SAMARTZIS, PHILIP & RASMUS B. LUNDING Touch Parking (Synaesthesia ) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Outside of their sporadic collaborations, Rasmus B. Lunding and Philip Samartzis exist in vastly different quarters of the avant-garde, as the Danish Lunding is best known for tinkering with programmable Lego constructions as the basis for composition and installation, where the Australian Samartzis wields his digital operating theatre with the precision of a skilled surgeon. The alliance which forged Touch Parking could be described as the Second Annual Transoceanic Summit for Giddy Robotic Engineers and Texturally Inclined Post-Turntablists. Both artists bring all of their tricks of the trade to the table (e.g. purposefully artificial DSP effects, microsonic explosiveness, theatrical drop outs, variable spatialization, divergent polyphony, etc.), and actually balance out each other's strengths, as Lunding's sense of humour works well with Samartzis' expertise in abstraction. Touch Parking resolves itself as a Mobius strip of surfaces, with the complex collages of electro-acoustic events colliding into each other and emerging in an inscrutable rebus of semiotic dead-ends and idiosyncrasies. Goodiepal's artwork on this picture disc replete with S&M cheesecake illustrations and pinstriped Rune stones further complicates the ecstatic absurdities for the album.

SAMARTZIS, PHILIP / SACHIKO M Artefact (Dorobo) cd 14.98
Philip Samartzis is an Australian electro-acoustic composer, who had gone on a tour across Japan a few years ago and through his travels developed some interesting relationships with a number of likeminded composers in Japan. After working with onkyo minimalist Kozo Inada, Samartzis has joined up with the incredibly prolific Sachiko M for this limited release through Dorobo. Sachiko M offers her signature high end sinewaves and closed-circuit squeals from a sampler with an empty memory bank feeding back upon itself, yet Samartzis breaks up her unwavering tones with jarring slabs of static and bursts of low end noise, sounding much like recent output from Zbigniew Karkowski. Quite good!
RealAudio clip: "Interference"
RealAudio clip: "Corruption"

SAN AGUSTIN Triangulation (Hoof and Mouth Blues) (Table Of The Elements) 12" 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Part one in the Table Of The Elements' label series of super limited one sided 12"s, comes from the relatively unknown Georgia ensemble San Agustin, a three piece free-rock-minimalist-noise-improv outfit that takes the propulsive rhythms of post rock, deconstructs them and wraps them in dense clouds of shifting drone, with occasional NNCK tribalism and Dead C-ish clatter. Really beautiful. They also have a 3 cd set on TOTE if this 12" strikes your fancy. Gorgeous woodcut image silkscreened in glow-in-the-dark ink on clear vinyl in a clear sleeve. So nice. And SO LIMITED!

SANDBLEISTIFT, MILAN / AIDAN BAKER / RELAPXYCH.0 Saite An Saite (Licht-Ung) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here's a three-way split, presented as 'a string based compilation.' Yup, the guitar is the centerpiece to these experimental smears and dronescapes, starring Aidan Baker, Licht-Ung label boss Milan Sandbleistift, and Relapxych.0 (an upcoming Swedish laptop trickster, or so we assume). Sandbleistift's gauzy drones hover above a thick amplifier hum, coupled with metal-on-metal scrapes, electrical interference directed into the pick-ups, and spidery textures that wiggle into the mix as he plucks away at the bridge of his guitar. Imagine Keith Rowe recording for Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. This is a pretty good track; but to be honest, it's Aidan Baker who steals the show on this album. Even with his esteemed catalogue of ethereal ambience and doomdronedirge excursions, "One Step Ahead, One Step Behind" is pretty exceptional. A desolate guitar melody repeats throughout the entire track, alluding to the doom of Nadja had he kicked on the distortion pedals. But without, there's a sadness which permeates the track, accompanied by ghostly flickers of complimentary drones, flanging bursts of static, and a slow-burning roar of distant distortion that eventually consumes the entire piece. So good! Relapxych.0 holds his own in creating a series of guitar-meets-the-laptop abstractions that looks to Fennesz and Tim Hecker for inspiration, and does a pretty good job in the way of an homage. Limited to a mere 300 copies; and it remains to be seen, if any more will be made available to us!
MPEG Stream: MILAN SANDBLEISTIFT "Seymour In Der Huette"
MPEG Stream: AIDAN BAKER "One Step Ahead, One Step Behind"
MPEG Stream: RELAPXYCH.0 "Insomniactivity"

SANDERS, KARL Saurian Meditation (Release) cd 14.98
Solo record from the guitarist of death metal geniuses Nile. Not what you might be expecting. Think all the 'Asian/Eastern' interludes from Nile records, all new agey with some very questionable vocals/lyrics. Ugh. A bit cheesy. Not sure what Sanders (and Release/Relapse) was thinking. Definitely worth checking out for it's WTF value, but even diehard Nile obsessives will be hard pressed to find a reason for having this in their collection.
MPEG Stream: "Awaiting The Vultures"
MPEG Stream: "Luring The Doom Serpent"

