SILENTIST House On The Hill ep (Celestial Gang) cd ep 7.98
We've pretty much totally fallen for these guys. Big time! Initially we were lead completely astray by a friend who described them as a classical pianist / grindcore drummer duo. We were expecting something like that weird Dave Lombardo record where he drums along to Vivaldi. What we got was much different but no less satisfying. A demented dark grind band with a pianist who added all sorts of unlikely tonal color, and weird melodic flourishes. On their second ep, they ditched the grind completely and replaced it with some sort of damaged cabaret, with super dramatic vocals, insane piano, and all sorts of swirling jazzisms. Well, here we are at ep #3 (what is it with the ep's guys?) and they've gone and done it again. It's almost like they're a different band each time. But there's always something that links all their disparate musical personalities no matter how tenuous. On House On The Hill, Silentist are some sort of doomy, gothy slowcore band. The opening track is a loping dirge, simple shuffling drums over a rumbling bass drone and drawled sung spoken vocals, with occasional bursts of anguished howls and extra-pounding drums, almost like a much more malevolent Codeine with some distinct Swans influence. The second track is equally as dark, but is a super dramatic sort-of-industrial version of the first song, music box melodies, weird distorted electric piano, grinding fuzz synths, pounding drums and moaned baritone vocals, that also occasionally shift into black metal screams. Imagine some neo-classical, black metal Birthday Party and you might be close. Very dark, and very creepy and strangely psychedelic. Heavy too, but not like metal heavy, more sort of dense and disturbing. This record is almost like the perfect mix of the first two, wild whiplash grind and super glammy cabaret, a blackened glam grind maybe? Some tracks are sweeping and epic, some are blasting and chaotic, but always the interplay between the drums and piano manage to hold it all together. Dreamy minor key melodicism jammed up against lightning fast blast beats, howled tortured vocals draped over sweetly melancholy ambience, dizzying and confusing, but so fucking great.
MPEG Stream: "Cut "
MPEG Stream: "Evil Triad"

SILENTIST s/t (Celestial Gang) lp 12.98
There are weird bands, and then there is Silentist. Originally described to us as a classical pianist playing along with a metal drummer kicking out insane blast beats, it ended up being not nearly that simple, and in fact it was even better that that description would have led us to believe, sounding much more like a weird grind metal band who just happened the have a lead pianist.
So after three eps, we have the very first Silentist lp, and it's as weird as we remember, maybe even weirder, and somehow even better. As of this writing, it's been playing for about 5 minutes, and EVERY customer in the store has come up to see what the heck we're playing, a few who were digging it, and a few who were seriously confused. And rightfully so. Imagine doom metal crossed with cabaret, classical music and grind metal, that description alone would lead you to believe that hearing it might do your head in, and actually hearing it, well, it just might, this is some totally insane, totally unique, and absolutely fantastic stuff.
Beginning with solo piano, the record starts of dark and dolorous, melodic and mysterious, but soon the pianist begins playing a bit more wildly, the drums kick in, and the shrieking vocalist soon follows, and suddenly it's some insane black metal / free jazz / whatthefuck hybrid. Imagine Dave Lombardo jamming with Lubomyr Melnyk and Gaahl from Gorgoroth on vocals. Or a grindcore reimagining of "Flight Of The Bumblebee", but all of those descriptions are really too reductive, this is some serious next level shit. Epic and majestic, sometimes sounding like a piano-led Swans... other times sounding like classical black metal, really quite difficult to describe, which in most cases means they're doing something right.
Anyone into weird heaviness or heavy weirdness, this is most definitely for you.

SILENTIST Tunnel (Zum) 7" 4.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Every Silentist review always requires a quick recap of the band's back story. Or at least the story of how we were introduced to the band. We were told they were a duo, a classical piano player, and a grindcore drummer (when in fact the same guy handles both drums and piano!!), and thus it was some sort of classical grind hybrid, and while perhaps there are elements of both in the music of Silentist, it's way weirder and harder to describe.
The sound here is similar to the last record, the A side begins with pounding low end piano, forceful and almost violent sounding, beneath it, super mathy and complex drumming, lots of rumbling bass buzz, the result is a sort of classical metal cabaret if that makes any sense, the howled vocals adding a strange punkish element to the weirdly complicated sort-of-groove.
The B side opens with swirly clouds of piano a la Lubomyr Melnyk, over rubbery rumbling bass and muted crunchy percussion, the vocals this time are heavily effected and crooned, and again, the cabaret vibe is heavy, albeit more evil and demonic. The rums explode and get super heavy, the piano becomes more frenzied, the bass thick and distorted almost like a metal guitar, all the elements tangled up and clashing wildly.
Plus at the end of the A side, there's a super brief track, a 26 second long burst of super lo-fi power violence, just insane drumming and shouted vocals, like Drop Dead or Man Is The Bastard but stripped WAY down.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

SILVESTER ANFANG Echte Viaamse Geiten (Eclipse) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest release from these purveyors of funeral folk avant ambient doom, Silvester Anfang. You may remember their last lp because of the very striking cover image, a sort of Mentors meets the Ku Klux Klan, shirtless men wearing hoods with goats in the middle of a forest. Very fucked up and creepy, which perfectly matched the music inside.
Not too much has changed sonically, if anything, they seem to have gotten even more abstract, a sound with definite nods to the Finnish folk contingent, trashcan percussion, lots of shakers and rattles, a distant keening buzz, far off swells of minor key rumble, creepy tin whistle melodies, bits of guitar, obtuse and angular. The sound is very heavily rhythm based, with various other instruments and sounds ebbing and flowing around the primal percussive chaos at Silvester Anfang's core. Every once in a while the group locks into simple rhythmic folk jams with buzzing guitar and insistent propulsive percussion, but it always seems to dissipate into blissed out clouds of drone and clatter, but the drums and shakers never waver, always there, often in the foreground but just as often lurking mysteriously below the surface.
Side two is a much rockier proposition, the band falling into some almost groovy krautrock territory, heavy fuzz bass unfurling a propulsive riff, beneath warbly seasick guitar and tons of swirly lo-fi fuzz. The disc winds down with a bit of traditional folkiness, almost like a jig, but looped into a repetitive groove, mesmerizing and hypnotic, buzzy and almost raga like, and like the rest of the record, beautiful, haunting and creepy.

