bit tough for us to comment on since, we're embarrassed to say, we've seen only 2 of the 8 films referenced, but we're certainly excited to check the rest of them out now.
The opening track is a dark brooding convoluted space prog workout, channeling Goblin, as well as John Carpenter, into an intense creepscape, all minor key and darkly ominous, with long stretches of haunted house synth and wheezing harmoniums, the drums complex, skittering amidst a winding droneprog jam, heavy on the low-end and the tension building shimmer.
The second track is all smokey and jazzy, a minimal shuffle beneath some atonal scrabbly Derek Bailey like guitars, the track soon morphing into creepy sepia tone music box melodies.
Over the course of the rest of the record, as the tracks slip from film to film director to director, Bresson to Suzuki, Starewicz to Shindo, Branded To Kill, Lancelot Du Lac, Onibaba, The Mascot, the songs follow suit, shifting from mood to mood, sound to sound, soaring strings, ballroom jazz, bursts of acid fried synth blow outs, tribal almost African sounding drumming, gypsy folk violins, super intense spastic freaked out avant metal damage, deep shimmering drones, long stretches of creaking industrial ambience, haunting bagpipe like melodies, moody abstract drifts, gently strummed guitars clouds of cymbal shimmer, a constantly shifting world of sound, deep and layered, expansive and indeed, so cinematic.
Fans of Guapo will want this for sure, but anyone into far out soundtracks, experimental soundscapes or avant prog should definitely check this out as well.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Onibaba"
MPEG Stream: "Blast Of Silence"
MPEG Stream: "A Quiet Week In The House"

RATJKE, MAJA Stalker (picture disc) (Important) lp 14.98

RAZEN / SHELDON SIEGEL split ((K-RAA-K)3 ) lp 16.98
We discovered this strange split lp via the always amazing WFMU in New Jersey, a freeform radio station we've collaborated with on numerous occasions in the past, most notably we shared a couple showcases at the South By Southwest music conference in Texas, which by the way was no coincidence, and it wasn't just because we're pals, it's also because WFMU constantly and consistently play the most amazing shit. We think we know about the craziest, most underground music, and then we tune into WFMU and routinely have our minds blown. And yeah, we blow their minds once in a while too, with stuff we recommend on our list, but pretty much every time we listen to WFMU, we have to have a pen and paper handy to jot down all the amazing things we need to track down, which happened recently with this here record. One track was all it took to know this was some serious aQ-worthy weirdness, dark and psychedelic, tripped out and bizarre and beautiful, on a label we love too, with a background story as cool and weird as the music itself. So we got as many as we could (it's limited to 300 copies!) but odds are they won't last, so grab one of these quick cuz once we describe it to you, we're pretty sure you're not gonna be able to live without one...
The oddly named Razen are a duo, who grew tired of the traditional rock band instrumentation, and decided to each pick a new instrument, one they had no idea how to play, which is how they ended up with a detuned santoor (like an Indian hammered dulcimer) and a drumset assembled from metal plates. And thus was born Razen. They've expanded their instrumentation to include still more instruments they don't know how to play (bouzouki, keyboards, horns), and have invited a handful of guests to contribute an even more impressive and bizarre arsenal of noisemakers, including bagpipe, chalumeau (a classical style recorder), sopranino (one of the smallest horns in the saxophone family), bass recorder, duduk (a Middle Eastern woodwind) and shenai (a North Indian oboe), and this is the result: a glorious, mysterious take on world music, dark and haunting, heavily percussive, cinematic, abstract and dramatic, the label mentions Moondog and Bohren & Der Club Of Gore and David Lynch, but we also hear some Sun City Girls, some martial industrial music, while at the same time the sounds dip into African folk music and Indian style ragas, all rife with drone and buzz and strange melodies, lush textures, frantic rhythms, all filtered through Razen's distinctively non-world music perspective.
"Rammelaargong" begins with hypnotic tribal hand drumming, deep low end thrum, fluttering woodwinds, and haunting steel string shimmer, eventually building to a frenzy of howling horns, and frantic drumming, infused with plenty of drone and buzz, and a strangely motorik rhythmic pulse, with everything eventually dropping out, finishing off with a brief flurry of lo-fi percussion.
"Razen Zand" begins with a thick undulating raga like drone, rendered in glitchy electronics, before the drums kick in, and then the horns, and the sound is almost like a marching band playing some abstract African folk music, the drums and horns locked into staccato bursts, while in between those bursts, wild melodies are unfurled from buzzing steel strings, the sound manages to be epic, and majestic and HEAVY. "Richel" is all low end blur, and woozy snake charmer melodies, shimmery spidery buzzing strings, a sun baked sprawling raga-like drift, the vibe dark and emotional and intense, very cinematic, wild fluttering woodwinds flit above that mournful snake charmer cry, the track laced with sharp percussive strikes, and thick low end thrums, hummed chantlike vox, and swirls of metallic shimmer. "Rode Hond" too, begins with a deep metallic buzz, layered and lush, and those exotic intense snake charmer melodies, the percussion, spare and skeletal, but propulsive and rhythmic, the song growing more and more intense the drums more frenetic, the horns and woodwinds more tense, soaring and singing out, all the instruments slipping into a hypnotic groove, that we could listen to forever, and fades out way too soon.
So incredible, it's only 4 tracks, but they're so intense and detailed and blossom a little more with every listen, you might as well set your turntable to send the needle right back to the beginning, and let it play all night.
And that's just the Razen side. The flipside is taken up entirely by a single track from Sheldon Siegel, which is not in fact a person, but rather a group, a Belgian abstract free jazz outfit, made up of cello, drums, percussion, sax, vocals, tapes and music box, and don't be expecting regular old free jazz, they are after all teamed up with Razen for a reason, and not because they're both from Belgium, it's more likely, that like Razen, the guys in Sheldon Siegel approach their music similarly, looking to subvert the old, and invent something new, to create a music that while made up of free jazz elements, is more than free jazz, and what they've come up with does definitely strike out from the confines of free jazz, sure, a quick listen will sound like free jazz on the surface, but as you dig deeper, and the song develops, thick grinding cello drones ground the sound, a thick undulating textural buzz, underpinning, stuttery skronk and little flurries of percussive skitter, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer. Over the course of the side's 25 minutes, the group shift gears dramatically, slipping into a seriously twisted dirge, with the horns super processed and sounding almost electronic, blissing out, and letting blurts of feedback and spurts of rhythmic sputter spar over mournful cello melodies, sounding super dramatic and intense, after some bursts of almost traditional sounding avant jazz, the sound winds way down, the tapes warble and whir, the other instruments are muffled and muted, a strange landscape of scrapes and thumps, of fragmented melodies, and abstract ambience, before finishing off with a strange stretch of stumbling loping jazz flecked skitter, and swirling droned out weirdness.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: RAZEN "Rammelaargong"
MPEG Stream: RAZEN "Razend Zand"
MPEG Stream: SHELDON SIEGEL "Drie Mannen Stappen Aan Boord... (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: SHELDON SIEGEL "Drie Mannen Stappen Aan Boord... (excerpt 2)"