SANDERSON, PHILIP Reprint (Anomalous) cd 14.98
A wonderful piece of history precedes the reissue of this recording by the British pioneer of DIY electronics and cassette culture, Philip Sanderson. Having manufactured a number of cassette-only releases from 1978 - 1981 through his label Snatch Tapes, Sanderson devised the rather cynical ploy of recording under the moniker Claire Thomas and Susan Vezey to see if labels like Rough Trade, Cherry Red, or Fast Product might take the bait of women artists producing abstract electronic music. It's the same dodgy yet brilliant ploy recently used by San Francisco's Ziegenbock Kopf to market themselves as gay leatherboys. Unlike ZK, Sanderson got so far as to get a Claire Thomas and Susan Vezey track on the intriguing Cherry Red compilation entitled "Perspectives and Distortions" alongside The Virgin Prunes, Eyeless In Gaza, The Lemon Kittens, and Robert Fripp. The charade was up when Cherry Red made an offer to Claire and Susan to release an album and wanted to meet the two. Upon learning of the ruse, Cherry Red decide to pull out of the deal instead of continuing the masquerade. It's a shame that it had to come to that as Sanderson had produced a really amazing record of low-tech Cluster-inspired electronic bubblings, although Cherry Red's reaction is an understandable one. Regardless, Sanderson shrugged it off, issued the recordings as "Reprint" through Snatch in 1980, and thankfully 23 years later re-released it on CD through Anomalous Records.
The album begins convincingly enough in regards to the Claire and Susan mythology as Sanderson has employed the vocal talents of a woman simply identified as Nancy in an ethereal collage of her voice cycling through a mantra of tape delay effects. Yet that is the only reference to anything distinctly feminine on the record, as Sanderson completes the record with variations and repetitions of clattering electronics corroding into grimy noise and smeary tape hiss, not unlike Chris Carter's productions for Throbbing Gristle and less structured than Sanderson's work as the Storm Bugs. Sanderson's liner notes describe the record as "academic rigour married to an inverted pop art aesthetic. For whereas pop art incorporated the cheap intoxications of consumer culture into the supposed lofty rooms of high art, here was an attempt to incorporate the form of high art into the low brutality of DIY electronics." Well stated! It's probably not for everybody, but with the proliferation of CD-R labels doing the exact same thing 20 years later, "Reprint" is a historical gem.
MPEG Stream: "Bright Waves"
MPEG Stream: "Under Press of Sail"

SANDERSON, PHILIP Seal Pool Sounds (Seal Pool) cd 16.98
It's been a very, very long time that Philip Sanderson has released anything new. Up until Seal Pool Sounds, the last recordings for Sanderson date back to 1982! During the late '70s and early '80s, Sanderson had been very active in the Britian's DIY cassette culture, producing music as the Storm Bugs (with Steven Ball) and as Susan Thomas & Clare Vesay (whose fictional femininity caused a minor bout of controversy between Sanderson and Cherry Red records). He also collaborated frequently with David Jackman who at that time had yet to form his seminal drone-scrape project Organum. Many of these recordings emerged on Sanderson's own Snatch Tapes; and some of those original cassettes have slowly been reissued in recent years. In the mid-'80s, Sanderson made a stylistic jump to film and installation, offering an explanation as to his whereabouts during all those years.
Within the murk, hiss, and Frankensteinian electric constructions of his early work on Snatch, there was a peculiar and perverse sense of humor in Sanderson's work. On Seal Pool Sounds, he allows the playful aspects of that sense of humor to occasionally emerge with these much cleaner squiggles, jolts, and drones of electronic sounds. Alternately, a plaintive melancholia hangs upon other abstracted tones and broken rhythms, ending up sounding like more primitive constructions from Mika Vainio's solo work, those Microstoria albums, and even Manhatten Research era Raymond Scott.
MPEG Stream: "Pilot Light"
MPEG Stream: "Flume"
MPEG Stream: "Left Them Down"

SANDOZ LAB TECHNICIANS Everythings Fifteen (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd 14.98

SANDOZ LAB TECHNICIANS Synaptic Acres (Metonymic) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Their label Metonymic qualifies Sandoz Lab Technician's "Synaptic Acres" as "fluent jazzish exotica, with undercurrents of 50's noir films that never were, to minutely detailed moments of stillness and beauty." I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. The Sandoz Lab Technicians emerge as one of the more mind-expanding outfits from the fertile New Zealand free noise community, which has also spawned The Dead C, RST, Flies Inside The Sun, Surface Of The Earth, etc. With freeranging sonic investigations with guitars, feedback, drums, sax, melodica, and bells (just to name a few of the many sounds uttered on this album), "Synaptic Acres" is a playful if gritty album akin to playing in the mud as a kid.

SANDOZ LAB TECHNICIANS The Western Lands (Last Visible Dog) cd 9.98
Sandoz Lab Technicians may be the most fucked-up and most freeform out of all of the mind-expanding, free noise New Zealanders that we have championed in the past (i.e. Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, Omit, Anthony Milton, etc.). That said, Sandoz Lab Technicians haven't been terribly prolific (unlike pretty much everybody else we just mentioned), but they have been consistently way out there when they have managed to record their ramshackle improvisations. The Western Lands is as loose and freeform as you can get, with absolutely nothing resembling a song, a structure, or even the hint of a melody getting in the way of their sonic escapades. Random scrapes and scratches across both guitar and violin aimlessly drift behind a plinky-plonk keyboard smeared with the delay emitting semi-tonal clusters of notes that resemble jazz vibes at their most cosmic or most terminally stoned. Then, inexplicably one of the Technicians sloshes a glass of water around just below the microphone. Weird. SLT work better, however, when eschewing such Fluxus strategies and gravitating towards long-form, heavy amplifier drones dappled with gong crashes. Still, way more obtuse than anything you'll hear from any of those other NZ folks...
MPEG Stream: "Nebulous"
MPEG Stream: "The Western Lands"

SANKT OTTEN Morgen Wieder Lustig (Hidden Shoal) cd-r 11.98
After a way too long break, Hidden Shoal return to aQuarius, with two new gems, both from long time aQ faves, the first is the latest from SF dreamdronedrifter Wes Willenbring, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this right here, the latest from German outfit Sankt Otten, who we originally described as a mix between Bohren And Der Club Of Gore and Portishead (they're often described in the press as the German Portishead), and really Bohren and Portishead, can't do much better than that. But we were excited to hear how these guys might have changed over the last couple years, and in fact, their sound has shifted quite a bit.
At least in the beginning, the murk and the muted minimalism has been replaced by something much more washed out and ethereal, glimmering and dreamlike, the opening track is a weightless swath of gauzy chordal shimmer that leads directly into a deep throbbing bass synth, we were prepared for a descent into darkness, but weirdly, the sound shifts toward something more epic, a chiming gamelan like melody, over warm soaring synths, skittery drums, a sort of laid back droney downtempo shuffle, but laced with a weirdly major key melody.
It's around track three, where the group slip into some serious downtempo trip hop territory, a gorgeous hazy trawl through greyed electronics and blackened ambience, more laid back skitter, thick throbbing bass, and all sorts of sweeping swirling melody, dark and epic and mysterious. But SA continue to defy the German Portishead pigeonhole, by cranking up the tempo, veering into a sort of krautrock by way of Four Tet one minute, whirling Pop Ambience the next, synthy sprawling blissed out prismatic new age the next, over the course of the record slipping back and forth between these various sounds, sometimes melding several at once, a gorgeous, moody sonic journey, from haunting atmospheric darkness, to sun dappled rhythmic mesmer, to spaced out psychedelic synth, to eighties sounding new wave to hushed dreamlike ambience, to creepy slowcore crawl. Awesome stuff.
MPEG Stream: "Ein Himmel Voller Galgen"
MPEG Stream: "Mutter, Jazz Und Der Heilige Geist"
MPEG Stream: "Mit Popcorn Und Champagner"