SILVESTER ANFANG Kosmies Slachtafval (Aurora Borealis) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Belgian funeral folk avant ambient doom troop Silvester Anfang sure have a way with images. Their first full length featured the band in white hoods, shirtless, with sticks and clubs and axes and goats on chains, now this one, the band's first proper cd release, sports a foxy raven haired lass licking a skull, and elsewhere in the booklet and on the sleeve, posing with said licked skull, as well as plenty of goats still, upside down ladies in bikinis in the shape of an upside down crucifix, as well as a full color fold out poster of the babe-licking-skull album cover....
And while that all may seem a bit over the top, somehow, it suits Silvester Anfang's dark and demented music. They're like a grim, blackened, metallic version of all those freaky forest neo folkies. Imagine Avarus or Feathers or Kemialliset, just hanging out beneath the trees, weaving their stumbling free folk magic, when all of a sudden, they're pulled into some pit in the middle of the forest, only to emerge days later, with a blank dead eyed stare, emotionless, eyes black as obsidian, their hair tangled and matted, their skin covered in mysterious tattoos, and the sounds they make, like some some primitive musical ritual...
That's sort of what Silvester Anfang sound like. The parts are all familiar, the shuffling rhythms, the junkyard percussion, the haunting vocals, the detuned guitars, but somehow twisted, dark, and so black, and like they also somehow dragged some big ass amps as well as at least one full drum kit out into the woods, and the results are seriously scary (and amazing).
The first track unfurls a web of jagged distorted guitar melodies over a simple motorik pound, surrounded by all sorts of chants and distant drones, above a constantly shifting landscape of grinding whirs and swirling clouds of tinkling melodies, occasionally overtaken by thick washes of super distorted guitar buzz, everything culminating in an orgiastic musical free for all, with wild feral female vocals, dense tribal drumming, epic cinematic swells... an immense sonic squall the lights the black forest with some burnished red glow...
The second track, the nearly half hour long "Konfituur Voor De Satanjeugd" is much more subtle and stretched out, some sort of German Oak krautrock style slow burner, all shuffling drums and whirling ambience, spidery guitars and glistening barely there melodies, until about the 20 minute mark, when a riff finally coalesces, a killer riff, a sort of Viking dirge, a bit metallic, grinding away over thick sheets of blown out guitar drone, a dense wash of amp buzz and guitar growl, the riff looped and cyclical, while in the background lurk streaks of high end guitar and warm whirring synths, gorgeous and not a little bit frightening.
Magickal and mystickal, dark and diabolical, just the sort of musick that might very well have you too licking skulls after repeated listens, and there's certainly not a better recommendation than that...
MPEG Stream: "Mijn Vader Was Een Wolf En Mijn Moeder Was Een Hoer"
MPEG Stream: "Konfituur Voor De Satanjeugd"

SILVESTER ANFANG Levend Op DeBrandstapel (Skulls Of Heaven) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest hellish musical missive from these Belgian funeral folk freeks, but where past releases have found the band wandering through twangy campfire lit forests, and offering up strummed pagan prayers to the gods, Levend Op De Brandstapel is Silvester Anfang at their most rocking, their most freaked out and psychedelic, blown out and tripped out heavy. But even then, the band still sound unhinged and abstract, stumbling and damaged. The guitars this time around are thick and distorted, the riffs are sharp edged and buzz drenched, but the band never actually ROCK, at least not in the traditional sense. The first half of this single 26 minute track, is an expanse of drone and clatter, big black riffs slowly unfurling and allowed to drift amidst a sea of whirs and shimmers, clangs and clatters, it's like the skeleton of some classic rock song, ensorcelled and brought back to life, lurching and lumbering through a landscape of distant drones and random percussion. The second half of the track, the noise quotient gets ratcheted up big time, and while the band still doesn't quite rock, it does get wilder and heavier, the sound transforming into a Sunroof! style high end ur-drone, but here, the drone is littered with howled voices, grinding shards of guitar, feedback everywhere, all tangled up into a corrosive noiserock loop that plays out right until the end. Woah.
Packaged in miniature dvd style case, with a tripped out, and very evil looking black and white cover insert. EXTREMELY LIMITED, we got about 25 copies and probably won't be able to get moreÉ
MPEG Stream: "Levend Op DeBrandstapel (Excerpt)"

SILVESTER ANFANG Satanische Vrede ((K-RAA-K)3) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
After a load of limited tape and cd-r releases, this is the first proper full length from Belgian Funeral folk collective Silvester Anfang. Don't let the amazing cover art mislead you though. The band, all shirtless and pasty, in weird Elephant Man pillowcase hoods, with clubs and axes and goats on leashes in some mysterious forest. We sort of expected some black metal Mentors thing. But as the saying goes, you can't judge a band by their hoods and goats. Silvester Anfang travel a similar sonic path as Finnish outfit Avarus, clattery, dreamlike abstract primitive pagan free folk, with plenty of tribal percussion, strange chanted vocals, lots of shakers and rattles and hand drums, buzzing guitars, Eastern grooves and some alien Gypsy music vibes. A super abstract ambient folk krautrock, murky and lo-fi, dark and droney and funereal for sure. Really great!

SIMULACRA Eidolon (Triple Bath) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ultra limited cd-r release from Belgian outfit Simulacra, the black ambient project of NOTHingness head honcho Miguel Boriau. NOTHingness is responsible for a handful of AQ faves, including the dark doomy ambience of Tenhornedbeast and the epic doom of the recently released Morkheim. Boriau's Simulacra project falls more in line sonically with the former, although it's less doomy and more glacial and lovely. Imagine a more blissed out Lustmord, or Coleclough and Chalk tackling some sci-fi dark ambience and you'll be getting warm. Two epic tracks, each clocking in at over 20 minutes, each a slow burning, outer space drift, deep resonant swells, sweeping majestic vistas of low end shimmer and fuzzy dreamy drift. Mesmerizing and meditative, but still pretty dark and ominous. It's hard not to picture the vastness of space, or barring that, some endless series of underground caverns, this is the sound of black holes drifting through a starry sky, of our bodies hurtling through space in slow motion, gorgeously bleak and barren, warm and immersive, a dreamily dense slab of sonic swoon, the perfect soundtrack for your own late night interplanetary drift.
LIMITED TO 96 COPIES! Each disc individually numbered, we got a handful and will probably be unable to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Wandering The Spirit World"
MPEG Stream: "Disintegrate Into Nothingness"

SIMULACRA Somewhere... Inside A Void (No Angels Prod.) 3"cd-r 14.98
We reviewed the debut cd-r from this Belgian deep drone one man band way back, but sold out in a blink as it was limited to 96 copies. Well, don't blink this time, as we just got a brand new 3" cd-r from Simulacra, the project of NOTHingness Records main man Miguel Boriau (who now runs Consouling Sounds, whose first few releases we'll list here next time), again WAY too limited, this time 100 copies, and we got about a quarter of those.
Gorgeously packaged in an oversized full color folder, adorned in blacks and rusty browns, with a photo print inside, each sleeve hand numbered, this latest disc from Simulacra, is a 22 minute expanse of hushed cavernous rumbles, and blurred melodic shimmer. Definitely dark and ominous and haunting and intense, but weirdly beautiful, and almost soft. It's like the sound of candlelight flickering in deep dark caves, the sound of sunlight struggling to filter through cracks and fissures to reach some subterranean underworld. The sounds are sprawling and drawn way out, it's drone music for sure, but arranged into soft swells and abstract melodies, cinematic and soundtracky, veering from intense low-end murk, to a sun dappled drift. It's like the soundtrack to a late afternoon stroll through the ruins of some ancient keep, as you wander along the walls, through the courtyard, into the depths below, sometime passing through shafts of sunlight, or stumbling into some cavern undisturbed for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. So evocative and dreamlike. As soothing and mesmerizing as it is eerie and grim.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, hand numbered, these are the only copies we'll be able to get...
MPEG Stream: "Somewhere... Inside A Void (excerpt)"