SANKT OTTEN Wir koennen Ja Freunde Bleiben (Hidden Shoal) cd-r 11.98
Before we get into the story behind this disc, let us just start by saying, that not only is this one of our new favorite records, a gorgeous slithery, smokey cross between Bohren And Der Club Of Gore and Portishead, but that it took a whole lot of work to get it into the store and available for sale...
So this has actually happened to us a few times, which either speaks to our naivete, or as we prefer to think a dogged belief in the record album as object, to be held, listened to and loved, and an inability to understand any thoughts to the contrary. Australia's Hidden Shoal Records got in touch with us and was hoping we would check out some of their bands, we did, and got all excited about carrying them at AQ. Until, after we emailed and tried to order some, we were regretfully informed that Hidden Shoal was in fact a digital only label, no lps, no cds, no cassettes, just MP3's. Too bad we thought, as far as we were concerned, though of course we know there are those perfectly happy to download some MP3's. But over the course of many months, and lots of emails back and forth, the label admitted to being interested in actually pressing up cds. We of course encouraged them, because we wanted all our customers to be able to buy and hear this music, but also, because, there's something about the object, the cd or the lp or the 7", the liner notes, looking through the booklet while listening to the music, the feel, even the smell. And sure, it IS all about the music, but that other stuff is part of it too, no matter how much iTunes wants us to think otherwise. Obviously most of you don't need to be told that, otherwise you'd probably not be reading this.
Well, the upshot is, two of our favorite recordings on Hidden Shoal are now finally available on cd, well, cd-r actually. But they are professionally pressed, with full color artwork, printed artwork on the disc, and heck, we'll take cd-r's over MP3s any day. And lots of you seem to prefer cd-r's anyway...
This disc is the latest from German combo Sankt Otten, often considered to be the Portishead of Germany, and sonically, that's not all that far off the mark. Although when we first heard it, we heard a lot of Bohren as well, late period Talk Talk, and maybe a little Tricky and Massive Attack. It all adds up exactly how you might imagine. Slow burning instrumentals, humid and sultry, Morricone-ish guitars drifting in a sea of rumble and shimmer, the bass a slithery serpent of sound, smooth and sexy sometimes, distorted and fuzz drenched at others.
But as with music like this, it's all about two things, the drums, and the atmosphere. And the drums here are perfect. And heck, so is the ambience. The rhythms almost always begin a jazzy skitter, the cymbals sizzling, the snare brushed, occasionally lurching into a more propulsive funk flecked rhythm. A dark lugubrious pulse, dangerous and dimly lit. The drums demarcate a darkened path through back alleys and smoky clubs, everything cloaked in a thick, ominous ambience. Dense sonic swells wrapped around sparse arrangements and moody minor key melodies. More of a jazz vibe than any of the above mentioned bands... but the jazziness oozes into all sorts of gorgeous variations, with the various chunks of dreamy doomy shuffle separated by stretches of Circle like hypnorock or looped Necks style static jazz, or the haunting Sigur Ros like vocals on "Fallen Und Fangen (Johannes Der Laeufer)" draped over soaring super dramatic strings, or even the album closer, "Maerchenwald", which almost sounds like it could be on Kompakt, a grey hued shoegazey drift, with sweeping synths rainy day piano, and a strange techno pulse buried in the mix. Some tracks sound so much like Portishead, they could be lost B-sides or instrumental outtakes, but Sankt Otten manage to imbue even those tracks too with their own stamp, be it an unlikely melody, some Western twang, some strange distorted bass line, spidery atonal synth or an unexpected abstract breakdown. Or as is the case on "Zum Schweigen Verdammt" its flurries of cinematic strings, and super distorted percussive crashes.
It's all just so intensely moody and melancholy, jazzy and dramatic, and so so gorgeous.
MPEG Stream: "Fremdenzimmer"
MPEG Stream: "Happiness (Woanders Als Hier)"
MPEG Stream: "Zum Schweigen Verdammt"
MPEG Stream: "Hoehenrausch"

SANSO-XTRO Fountain Fountain Joyous Mountain (Digitalis) cd 15.98
She's been on the scene for a few years now, but this is the first we've heard of the intimate and fragile dreamlike sounds of Sanso-Xtro, aka Australian multi-intrumentalist Melissa Agagte, who uses analog synths and electronics to create a fantasy soundtrack for a wander through a mystical forest, a sound that makes us think of folks like Islaja and Paavarhaju, or what it might sound like if Natural Snow Buildings teamed up with Colleen. It's never too precious for its own good, and in fact there's a mesmerizing haunting quality to this album that wraps you in its arms from start to finish. Like a warped music box floating on an empty lake, this is intimate and engaging music at its best!
MPEG Stream: "Fountain Fountain"
MPEG Stream: "The Origin Of Birds"
MPEG Stream: "Wood Owl Wings A Rush Rush"

SANSO-XTRO Fountain Fountain Joyous Mountain (Digitalis) lp 19.98
She's been on the scene for a few years now, but this is the first we've heard of the intimate and fragile dreamlike sounds of Sanso-Xtro, aka Australian multi-intrumentalist Melissa Agagte, who uses analog synths and electronics to create a fantasy soundtrack for a wander through a mystical forest, a sound that makes us think of folks like Islaja and Paavarhaju, or what it might sound like if Natural Snow Buildings teamed up with Colleen. It's never too precious for its own good, and in fact there's a mesmerizing haunting quality to this album that wraps you in its arms from start to finish. Like a warped music box floating on an empty lake, this is intimate and engaging music at its best!
MPEG Stream: "Fountain Fountain"
MPEG Stream: "The Origin Of Birds"
MPEG Stream: "Wood Owl Wings A Rush Rush"