SIN ROPAS Fire Prizes (Shrug) lp 24.00
Latest from Sin Ropas, a duo consisting of Tim Hurly of aQ faves Red Red Meat and Califone, and Danni Iosello, having called Germany home briefly, settled in North Carolia, where they holed up in a library to record Fire Prizes. Originally released on cd in Europe a few years back, now available as a super limited, deluxe and gorgeously designed lp.
Sonically, Sin Ropas sound like the logical progression from Hurley's other groups, which as far as we're concerned is a very good thing. Oh how we miss Red Red Meat, and how we still love Califone. So it should come as no surprise that we love Sin Ropas too. A dark dusky mournful twang, stretched out over an abstract rock and roll frame, recalling the above mentioned outfits, but also the folky slowcore of Rex, the intimate dark country of Sparklehorse and the indie twang of the Grifters. Everything is shaded and dusty, the guitars go from spidery and slippery, to distorted and downtuned, Hurley's voice a whiskey soaked rasp, backed up by Iosello's angelic vocals, slide guitars drift and shimmer, everything dramatic and minor key, haunting vocal harmonies, muted percussion and jagged riffs, the songs going from druggy sprawl to crunchy campfire stomp, but always wreathed in teary eyed melancholy and warm washed out dreaminess. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands should definitely check this out.
Like all the Shrug releases, vinyl only, and they spare no expense. And this one has to be the fanciest one yet. A full color picture disc, pressed on super thick vinyl, housed in a thick full color innersleeve, which in turn is housed in a gorgeous diecut jacket, rich textured paper, inked and letterpressed, with the silhouette of a leafless tree cut out, on the front and the back, so the inner sleeve is visible through the branches. SO NICE! And of course limited as all get out. ONLY 485 COPIES!! We have a handful...

SINGER, LIAM Dislocatia (Hidden Shoal) cd 13.98
It's been a while since we last heard from this fine gent! We actually used to see Mr. Singer on a daily basis when he'd keep us not only musically satiated with his (sadly now defunct) indie label Tell-All Records, but also deliciously caffeinated across the street (fyi, he's a maestro at mocha making!). He moved eastward to Brooklyn a few years ago, and the last release from him was his second album, 2006's Our Secret Lies Beneath The Creek. Well, about a year or so ago we caught wind that he had a new album in the works, and it was destined to be released on the Australian indie label Hidden Shoal no less, home to a couple of other faves of ours, SF's Wes Willenbring and Germany's Sankt Otten. We were positively giddy about this good news. Needless to say, we've been eagerly awaiting its arrival, and we are happy to report that it certainly doesn't disappoint.
Carrying on from and expanding upon his richly poetic sophomore beauty, Dislocatia features gorgeous piano and string performances, and full choral arrangements. Indeed, this is quite the elaborate vocal affair, once again he counterbalances his own downy dreamy vocals with feathery soaring female ones courtesy of Wendy Allan of Boxharp. While it certainly makes for a distinct element and a defining characteristic to his music, we'll be honest, we occasionally found the high operatics to be somewhat distracting as we were sinking into each song, but please don't let that dissuade you from checking it out though because this truly is lovely. Might be exactly your cup of tea! It's an elegant coming together of contemporary classical chamber music and folk pop, both flowing and nimble, which will easily charm fans of artists such as Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens or The Dodos who might be seeking something perhaps a little more challenging. Really, if Singer were to be creating music in just one of the two styles, we'd be plenty impressed and delighted, but his effortless integration of the two seals the deal! Particular standout tracks include the gorgeous wistful "The Brief Encounter" and "Bellingham, WA And The Four Green Doors Beyond" as well as the comparatively fervent "Morton Feldman Holding Notes For Eternity" which definitely gives a witty nod to 20th century avant garde composers, but also brings to mind the tongue-in-cheek eccentric camp of no holds barred pop extravaganza-ists such as Sparks. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "The Brief Encounter"
MPEG Stream: "Mold Me Torn Fan"
MPEG Stream: "Bellingham, WA And The Four Green Doors Beyond"

SINGER, LIAM Twelve: A Series - F (Tell-All) 3" cd-r 2.98
What do you do when the rules are simply: compose a piece of music using only one note? Well, the folks at SF label Tell-All Records decided to explore the possibilities with a 3" cd-r series titled "Twelve". Each of the participants was assigned (or perhaps chose for themselves) one note of the 12-note scale. Here's one of the first two volumes released thus far, it's Liam Singer in 'F' (the other is Dave Zohrob's compositions in 'E').
He utilizes octave jumps, tempo changes and rhythmic shifts and syncopation to bring movement and shape to the lone note. The proceedings are punctuated by sparse percussion and vocal utterances (cues?). A lively beginning to this series.

SINGLE UNIT Family Of Forces (Jester) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Song title of the week: 'antlers! antlers! antlers!'
Single Unit is a Norwegian visual artist that also makes some truly freaked out electronic music. 'Family of Forces' is his exploration of hardcore, electronica, and metal! Well, sort of metal, at least moreso than most of the more recent Jester offerings. Imagine a black metal record, a Mr. Bungle record, or even a Zappa record, chopped to pieces and reassembled into some sort of insane electronic video game music with sampled chugging metal guitars, industrial roars, and all manner of bleeping and blipping, that form hypnotically hiccupping plunderphonic metal or maniacal droned out washes of bells and hums and whirring feedback! Partially composed, partially improvised, Single Unit mixes buzzing chiming childlike lullabies with technical and impossibly unplayable experimental metal ala Melt Banana, Meshuggah or Strapping Young Lad. Weird and GREAT.
RealAudio clip: "Moving In Caves, Enter Abstract"
RealAudio clip: "5th Cumming"
RealAudio clip: "Tremolo Confidence"

SINISTRI Free Pulse (Hapna) cd 16.98
Italian abstract analog glitch-rockers Starfuckers have been a long-time AQ fave. There's just nobody else quite like 'em. As their music has become ever more fractured and dissonant and dissolved in time, so too with the band itself it seemed...at least, we hadn't heard anything from the Starfuckers camp for ages.
But then we heard they'd changed their name to Sinistri, the title of the Starfuckers first cd in 1994. And now the Swedish label Hapna, whom we always look to for interesting music, have, much to our excitement, released Free Pulse, the debut Sinistri album (but also kind of the sixth-or-so Starfuckers release). On Free Pulse, Sinistri are a quartet, consisting of long-time core Starfuckers members Manuele Giannini (guitar, amps, echoplex, wah, speaker, computer), Alessandro Bocci (computer, sampler, mixer, synth, turntables) and Roberto Bertacchini (drums), plus newcomer Dino Bramanti (real-time processing/live mixing, sampling, MaxMSP code).
And it seems that these fellows are up to their old tricks here, proving their motto that "music is a pollution of time". If you've heard the Starfuckers last album Infinitive Sessions from 2002, you'll have an idea of what to expect here -- they're still in their newfound "funk" bag. (Song titles indictate this is intentional, from to "Pre-verb Fried Funk" to "Black Vamp #1"). Not that this sounds very funky, far from it, though you can kinda hear it in their chicken-scratch guitar "licks". And if the song titles are clues to their sound, then try these: "Deep Squeak" and "Red Angular Feelin'".
Sinistri play what they call "nonmetric music", but that doesn't begin to describe it. It's mostly-instrumental "rock" music, broken down into the merest tics and pulsations of sound, brief drum hits and stabs of guitar littering Sinistri's quiet soundscape, stark and sparse, interspersed with shortwave-sounding static. Noises that most bands use ProTools to *remove* are the building blocks of the Sinistri sound...there's nothing else here. What vocals there are never rise above a whisper (a sinister one that that), melody is almost nowhere to be found, and rhythmically this is impossible to pin down. Forget "post-rock", this is post-post-rock at least. Maybe we could compare 'em to Radian, or US Maple, maybe...taken to a further extreme. Microscopic sounds being played freely. Different from most musics, and to at least some of us here, endlessly enjoyable.
If this is the first time you've ever heard Starfuckers / Sinistri, you may be bewildered. Give it a chance...you'll either not get it (that's fine)...or you might love it. Like this disc's pen-and-ink cover art drawings, Sinistri are intentionally cryptic. "Getting it" is thus optional, but pretty cool if you do, we think.
MPEG Stream: "Holes In Between"
MPEG Stream: "Ampstone"

SINISTRI Timing The 183K Pulse (Utech) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've been huge fans of the Italian avant free glitch prog abstract whatthefuck outfit the Starfuckers forever, so when the band quietly morphed into Sinistri (the title of one of their best records) we were most definitely intrigued. Their debut record on Hapna reviewed here about a year ago, found the ex-Starfuckers getting even more out there, even more damaged, and unfortunately for us being faced with reviewing the record, even harder to describe. This new cd-r features the band expanded to a sextet, jamming wild and free last summer. Wild might be a bit strong as Sinistri traffic more in musical whispers than shouts, but it couldn't get more free. The instrumentation goes a long way to explaining Sinistri's sound: guitar, amp, wah left channel, amp right channel, drumkit, real time basses, pulses, MaxMSPcode, mixer, synth cd-j, contact mic, effects and am/fm tuner. Lots of parts, but assembled quite economically. The final product is a completely abstract assemblage of guitar skronk, percussive skitter, instrumental scrape and slither, short bursts of white noise, drones and ambient fuzz, very textural and very spacious. Imagine a free jazz record as a huge complex pile of buliding blocks. Then knock it over, dump all the blocks in a big pile and remove about 50 percent of the pieces and then try to reassemble them into the exact same complex structure. You end up with a similarly expansive and ambitious structure, but one with huge gaps and spaces, turning what might have been a dense slab of free jazz, or free rock, or free funk, into a splattery scuttling minimal beast. Occasionally the guitar get almost heavy unfurling some convoluted psych riffage, and the bass does dabble in funkiness, but it's a bizarre alien funk that bears little or no relation to any earthbound funk.
Sinistri are definitely a difficult listen, truly perplexing, baffling and confusional, but their peculiar sound manages to be as mysterious and beautiful as it is abstruse.
Packaged in gorgeous hand assembled card stock covers with pasted on black and grey obi. Limited to 200 copies, each one hand stamped. We only got about 30 or so, and we're pretty sure once these are gone we won't be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Tk IV (Pt. 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Tk VI (Pt. 1)"

SINK The Process (Kult Of Nihilow) cd 16.98
The Kult Of Nihilow website has this to say about Sink's The Process: "This is not a sludge record. This is not a drone record. This is not an experimental record." Which is not actually true, since it's actually an awesome mix of all three. More accurately, it's not an average sludge record, or a typical drone record, and isn't like most experimental music, but that's precisely what makes it so appealing.
Sink are from Finland and have shared a split with aQ faves, UK dronelords Marzuraan, and they traffic in a sound that is both crushingly slow, blindingly heavy, as well as mysteriously dark and droney, but just like anything, it's what you do with all that stuff that matters. Anyone can tune down and play an E chord for 10 minutes. But not anyone can make it sound like angels singing.
On their split with Marzuraan, we described their sound as "a swirling, sludgy wall of hissing fuzzed out blackened ultra noise, harsh and horrific", but there's nothing like that here. The Process is much more musical, and more measured, for a band who is typically defined as a sludge band, they spend much of their time unfurling dark muted shimmery dronescapes, hushed whispery smears of barely audible thrum. And even when they are dropping some serious sludge, it's not really sludgey, the guitars are thick and corrosive, but glimmering and crystalline, rife with haunting chords, the vocals deep monk like chants. The opener here is the perfect example, it sounds like Tibetan monks fronting a doom band, only the doom is strangely melodic, and hauntingly cinematic. Halfway through the track fades into some dark chiming ambience, all muted and blurred, before the crushing doomic blows begin to rain down again, those vocals returning to underpin everything with their thick rumbling whir (sounding quite a bit like Tuvan throat singing). It's a pity the track is only 11 minutes long. We could have gone for twice that! At least.
The second track is all soaring Sunroof! like streaks of sound and strummed acoustic guitars, sounding like a noisier doomier Kiss The Anus, but all washed out and smeared into bleary shoegazey drifts, reminding us of a way more abstract Nadja or Angelic Process actually.
Strangely enough, almost the whole rest of the record is devoid of any hint of sludge or doom, instead exploring longform guitar drones, super minimal sinewave skree, gentle dreamlike ambience, rumbling cavernous dronemusic, until finally, the not at all appropriately titled final song "The Silence", which is anything but silent, four minutes of murky corrosive drift, but like the opener, rife with mysterious melody, disembodied vocals, glimmering chordal blur, all spread out into a thick sluggish doom-ic haze, that seems to blot out the sun, bathing everything in a burnished blood red glow.
Beautifully packaged In an elaborate fold out sleeve, printed in full color with a little tab to hold it shut. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Weakness (The Process)"
MPEG Stream: "Ascension"
MPEG Stream: "Receiving Silence"