SANTOMIERI, DEAN Boy Beneath the Sea (The Foundry) cd 12.98
Released on the local ambient label The Foundry, Dean Santomieri's "Boy Beneath The Sea" starts off pleasantly enough with slowly strummed Godspeed / Tarentel guitar riffs complemented by vaguely New Age-ish chimes and polished digital sheen. But Santomieri marrs the atmosphere with an extended monologue about "wonder, fear, guilt, impotence, love, anguish and freedom as uttered from the perspective of the boy in his new world as well as that of his parents and sister in their loss." Since the spoken word / ambient combination is one of my least favourite genres, I'll admit to turning this off rather quickly, never to return to it again.

SAPAT Mortise And Tenon (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98

MPEG Stream: "Maat Fount"
MPEG Stream: "Dark Silver"

SARAH'S CHARITY Code Of Red Twin (Arbor) cd-r 6.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
We always assumed that Denmark's Sarah's Charity must include Matthew Bower of Skullflower, or Marcia Bassett of Hototogisu, or at least someone from Heavy Winged or Double Leopards or one of those sorts of bands. They have the same sort of slow burning heaviness going on, the washed out walls of psychedelic swirl, grinding guitars, keening streaks of high end. Another one of 'those sounds' we can't ever seem to get enough of.
Ends up SC are indeed from Denmark, and do not count any American or British noise rock ringers among their members, which is just as well, as these guys can totally hold their own, and then some, whipping up a seriously dense and deliriously blown out soundscape of buzz and blur and shimmer and rrrroooaaaaar. The other cd-r we had from SC was equally guitar heavy, but here, the sound seems significantly murkier and more muted, softer even (softer being relative of course), giving it a more dreamy drone-y sound which is no bad thing at all. But fear not, this is still fierce and prickly and caustic and HEAVY, just sort of pretty too.
We only have a handful of these, it was LIMITED TO 150 COPIES (each with a hand numbered insert), and they've been waiting for a while to get reviewed and listed, so pretty sure these are long gone and out of print at the source, but while they last, we got em here...
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

SARAH'S CHARITY On The Edge Of Black Sinus Desert (Heavy Blossom) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another new, mysterious missive from Heavy Blosssom, the cd-r label run by Marcia Bassett of the Double Leopards and Hototogisu and Matthew Bower of Skullflower, Hototogisu, Sunroof!, Total, etc. Did lots of digging but couldn't figure out a damn thing about this Sarah's Charity outfit. There are guitars. LOTS of 'em. And we're talking the sort of guitars that sound like they are playing themselves, lit on fire, squealing and squirming, snapping at you every time you reach toward the amp and try to turn it down. Sharp and prickly, thick coruscating walls of white hot, buzzing snarling guitars. This is definitely a 'noise' record. But it's also somehow a psychedelic guitar record. By the sound of it, this could be either Bassett or Bower, just sort of going apeshit with a guitar, and about a million watts of amplification and the biggest distortion pedal in the universe. After a few minutes the distinct guitar-ness of the sound begins to blur and distort and all sorts of strange melodies and alien textures begin to emerge. For being very LOUD, and very heavy, and quite harsh, it's also strangely soothing and droney. An amazing, massive acid fried psychedelic free noise outerspace freakout. Released on Hototogisu's Heavy Blossom label. As always, SUPER LIMITED. We only got a handful. Packaged in a hand painted fold over cardstock sleeve. Be careful though when you put this in your player. The cool hand painted disc seems to dry and flake, so before you throw this in, give it a good blow or brush, and then hang on...
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

SARIN SMOKE s/t (Wholly Other) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
First release from this brand new duo, made up of one part Tom Carter (Charalambides) and one part Pete Swanson (Yellow Swans), gorgeously presented as a one sided clear vinyl lp, the other side featuring silkscreened artwork from Grouper's Liz Harris, housed in a thick clear vinyl sleeve.
Both these guys bring out the best in the other, dense tangles of chiming metallic shimmer, drifting harmonics, whirring amp buzz, keening feedback, bits of scrape and shuffle, dotted with tiny squalls of burnt psych guitars, swooshing ambience and lots of drifting space.
The sound is murky, but vibrant, notes and chords spread into a thick slow shifting fog of fragmented melodies and wavery bits of guitar grind. On the surface, this is raw and wild, untamed and even mildly abrasive, but these guys manage to deftly smooth it all out into something downright pretty, without losing any of the raw fire or visceral immediacy.
As with most things like this, it's also super limited...

SARIN SMOKE (PETE SWANSON / TOM CARTER) Smokescreen (Three Lobed ) lp+cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We listed the first release from Sarin Smoke a while back. It now seems to be back ordered or our of print or for some reason unavailable, we're working on getting more back in, but in the meantime, they've returned with yet another lp only slab of dreamy, blessed out guitar explorations. The 'they' in this case being Pete Swanson from the Yellow Swans and Tom Carter from Charalambides.
This is absolute nirvana for guitardrone fanatics. Huge glowing arcs of grinding distorted guitars, massive swells of whirring low end incandescence, whispered minor key creep, creaking buzzing shimmering ambience, tinkling melodies, throbbing humid riffing, spare and spacious, contemplative and meditative, but with occasional stretches of almost straight rock riffing, and once in a while bursts of fiery psychdrone radiance.
Limited to 652 copies. Pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl. And while they last, the first 287 lps comes with a cd (not a cd-r, an actual cd) with the same music for listening and Ipod-ing ease!!! Packaged in super heavy letter pressed sleeves with original artwork from Liz Harris of Grouper.