SINNEPLAKKEN s/t (Time Released Sound) cd 12.98
One of six records which were originally part of a multi part release from local label Time Released Sound, whose releases are initially presented as deluxe hand crafted art editions, which we carry when we can, but in the case of this series, dubbed the 'chocolate box' series, which found each record pressed onto 3" cd-r's and packaged in a mini chocolate box, every box hand assembled, and every one different, the set had a seriously hefty price tag, and sold out super quick anyway, so while we weren't able to get our hands on the deluxe versions, thankfully the records were also available as proper cds in more modest packaging. We already reviewed the first two installments on the last New Arrivals List, Taskerlands and David Newlyn, and this week, we have the other four.
One of which is this one, from Sinneplakken, a quartet who have crafted a gorgeous bit of electronic flecked ambient minimalism that is thematically focused on the history of the Frisian Islands (!), which comes in the form of a few spoken word passages which feature Frisian poetry (!), however, the music itself is quite compelling, rhythmic and spare, but somehow lush and lovely as well, deep pulsations, chiming bell like melodies, muted strummed guitars, spidery minor key melodies, lush swells, swirls of electronic shimmer, blurred effects and random bits of percussion, field recordings, delicate pianos, streaks of static, subtle bits of barely there drumming, wheezing organs, sitar-like buzz, and stretched out almost raga-like drones, soft squalls of psychedelic guitar buzz, shards of feedback, all woven into a strange series of soundscapes, that slip from barely there haunting abstract minimal folk drift, to almost post rock slow build smolder. Quite cool.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Oanspielt (Washed Ashore)"
MPEG Stream: "Tsjindiel (Opposite)"

SIRATORI, KENJI + PENDRO Terminal Machine (Hypermodern) cd-r 6.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
It's been a while since we've heard anything from the Fflint camp, our favorite source for brilliant, damaged outsider avant electronic weirdness. But this week we've got not one, but two missives from the mysterious world of Fflint Central. And while Terminal Machine is not technically -ON- Fflint, Pendro does just happen to be half of the mighty Fflint duo so it most definitely count. Here he's teamed up with Japanese writer / musician / sound artist Kenji Siratori, who we heard from recently on the mind blowing Hypergenome666 4cd set with Nordvargr and Beyond Sensory Experience.
And like on Hypergenome666, Siratori is a man of words, literally. His texts are dense and bizarre, strange and so fascinating. For Terminal Machine, Siratori sent recordings of himself reading some of his works and gave Pendro the go ahead to transform those words into abstract sound.
The opening track features Siratori's voice gradually twisted into strange shapes as more and more effects are added, becoming more brittle and metallic, until the words almost sound like the plucking and scraping of steel strings. Later, the words are chopped and reshaped into some lurching post-Autechre IDM skitter, a smear of distorted melody and chittering rhythm, elsewhere the text becomes some droning sci-fi soundscape of processed vocals and FX drenched drones, another track finds the vocals obliterated, the only traces left a skittering, squelchy, splattery soundscape of Fflinty buzz and crumble. The final track is a dark, drifting dronescape, distant metallic buzz, bursts of microscopic grit, bits of high end glimmer and little upper register trills, all drenched in a thick patina of murk and mumble. The human voice twisted and tangled up into some seriously inhuman sounds. Pretty amazing stuff.
Packaged in a slimline case with some seriously disturbing 'meat-y' artwork...
MPEG Stream: "One "
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

SISSY SPACEK s/t (Helicopter / Nu Form) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
John Wiese (Bastard Noise) and his pal Cory Ronnau deliver what is probably the world's first plunderphonic grindcore record. Although in this case all of the plundering is self inflicted and self directed as the two record their own two piece (guitar and drums) blasting grind record and attack it with a razor blade (actually probably a laptop, but whatever) and spit out a garbled, sputtering, stuttering no-wave masterpiece. Think Oval, if he only scratched Drop Dead and Crossed Out cds. Nice.
RealAudio clip: "Track one"

SISSY SPACEK Scissors (Helicopter) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Album number two from John (Bastard Noise) Wiese's cut 'n' paste, plundercore grind project Sissy Spacek. Short and sweet blasts of feedback and throat clearing kinda like Masonna crossed with the Locust. Like the spine says: "SISSISSPSSKSSISSRS".
RealAudio clip: "Cobra Heart"
RealAudio clip: "Hair Control"

SISTER IODINE Flame Desastre (Editions Mego) cd 17.98
Can you handle some noize? The French trio Sister Iodine have apparently been around in the underground for some years now. Jim here recalls that their early stuff was more akin to no-wave, angular rock music (and was quite curious about them having a disc out on Mego). The rest of us here hadn't heard 'em before... but really dig this, which is definitely much more in the noiserock vein of, say, Wolf Eyes, than DNA-ish no-wave. Yep, noiserock a la Wolf Eyes, Shit & Shine, Cadaver In Drag, Hair Police, heck even Hijokaidan. Total distortion overload, the very first track coming off like an exploding minefield of noise, shit blowing up all around. But at the same time, it's not JUST noise, there's enough rhythmic structure to qualify this as rock music, made with guitar, drums, Korg PS3010 synth, and little regard for common standards of musical practice, like, say, melody, or even, really, riffs. Instead these 12 "songs" are all about interesting varieties of throb and rumble, flangey FX and feedback. Further keeping us entranced are the ponderously heavy drum hits, making things almost Khanate-like in parts, run through some sort of monster Merzbowian filter, as on the slumping slomping sizzling trudge of "Terminal Pain".
It's all instrumental (or at least, we can't HEAR any human vocals amidst everything else) but the song titles perhaps give some sense of Sister Iodine's mood: "Lava Junkie", "Black Trauma Delice", "Napalmee", "You Burned", etc. are all in keeping with their general sonic demeanor. Yeah, kind of a negative vibe, yet paradoxically gleeful as the cathartic impact of noisemaking with such abandon takes effect as well. This is the type of noise rock action we find most satisfying, and it even works at low volumes, as gritty textural drone, but turn it up (if you dare) to be fully cleansed in the controlled crinkum-crankum chaos of their howling rocket launching saucer landing skree!
This album was originally released a while ago on vinyl (limited and long gone presumably), and is now reissued on cd with 2 bonus tracks by Editions Mego, in nice, slightly oversized folder packaging like they like to do. Limited to 500 copies, and quite recommended.
MPEG Stream: "You / Lacerate"
MPEG Stream: "Terminal Pain"
MPEG Stream: "You Doped"

SISTRENATUS Division One (Cold Spring) cd 15.98

SITAAR TAH Semimimimimin (aRCHIVE) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We first heard Sitaar Tah!, Tokyo's amazing 22-piece all-sitar "orchestra", a couple years back on another limited (and now out of print) aRCHIVE release, the sprawling, droning two cd set Animamima on which they collaborated with Japanese dark psych lord Keiji Haino! And we've been eager to hear more from 'em ever since. Now aRCHIVE presents a Semimimimimin, a 43-minute studio recording from the group. Sitars are GO!
So.... You like dense drone. You like exotic, Eastern raga-like stuff. You like psychedelic, pulsing, shimmering beauty. You like ghostly Phillip Jeck-like lo-fi surface hiss. Well what more need we say? You're gonna like this!
One long, trance-inducing track that weaves the sound so many massed sitars into complex patterns of rhythm and melody, modulating and building to more abstract and organic, swarm-of-insects levels... absolutely as soothingly nice as you could imagine.
Beautifully presented in the aRCHIVE tradition, in their usual oversized format, with art by SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, 4-color silkscreened cover, LIMITED TO 700 COPIES ONLY!
MPEG Stream: "Semimimimimin excerpt 1"
RealAudio clip: "Semimimimimin excerpt 2"

SITAR OUTREACH MINISTRY Spring Of 1970 EP (Auris Apothecary) leaf and twine wrapped cassette + magical seeds 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
First we've heard from this Indiana crew, but the name definitely had us intrigued, and the fact that it was released on Auris Apothecary, one of our favorite labels going right now, whose packaging is consistently mind blowing, this one's no different. Each one comes wrapped in a sunflower leaf, and tied with twine, inside is a packet of "magical sunflower seeds" and a sunshine yellow tape housed in an eco-friendly brown paper sleeve, all housed in a stickered NON eco-friendly ziplock plastic bag. Sonically, this might be one of our favorites in the AA catalog, sitar and acoustic guitar, which means plenty of mesmerizing steel string buzz. The A side is an awesome psychedelic version of Greig's "Hall Of The Mountain King", that immediately recognizable melody stretched out into a gorgeous and languorous sprawl of hypnotic buzz (though the sticker instead says it's "Rites Of Spring" for some reason!). The flipside is a much darker proposition, whipping that guitar and sitar buzz into a brooding psychedelic squall, thick pulsing swells, ominous and haunting, distorted and darkly threatening. Both sides are amazing, and WAY too short. definitely excited to hear more from these guys.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE Mariakapel (Pavilion / Whipping Post Music) lp 28.00
Heck yeah, a 2nd pressing! Got a bunch, but sold a bunch too before this list so right now we only have a mere handful, so act quick if you missed it before 'cause we're pretty sure we won't be able to get it again. (Although, also fyi, Ben tells us that there probably will be a compact disc edition someday too.)
Mariakapel was a special tour only lp from Six Organs Of Admittance, aka Ben Chasny, originally released to coincide with a 2011 European tour. We got a couple dozen of the first pressing on Pavilion (ltd. to 500 copies) direct from Ben back then, but those went pretty quick as you may recall. And no surprise, cuz this is really really great. Compiled from two live performances in 2010 and 2011, the opening and closing tracks were recorded earlier in 2011 in Massachusetts, the opener is all wheezing harmonium, a gorgeous stretch of psychedelic mesmer, swirling and shimmery, laced with bits of acoustic guitar, very hypnotic and raga-like, gradually growing more lush and textured as the track progresses, extra layers, tangled melodies, all just beneath that glorious harmonium hum. The closer sort of bookends the record with a similarly droney sound, but this time with what sounds like organ, still very raga like, all long layered tones, and constantly shifting overtones. Gorgeous and intense.
But between those two drones, are a handful of recordings from 2010, recorded live in Tilburg, Holland, a fantastic collection of spare, sparse minimal Appalachia, in the background you can hear feet shuffling, people moving about, but nothing can distract from Chasny's darkly meditative guitarscapes, which include some of Chansy's most intense playing, super percussive and buzzy, downtuned and intense, sounds like he's getting a little Orcutt on some of these jams, but it definitely suites him, and even at his most aggressive, he manages to make the tracks lush and lovely and still impossibly melodic. Fantastic stuff as always.
LIMITED THIS TIME TO 250 COPIES, via Dutch label Whipping Post.

SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE s/t (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98
Several years ago, while listening to excellent Bay Area college radio station KFJC, a particular track of hypnotic, droning psych caught my ear -- buzzing, repetitive acoustic guitar and organ and a mysterious voice intoning "prayer for the su-unnnn..." over and over, all building into a loose, dirgey trance. Gorgeous. Further listening revealed the mysterious voice as belonging to Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs of Admittance. Soon thereafter, my ever thoughtful roommates returned from a John Fahey show, at which Six Organs had been the opener, bearing an LP on which I was excited to find the track I loved. A bit of time passed, and lamentably, so did John Fahey; Six Organs has gone on to make two great albums as well as lending a considerable hand to Comets On Fire on their awesome "Field Recordings from the Sun." This here is a long-awaited cd reissue of that first Six Organs LP, with the addition of 2 tracks from a limited 8" lathe-cut disc. While Chasny seems to be getting better and better, as evidenced by his best and most recent record "Dark Noontide," the darkly psychedelic 4-track ramblings on this disc find his signature sound fully in place-- an immediately recognizable way of attacking an acoustic guitar into a state of humming, reverbrating submission, that resonant baritone, and detours into percussive experimentation, all ritualistic and, I'll say it again, thoroughly hypnotic. So Nice.
MPEG Stream: "Sum of All Heaven"
MPEG Stream: "Invitation to the SR for Supper"

SIX WAYS TO AVOID THE EVIL EYE s/t (Onetree) lp 14.98
Awesome slab of instrumental outer space ur-drone raga folk from a sometime collaborator of The Sun City Girls, Dredd Foole and others. Slide guitar, tabla, sitar, violin, organ, frame drums, metal bowls and a whole mess of other instrument we've never heard of deftly smoothed into a some sort of sprawling tribal drone ritual, think Sunburned Hand meets Muslimgauze meets Angus Maclise meets Jack Rose, but with more Hawkwindy swirl, and druggy din. Simple hypnotic rhythms beneath abstract Eastern percussion, lots of buzz and drift and shimmer, wrapped in thick sheets of reverb and fuzzy FX. Gorgeous stuff. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as any of the new weird America or modern freak folk will flip for this.
Super limited vinyl reissue of a way out of print cd-r. Green and black hand screened sleeves and printed insert.