SARTORI, ANDREA Il Tagliacode (Persona) cd 16.98

SATORI Contemptus Mundi (Cold Spring ) cd 13.98

SATORI Kanashibari (Cold Spring ) cd 13.98

SATURNIC VISCERA AND MOONGUTS ORACULUM Ocean Beach October 28 2006 (Dolor Del Estamago) cd-r 4.50

SAULE Sentimental Journey (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98
This is the stuff we like! Slow moving vinyl crackle and click, achingly pretty. Droning melodiously, hum and repetition beautifully employed, this conjures a mood of reverie and melancholic bliss. Saule is the name used by Belgian composer Xavier Garcia Bardon for his turntable-based works, and this Sub Rosa cd is his debut release. The first thing we were reminded of when we heard this was Philip Jeck. You know how much we love that British looper of scratchy old vinyl, right? Like Jeck, Saule also finds music in the grooves of old records -- that is, in the sound of the needle on wax, as well as what's more commonly considered a record's musical 'content'. And like Jeck he's a careful listener, rather than a hyperkinetic whipwhipwhap DJ. Futhermore, both Saule and Jeck use multiple turntables to elaborate an aesthetic enamored of dusty, glacially-paced drones. But although they have much in common, Saule isn't merely just another Jeck. No, Saule is more like Jeck crossed with a post-rock band! But there's no 'band', just Saule's prepared records, three turntables, a microphone, mixer, and "headphones (for feedback)". With Philip Jeck, the mesmerizing, crackling loops can be their own reward, but Saule will provide some rock-like resolution as well, as with the sudden burst of distortion that heralds the addition of a sampled, broken drum break toward the end of track one, "Hola". Especially when you get to "Lido", the third of three long tracks that comprise Sentimental Journey, you'll hear this post-rock thing we're talking about. Codeine mixed with Radian comes to mind. "Lido" was apparently originally conceived as a soundtrack to an independent film, stills from which enliven the cd packaging. And it, like the other tracks here, has a cinematic quality, though it might well overwhelm any visuals. This disc is a stellar example of 'turntablism' in a non-hip-hop context - as we said, it's more like instrumental post rock instead, although we're sure DJ Shadow fans will like this! We suggest playing it loud, which will be especially effective when track three swells into something grand that Godspeed could never match.
MPEG Stream: "Hola"
MPEG Stream: "Lido"

SAUTER, JIM / DON DIETRICH / THURSTON MOORE Barefoot In The Head (Forced Exposure) cd 13.98
The 1988 collaboration between the two noise-saxophone titans of the legendary improv outfit Borbetomagus and well-known Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore. Classic squall, now on a domestic cd.

SAWADA, JYOJI Enfant Terrible (Sonore) cd 14.98
Apparently, a concept record about the children of the future and the terrible legacy we are leaving to them on this planet, with children's voices, jazz guitar, electronics, gamelan, record crackle, field recordings, etc. Japanese musician Sawada is kind of a "kitchen sink" style composer, heavily utilizing the sampler and the studio, but all his sounds are quite beautiful and/or intriguing.
While this might MEAN more to those who speak either Japanese or French, Sawada's music has plenty of charm on its own, without the context the narration provides. Some may remember his excellent and mysterious Base of Fiction cd from 1994, which was similiar but more "rock" (with members of underground Japanese bands like the Ruins joining in).

SAWAKO Hum (12K) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Tokyo artist Sawako crafts her delicate, minimal ambient soundscapes from interwoven slivers of piano, voices, field recordings among other things.
The results are ultra ethereal and soothing. She would fit very well in either the Mort Aux Vaches or 20' to 2000 series. Hum also features additional instrumental contributions from Taylor Deupree, Aoki Hayato and Kenneth Kirschner. For fans of Deupree, William Basinski, Oval, Colleen and Pan Sonic.
MPEG Stream: "Patchworked Blanket"
MPEG Stream: "Incense Of Voice"

SAWAKOT Omnibus (Community Library) cd 12.98
Omnibus is a gorgeous collage of donated sound. Various contributors (Polmo Polpo, Tu'M, Hypo, Yuichiro Fujimoto, Birds in Tokyo and more) each presented various bits and pieces of sound: songs, found recordings, misplaced melodies, snippets of vocals, little chunks of rhythm, all of which were twisted and tangled and stretched and smeared into a gorgeous droney soundscape. The resulting pieces seemingly bear no relation to the original sounds. Instead, they managed to be pretty cohesive suite of soft shimmery sort-of-songs, all cobbled together from looped hiccupping warbles, damaged music box melodies, tape hiss, lo-fi recording detritus, detuned guitars, muted percussive thump, skittery shuffle, blooping bleeping video game sounds, skipping cds, little bursts of some disco-y techno chopped up and reassembled, and loads more impossible to pick out source sounds. But the final product really is more than the sum of its parts. A deliriously dreamy weird and wonderful world of sound.
MPEG Stream: "O R G"
MPEG Stream: "Aykmin"
MPEG Stream: "Datam"