SIXES Submissions (Jyrk) 3" cd-r 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This mysterious East Bay noisemaker known simple as Sixes made his Jyrk debut with this dense little 3" disc. For being so small, it definitely packs a serious wallop. Ultra massive low end drones, huge reverberating continent shifting tectonic rumbles, crushing, pulsing black fuzz. An incredibly dense black hole of sound. Impossible to say what the sound source is, it sounds like someone took a bunch of analog synths, about a hundred guitars, the same number of wildly malfunctioning amps, and dropped them in a tar pit. Churning gut rumbling brutality laced with jagged streaks of clipped and stuttering high end, everything burnt to a crumbling black, like watching some massive black tower, slowly crumble to pieces, the sound absolutely deafening, a physical presence that threatens to not only blow out your ear drums, but blow a gaping hole clean through your chest, take your head off, incinerate you and leave a tiny pile of smoldering cinders. The sound eventually settles down to a low level rumble, still crumbling and super distorted, before beginning a slow build, thickening, getting more distorted, the high end streaks spreading and brightening, eclipsing the low end pummel, until the two sounds, the earthquake low and shooting star high, are all tangled up, an ancient battle in sound, the two eventually becoming indistinguishable, all that's left, a huge snarling grey cloud of fuzz and grit and grind that threatens to blot out all other sound before quickly fading to black. Phew.
Packaged in swanky silver metallic on black sleeve, housed in a mini 3" jewel case.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1"

SKATERS Dark Rye Bread (Humbug) lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN PRINT!!! FOR A VERY LIMITED TIME! More expensive but we had to ship them over from Berlin! Only a handful of these, they'll probably be gone in a flash...
All you folks who have been in a Sunroof! / Avarus / Kemialliset Ystevat / Jewelled Antler tizzy lately and can't get enough free-noise-drone-folk-psych weirdness, would do well to check out the Skaters, a lesser know outfit from right here in SF. These cats kick up a serious skree, huge swirling clouds of overblow guitars, washes of crumbly distortion, chaotic drumming (or primitive drum machine programming maybe), all over a bed of caveman percussion and plink plonk ambience. Closest comparison might be Avarus with Keiji Haino on supersonic black hole lead guitar. Or a Dead C / Sunroof! jam session gone mental.

SKATERS Dark Rye Bread (Nature Tape Limb) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SKATERS Diminishing Shrine Recycles video 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Okay, we don't really have a VCR here so no one has been able to actually watch this video, but judging from how freaky people have gotten about local free noise outfit the Skaters recently, we figured we oughta list it anyway, especially since we only managed to get 8 copies. As far as we know these are the last copies and then it's gone for good. Made for their recent tour, Diminishing Shrine Recycles is the perfect lo-fi visual analogue to the Skater's dense sonic skree. First come first serve. These will probably be gone in a heartbeat...

SKATERS Dispersed Royal Ornaments (Wabana) lp 24.00
Yet another gorgeous chunk of musical murk from these Berlin based noisemakers. Not sure what they do or how they do it, but they manage to make tape hiss sound divine, and warbly defective recording equipment sound like it was meant to be busted.
This latest 12" is more of what we've come to love about these guys. A grimy, gritty dream world of dripping low end and thick sludgy ambience.
One side is completely vocal based it sounds like, with lots of moaning and coo-ing and mumbling and chanting and wailing and groaning and howling, all drenched in tape hiss and amp buzz and reverb and delay and whatever other effects seemed to be within reach, all of these disparate vocals get all tangled up into a weird swirl of sound that almost sounds like a bunch of dusty old 78s being played at once.
The flip side is more standard Skaters fare, weird muted rhythms, mumbled vocals, guitar hum, synth buzz, snake charmer melodies, all sorts of rumble and warble and shimmer smeared into goopy soundscapes that crawl and ooooooooze.
Packaged in a super glossy full color collage sleeve with hand screened liner notes on the inside.

SKATERS Dripping Avenues (self-released) cassette 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest chunk of murky throb from the Skaters, a gorgeous expanse of alien ragas and primitive tribalism, all wrapped in that distinctly lo-fi Skaters swirl of sound. The band recently relocated to Berlin, thus these tapes, already sort of expensive, had to be shipped from Germany and ended up being even more expensive, but we only got a handful, and will not be able to get more, and to be honest, as expensive as it is, it might be the best thing we've heard from these guys.
Strangely propulsive, Dripping Avenues is some sort of muted krautrocky jam, with simple tribal rhythms, chanted throat singing-like vocals, and strange streaks of high end sound smeared into the backdrop of constantly shifting shimmers. Eventually a haunting Eastern tinged raga surface from within the murk, and adds a strange drone quality to the proceedings. But it's the production that really makes the Skaters' sound so unique. It's like listening to everything underwater. Warbly and thick and syrupy, as if the air was some sort of liquid, and the sound waves were struggling to make it through. Tape speed variation, hiss and whir, all whipped into a mantra like blur. Imagine the No Neck Blues Band playing on the bottom of the sea, while you float on the surface, your ears just slightly submerged, the strange ramshackle grooves slowly drifting upwards, completely warped and warbled by the time they reach your ears.
The overall vibe is some sort of alien ur-drone raga ritual, a murky mesmer, endlessly repeating, slowly and subtly shifting, a divine dreamlike drift dipped in Skaters grit and grime and allowed to ooze into the tape recorder and out of your speakers...

SKATERS Gambling In Ohpa's Shadow (Pseudo Arcana) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SKATERS Pavilinous Miracles Of Circular Facet Dice (Chocolate Monk) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SKATERS Physicalities Of The Sensibilities Of Ingrediential Strairways (Eclipse) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Physicalities Of The Sensibilities Of Ingrediential Strairways [sic] is the brand spankin' new release from modern psych high priests the Skaters. LongÐawaited and VERY limited, this lysergic dose of hazy psychosis left us dazed and wanting more. Recorded by the band in Universal City, Mexico, this summons an unearthly brand of rhythmic psychedelia, the perfect soundtrack for your next out-of-body experience. Quite possibly the Skaters' most dim and eerie release, this one time, vinyl-only pressing is already sold out on the label's end, so pick it up while you still can!!

SKATERS Rippling Whispers (self-released) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

SKATERS / YELLOW SWANS Humming Lattice Flowers (JYRK) cd-r 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another SUPER LIMITED cd-r from the Jyrk Collective (run by the guys in the Yellow Swans) who also just recently released the amazing (and also quite limited) Grey Daturas / Yellow Swans collaboration found elsewhere on this list. Unlike the GD / YS collaboration, this is a good old fashioned split, with each band offering up twenty minutes or so of their particular brand of skree. The Yellow Swans deliver a practically swoonsome drone, haunting and mysterious, with simple plodding percussion, occasional elctronic filigree and moody Eastern sounding guitar melodies. So nice. The Skaters take the noisier road, with a clangy clattery blown out soundscpae of distorted drones, buzzy fuzzy electronic whir and heavily affected disembodied vocalisations. Thickly layered and weirdly otherworldly.
And again, just to drive that point home, THIS IS VERY LIMITED. By the time you read this review, this cd-r will already be out of print. So if you want one act fast!
MPEG Stream: "One"