SAWS s/t (InTone) cd 14.98

SAX RUINS Yawiquo (Ipecac) cd 16.98
Do you like sax? Do you like the Ruins? Then, hey, have we got a deal for you! Ruins drummer/mastermind Tatsuya Yoshida teams up with jazz improviser Ono Ryoko (alto sax) in this new unit, Sax Ruins (sorry, no idea what that name means, how did they come up with it?). The Japanese band Ruins has been Yoshida's vehicle for heavy duty, ultra mathy, Magmoid post-punk prog mania since 1985, and has pretty much always been a drums / bass two piece, Yoshida accompanied by several different insane bass players over the years. Their last album was 2002's Tzomborgha, also on Mike Patton's Ipecac label... and then in 2004 bassist number four (Sasaki Hisashi) left the band, yet to be replaced as far as we know. So Ruins is now defunct, or at least on an indeterminate hiatus, but that hasn't stopped Yoshida from performing Ruins songs, in a mindboggling one-man-band format called Ruins Alone. And now, in the Sax Ruins duo!
As you might expect, it's hyper frenetic and jumpy, but also... boppy. The buoyant saxophone helps make this duo's uber uptempo activity feel positively infectious, a joyful noise indeed. And it's not all frantic musical athletics, there's room here for some really lovely, melodic passages too, as on "Epigonen". Ono Ryoko really pulls out all the stops, drawing on her experience playing not only jazz but also funk/R&B, prog, and psych (the latter in collaboration with Acid Mothers Temple). She delves into extended techniques, circular breathing and such, and somehow is a match for Yoshida in the endless energy dep't. Together, what they unleash here is exciting stuff, way more complex and catchy than your average freakout. Imagine a stripped down, pepped up marching band playing really wild Carl Stalling / Raymond Scott style cartoon music. And wisely, Yoshida has kept this instrumental, none of his crazy vocals getting in the way of the sax blasts.
The 17 tracks here include saxified reinterpretations of classics from the Ruins' vast catalog, such as "Hyderomastgroningem" and "Pallaschtom", plus some new tunes too, including the album's title track and grand finale, that one a showstopper for sure.
So, again, definitely for fans of Ruins - who also like saxophone. And those into the likes of Zu, Flying Luttenbachers, 16-17, Alboth, and other exemplars of jazzprogcore craziness. Oh, and of course any John Zorn / Naked City fan ought to be ecstatic! Dunno if we'll really need any MORE albums from Sax Ruins though, 'cause as cool as this is, we're still keen for more Bass Ruins...
MPEG Stream: "Zworrisdeh"
MPEG Stream: "Gravestone"
MPEG Stream: "Yawiquo"

SAYONA Terreur Blanche (Living Tapes) cassette 8.98
Sayona is another one of those outfits that should have the aQ faithful frothing, a new group made up of several members of weirdo Belgian ritualistic psychedelic noise folk occultists Sylvester Anfang teamed up with a mysterious woman known as Shazzula, who most aQ folks probably know from the Black Mass Rising film, which we sold a bunch of, but who has also played with Aqua Nebula Oscillator, Farflung, White Hills, and Mater Suspiria Vision among others, together, they conjure up something weirdly kosmische and new agey, slipping easily from near static drugged out droney drift, to pulsating sci-fi synthscapery.
The tape opens with a field of pulsing static over thick swirls of layered synth murk, very
new agey but far more ominous and malevolent, a sinister soundscape of buzzing electronics, and muted buried rhythms, all wreathed in feedback and a layer of gauzy thrum. The sound blossoms into something a bit more corrosive, with thick guitar buzz unfurling over lush chordal swells, anchored by a programmed skeletal beat, that builds to an actual propulsive groove, darkly driving, giving it a definite machinelike robo-krautrock vibe, super mesmerizing and dreamily druggy, all over a woozy, lo-fi sprawl of celestial whir and hum, shimmer and soft skree.
The tape is weirdly edited, the transitions abrupt and jarring in places, as if someone was changing the channels, but it weirdly works with the overall vibe.
Imagine a mash up of tripped out retro-futuristic late night synth jam, murky blackened sonic ritual and hazy headtrip soundtracks for some super stoned end-of-the-world planetarium show. So good. And most likely VERY limited.
MPEG Stream: "Orgies Ecclesiastiques"
MPEG Stream: "Interlude"

SC.ALL Live @ Silk City (Scarcelight) cd-r 4.98

SCANNER 20' to 2000: August (Noton/Raster) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've reached the eighth installment in Raster's monthly countdown to 2000, and this time it's Robin Rimbaud's turn. His contribution is a minimal array of pulses, blips and beats (nothing too surprising in that discription, now is there?). Very much a headphone listen--keep away from noisy machines.

SCANNER Sulphur (Sub Rosa) cd 15.98
From the liner notes: "The Scanner series of recordings features the intercepted conversations of unsuspecting talkers, edited into minimalist musical settings as if they were instruments." Robin Rimbaud is Scanner, recorded live in London, March 1995.

SCANNER/SHEA/MAIN Live Sessions - Paris June 1996 (Sub Rosa) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
David Shea, Robin Rimbaud, and Robert Hampson follow up their live in London disc with another from the French capitol.

SCANTILY CLAD 4 (self-released) cd-r 7.98
Album number 4 from these home recorded synth rock improvisers, each one has been a beautifully hand assembled package rife with bizarre xerox collages that riff on retro-futurist themes, as does the music though in a more roundabout way. This is modular synth music that doesn't winkingly nod to the vast past of synth heavy music, but takes a more DIY off the cuff attitude towards shaping its sounds and song. Though we can hear strains of groups like Chrome, Add N To X and Stereolab, Scantily Clad don't seem to try and emulate either of those bands instead focusing on a hodgepodge of moods and tropes: Noisy interludes, distorted shoegaze psych, vibrant pop, kosmiche bliss, and avant experimentation. All with strange titles like "Vacant Stare World Exciter" and "Exotic Fabrics And Materials". This is library music for the new modern age!
MPEG Stream: "Hey Swisher"
MPEG Stream: "Black Leather Utility Belt"
MPEG Stream: "Paso Nineteen Eighty-Eight"
MPEG Stream: "Somehow Please Miss Me"

SCATTER Surprisin Sing, Stupendous Love (Cenotaph Audio) cd 14.98
This very interestingly, artfully packaged disc is stickered with the information that the debut from Scatter includes a member of Scottish NYC-wavers Franz Ferdinand. And while at least of few of us here at Aquarius really like Franz Ferdinand, that fact is much less relevant to the sound of Scatter than that the nine member Scatter also includes percussionist Alexander Neilson in their ranks, who we only recently were introduced to via Neilson's excellent collaborative cd with AQ fave Richard Youngs, Ourselves. And Scatter indeed proves to be in line with the experimentation of Youngs and others in the UK free-folk underground. On Surprisin Sing, Stupendous Love, you'll find Scatter appropriately enough scattering their music with elements drawn from such diverse traditions as folk music and free jazz. There's some sweet female vocals, softly melodic *and* plenty of abstract, jazz oriented group blowing. Both Appalachia and Sun Ra are referenced. Less dense than delicate, but definitely lively and lovely. We think this is on roughly the same wavelength as the likes of A Silver Mount Zion, Vibracathedral Orchestra, and Black Forest / Black Sea, though sounding mostly unlike any of those.
MPEG Stream: "Nationa Magic"
MPEG Stream: "Alternations Of Pasture And Urban Conurban"

SCATTERED ORDER Prat Culture Plus (Klanggalerie) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We can't really think of anything from Australia that sounds like the post-punk / art-rock collective Scattered Order. Maybe bits of the Swell Maps or the very first SPK recordings, but Scattered Order were way weirder. The band formed in 1979 around a couple of blokes from Sydney bored with the prospects of pub rock riffs, taking any number of signal altering gizmos and throwing them into a jagged post-punk context. The band purposefully deconstructed what they came up with into a myriad of dubbed-out rhythms, hazy melodies struggling through the trebly din, angular stabs from guitars, junked metal, and electronics, and a go-fuck-yourself sense of humor.
Prat Culture was the first album from Scattered Order, having been self-released through their own M Squared imprint back in 1981. This was a record that teetered on the edge between control and chaos, with a jagged minimalist fug-rock, with spluttering table saw noises coalescing around jackbooted rhythms that looked forward to what Swans were doing just a year later on their eponymous debut. "Swiss Like Knives And Forks" was something of a 'hit' for Scattered Order, as it was much more a legitimate song with a driving rhythm section, a swaggering Buzzcocks-inspired guitar riff, and appropriately barked vocals. This was actually the track that made us jump at the chance to get a whole Scattered Order album, with a version of this song being included on the Can't Stop It 2 compilation of Aussie post-punk from a few years back. As thoroughly awesome as this one song is, it does stand out against the more amorphous excursions into monochrome riffs, druggist rhythms, atonal drones, and indifferent attitudes. "Slot Car Synth" recreates the accelerating roar from drag-racing through cheap machines and hammered rhythms, "Koo Koo Kamus" is an anti-groove dub track whose chicken scratch guitar rhythms are on par with the oddball post-punk expressionism of Sprung Aus Den Wolken, and other tracks have the feel of This Heat trying to work out how to play Mars songs.
This cd version of Prat Culture features all of the tracks from the "Screaming Tree" 7" - an equally impressive and equally obtuse recording, alongside a couple of live tracks that actually serve to complement the studio recordings without sounding tacked on at all.
A weird and wonderful find!
MPEG Stream: "Swiss Like Knives And Forks"
MPEG Stream: "Koo Koo Kamus"
MPEG Stream: "Boys In Coal Trucks"
MPEG Stream: "World's Longest Intro (2JJ Mix)"

SCHAEFER, JANEK Above Buildings (Fat Cat / Splinter ) cd 15.98
Janek Schaeffer worked extensively as an architect before shifting his aesthetic focus to sound design -- specifically, vinyl manipulation with modified turntables. On this recording, Schaefer incorporates field recordings into his signature magnification of slow turntablist actions, and utilises much more digital production than in his previous work, creating an exceptional album of drones, but full of eccentric details that remind us of Stilluppsteyppa. "Above Buildings" invokes Schaeffer's architectural fascination not only through the title, but with his compositional strategies as well, musically defining the space of a claustrophobic closet or a majestic open hall. Attention to detail keeps this record interesting, with surface noise being processed to sound like sizzling bacon fat and sawtooth distortion waves cajolled to release subtle melodies. Janek's digitized grey drones ebb and flow as if they were the somatic rhythm of some living architectural entity. Nice.
RealAudio clip: "forglen"

SCHAEFER, JANEK Black Immure (SIRR.ecords) cd 14.98
Before his commissioned performance at the Casa de Serralves in Porto, Portugal in 2002, Janek Schaefer spent several days accruing sounds from the surrounding areas. While collecting his usual armload of antiquated vinyl for his avant turntablist collages, Schaefer also made recordings of a Steinway piano as well as a series of gestural actions that made use of the building's natural reverb. The manipulation of that natural reverb -- both in the electronic manipulation of the pre-recorded sounds and in physical actions made during the performance -- were the crux of Shaefer's performance. The electronic aspect of "Black Immure" follows a similar path as his last couple of records "Pulled Under" and "Le Petit Theatre De Mercelis," with divergent currents of mysterious sounds abstracted into innumerably bleak surfaces. Schaefer punctuates his atmospheres with looped samples from those old records and the piano recordings, using a technique similar to Philip Jeck's, crafting those sonatas into oblique fragments of memory that have been faded beyond all recognition. Within these portions of the performance, the natural reverb of the space does blur the edges of each sound ; however, when Schaefer creates dense metallic clattering from slamming all of the windows shut in the space and dragging chains throughout the space, the reverb takes on an Industrial din. Altogether, "Black Immure" is an impressive piece of work.
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 03"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 05"

SCHAEFER, JANEK In The Last Hour (Room 40) cd 16.98

MPEG Stream: "In The Last Hour"
MPEG Stream: "Between The Two"

SCHAEFER, JANEK Le Petit Theatre De Mercelis (Audiosphere) cd 15.98
The third in this series of beautifully but annoyingly (according to several AQ-ers) packaged cds features AQ fave Janek Schaefer (the first two volumes featured Philip Jeck / Otomo Yoshihide / Martin Tetreault and Mika Vainio / Christian Fennesz). Recorded live in Brussels in April, 'Le Petit Theatre...' finds Schaefer in a mellow mood. And sounding not a little bit like Philip Jeck. Less looped sounding than Jeck, but still painting similarly sepia toned, fuzzy and murky soundscapes, with fluttering record crackle, low end thrum, warbly distant melodies, and dreamy gauzy atmospheres created out of layers and layers of rumble and hiss and whir and hum. This fifty minute track veers lazily from ominous dark ambient to free-drone to noisy clatter but always returns to the tranquil turntablescapes that we all find so damn irresistible. Probably one of my favorite Schaefer records so far!
RealAudio clip: "le petit theatre de mercelis [excerpt 1]"
RealAudio clip: "le petit theatre de mercelis [excerpt 2]"
RealAudio clip: "le petit theatre de mercelis [excerpt 3]"

SCHAEFER, JANEK Out ((K-RAA-K)3) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Janek Schaefer - an architect turned sound sculptor - presents two 30 minute turntable collages that build slow moving paranoid drones, rich with amplified blasts of surface noise, vertigo inducing swells of RPM dynamics, and stochatic tones usually associated with musique concrete. Fans of Christian Marclay and Otomo Yoshihide's turntable work should certainly take note.

SCHAEFER, JANEK Pulled Under (audiOh!) cd 16.98
A while ago Janek Schaefer himself described a record by my band Coelacanth as "soulless" so I am happy to return the favor in my review of Schaefer's latest album "Pulled Under," but of course for an album that is admittedly based upon a novel by JG Ballard, soullessness, vacancy, and desolation is just what he's going for.
Janek Schaeffer works primarily within the scope of experimental turntablism, building his own twin and triple armed varispeed turntables. That said, it's rare to actually hear anything within his compositions that really reflect his tricked out gear, with no scratching at all and very little recognizable appropriations of pre-existing recordings. Instead, Schaefer runs this source material through a considerable amount of digital filters, often maximizing the sounds latent bass reflex and smoothing out the high end. Augmented with equally manipulated field recordings, Schaeffer's "Pulled Under" transforms itself into a cold piece of sonic abstraction, rippling with desolate sonar blips, washes of unknown textures, and refractions of deep, dark drones. Sure, it's soulless, but it's a great soulless.
RealAudio clip: "SuperChannel"
RealAudio clip: "Penumbral Rover"
RealAudio clip: "Parallel Spoor"

SCHAEFER, JANEK Skate / Rink (Audion! / Staalplaat) lp + 3" cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So, we were playing this in the store, when a homeless guy, after bugging us incessantly for 'water' music, you know, like gamelan or Indian music (huh?), to combat the current water shortage and counteract the rampant petroleum consumption, asked if this Schaeffer record was broken:
"Why does this sound like broken 78s? Is this on purpose?"
"Is this to make money? The Beatles used music to make money, but I don't think this will make money."
"Does this make people happy?"
I'm sure it will make some AQ customers happy, as this is the sort of weird, high concept experimental stuff we dig so much. The first disc of this set is a one-sided lp entitled 'Skate' and refers to the skating of the needle across a record, not rollerskates. And appropriately enough, the record is cut wildly with brief bursts of static and grit, that will send your needle skating to middle of the record. Schaefer suggests this lp as a soundmaking tool, utilising your hands, or a 7" placed on top of the lp, to build clicking popping loops. It is accompanied by a 99 track, 20 minute three inch cd entitled 'Rink', designed for random play (of course), that incorporates a composition using sounds taken from the 'Skate' lp and live recordings from a skating rink installation in Ireland, extending the metaphor/pun even further. Glitchy and clicky and scratchy and staticky, perfectly pushing all those Jeck/Oval/Yoshihide buttons, that at least around here, can't be pushed often enough!
MPEG Stream: "Rink (Excerpt)"

SCHAEFER, JANEK Weather Report (Alluvial) cd ep 14.98
Janek Schaefer's Weather Report is a noticable contrast to the polished surfaces that twist through his previous albums of desolate isolationism, Black Immure and Le Petit Theatre De Mercelis. During his Residency in Minneapolis as part of the American Composers Forum, Schaefer was astounded by the hostility of the storms, tornados, snow, and cold; thus, set out to make a sound portrait of a Minnesotan winter. Schaefer didn't just focus on field recordings of weather, but of media sounds associated with weather. He offers the cryptic taxonomy of his sounds as "underwater ice skaters; flapping; old meteorological kit; leaf blowers; repairing weather damage; various 60's archive audio; melting ice, ski across snow, Minnesota forecasts on radio, in the car and on TV; Tornado chasing & test equipment; snow flakes landing on mic; squeaky tree; National Weather Service balloon launch."
Using very rough splices to join his material together, Schaefer looks back towards the pioneers of musique concrete to aid him through this psychogeographic piece of sound poetry. A brief 21 minutes long.
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

SCHAFER, HELMUT Thought Provoking III (23five Incorporated) cd 14.98
The Austrian noise artist Helmut Schafer died in 2007, leaving behind only a handful of recordings despite his constant travels to music / art festival around the world, including appearances at ARS Electronica and Documenta back in 1997. His work dealt mostly with psychoacoustic principles of intense frequencies at intense volumes, as such he found a sympathetic ear in Zbigniew Karkowski - who became a longtime friend and often collaborator. Yet, beginning around 2003 he came across some dismantled church organ pipes and began experimenting with alternative ways of activating the tones and timbres of those pipes, including a contraption of hairdryers that pushed small currents through the pipes to generate hushed, muffled tones. In building compositions through this system of organ pipes, he radically shifted away from the searing noise and towards a very quiet, contemplative electro-acoustic sound, involving violin, electronics, percussion, and ample pockets of empty space. Thought Provoking III is Schafer's final recording dating back to 2006 when he employed percussionist Will Guthrie and violinist Elisabeth Gmeiner to perform the piece in a Vienna church. In fact, Guthrie stitched this recording together from the rehearsal sessions and the performance itself, attempting to keep true to Schafer's wishes. The proceedings are solemn excursions in electro-acoustic mark-making built around those bellowing hums from Schafer's organ pipes amidst intermittent percussive flourishes, subtle gong overtones, sustained violin trills, and fizzling electronics. The non-repetitive clustered events sound akin to anyone from the Miasmah roster taking up the task of remaking late period Morton Feldman. For the final track of the album, Zbigniew Karkowksi took up remixing elements of Thought Provoking III into a piece reflective of Schafer's more volatile compositions. While full of the frigid vibration and electric toxicity, Karkowski shows considerable restraint in his remix, and constructing a poignant tribute to his lost friend.
MPEG Stream: "Thought Provoking III"
MPEG Stream: "Averaging Down 20xx By Zbigniew Karkowski"

SCHIMPFLUCH COMMUNE INT. s/t (Nihilist Records) cd 16.98

SCHMICKLER, MARCUS Demos (A-Musik) cd 17.98