SKATERS, THE Palm Shaper (267 Lattajjaa) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SKELTON, RICHARD Landings (Type) cd 15.98
Originally released on Skelton's own Sustain-Release Private Press Imprint in 2009 as a sonic accompaniment to a collection of writings bearing the same name, both were made over a period of 4 years in the landscape of Lancashire's West Pennine Moors. The chilly Arcadian climate sets the perfect tone for Skelton's oblique investigations into memory, displacement and loss. Made with huge washes of long-form bowed string drones and piano tones in a deep engagement with the natural surroundings, you can feel the all-encompassing frost, the cold water on falling leaves, and the harsh blanket of wind through a threadbare shelter. Attempting to resolve the delicate boundary between intense loneliness and tranquil solitude, these recordings take off from the personal memorial to his wife of his last release under the moniker A Broken Consort, and into a beautifully larger dialogue of place, history and perseverance.
MPEG Stream: "Noon Hill Wood"
MPEG Stream: "Pariah"
MPEG Stream: "The Shape Leaves"

SKELTON, RICHARD Landings (Type) lp + cd 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Originally released on Skelton's own Sustain-Release Private Press Imprint in 2009 as a sonic accompaniment to a collection of writings bearing the same name, both were made over a period of 4 years in the landscape of Lancashire's West Pennine Moors. The chilly Arcadian climate sets the perfect tone for Skelton's oblique investigations into memory, displacement and loss. Made with huge washes of long-form bowed string drones and piano tones in a deep engagement with the natural surroundings, you can feel the all-encompassing frost, the cold water on falling leaves, and the harsh blanket of wind through a threadbare shelter. Attempting to resolve the delicate boundary between intense loneliness and tranquil solitude, these recordings take off from the personal memorial to his wife of his last release under the moniker A Broken Consort, and into a beautifully larger dialogue of place, history and perseverance.
MPEG Stream: "Noon Hill Wood"
MPEG Stream: "Pariah"
MPEG Stream: "The Shape Leaves"

SKIN GRAFT Cleveland Death Portrait (Waves Of Decay) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Never heard of Skin Graft before (the band, not the label), but this one man noisemaker offers up some seriously and gloriously disturbing blackened noise, a sound that fits pretty comfortably alongside the others in this latest batch of grim black noisy heaviness from Waves Of Decay (Wicked King Wicker, Robe., Demonologists, Dreaded).
After along stretch of keening high end, tense and weirdly melodic, SG begins to introduce all manner of buzz and glitch and malfunctioning electronics, all bathed in reverb and delay, a strange bit of crunch and hiss and stutter laid over the siren like wail of the electronic bed. It manages to be both weirdly listenable, and sonically harrowing, some sort of soundtrack for the kind of movie most folks couldn't handle 5 minutes of, this is the sound of death, and derangement, and misery and something unknown in the dark, so tense and intense and pretty goddamn great.
The rest of the tape follows suit, SG laying down spare electronic glitchscapes, buzzing fields of black ambience, slipping deftly from hushed minimal drift to blown out ear shredding electrical storms, heaving avalanches of feedback soaked noise, to barely there bits of kosmische outer space transmission interference. Cool stuff.
Super sweet three color silkscreened, card stock insert, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have a little handful of those...

SKITLIV Amfetamin (Cold Spring) cd 10.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Back in stock! Get it while you can, cuz you never know, this might be the last we hear from these guys, as stories from their performance at the Roadburn festival in Holland were pretty over the top - an insane, barely musical rampage invovling fistfights, drunkenness, audience abuse, instrument destruction, extreme drug intake, bloodshed, shooting up, some actual music here and there, all culminating in one member of the band being shoved into a cab, a bunch of cash handed over with the instructions "take this guy as far away as possible and dump him." Woah. Sorry we missed it.
Anyway, the record itself is slightly more musical than all that, but still plenty grim and brutal and fucked up doomy and misanthropic and chaotic. Read on...
This one was definitely made for aQ. Self described black noise / doom metal from Maniac, formerly of Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem, joined by Kvarforth of Swedish black metallers Shining, and Attila from SUNNO))) (and also Mayhem oddly enough) and featuring music by Current 93. A pretty odd mix for sure, especially the two former Mayhem vocalists, and what's even more odd, is that this release features only two studio tracks, the other 6 recorded live, one of which is an intro recorded by David Tibet and Andrew Liles as Current 93. But a strange band deserves a strange release, so here we go.
The opening title track is some super abstract noise drenched doom, falling somewhere between Khanate, Gnaw Their Tongues and something much more spacious and abstract. A simple little guitar melody drifts through a landscape of howled and shrieked vocals, thick bursts of caustic crumbling distortion, little flurries of metallic chug, haunting minor key melodies, a truly twisted doomscape for sure, but it's Maniac's vocals (as well as Attila's here) that make it so fucked up and freaked out. So impossibly harsh and intense, a monstrous growl/shriek totally in the red, swallowing up all the sounds around it, managing to sound as creepy and crawly as it does intense and insane. There's tons of shit going on in the background too, strange voices speaking, other instruments drifting in and out, random samples and field recordings, some buried percussion, all only adding to the weirdness.
The second studio track is a whole different story, a hugely heavy slab of plodding doom metal, guitars thick and loud and distorted, layer upon layer of grind and crumble and buzz, the vocals super intense, slipping from hellish shriek to demonic growl and back again. Lots of effects, the arrangement full of starts and stops, plenty of grinding guitar lurking beneath the main riff, a loping freaky fucked up ultradoom jam for fans of Moss, Monarch, Nihill, Bunkur, Whitehorse, etc.
The rest of the disc is a live show recorded at the Camden Underworld in the UK in 2007, and begins with a creepy Current 93 intro, with David Tibet, howling his strange invective, over a wash of hiss and white noise and guitar rumble, until the band launch into a live version of the second studio track mentioned above which launches the band into an expansive trudge through some serious tweaked and twisted doom. Live it sounds a lot less freaked out and a lot more TRUE, huge riffing, caveman drums, amazing throat shredding vocals, the sound is definitely raw and live sounding, but it perfectly suits Skitliv's hellish black doom. The record closes with a live version of "Amfetamin", the track that opened the disc, and it's appropriately intense, the addition of drums doing nothing to take away from its minimal menace, the focus less on vocals (minus a flurry of howls and shrieks midway through) and more on the droning guitars and grinding crumbling creepy black ambience.
MPEG Stream: "Amfetamin"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Pain Coming"

SKITLIV Bloodletting (Cold Spring) 10" picture disc 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ultra limited picture disc 10" from this damaged and demented avant black doom outfit featuring former Mayhem frontman Maniac, Niklas Kvarforth from black metal outfit Shining, and Current 93's David Tibet among others. One side features an introductory collage created by David Tibet / Current 93, that the band used for an intro at their shows, and it's classic Current 93, a sort of demented slowly decaying gypsy folk, with Tibet's increasingly anxious and frantic vocalizing, his vocals multitracked so the track builds to a frenzied climax, with multiple Tibets howling and shrieking "Who will deliver me from myself?!". The other two tracks are alternate versions of tracks on Skandinavisk Misantropi, one a demo, and one an alternate mix, but they kind of sound better here, the guitars more raw, the sound more fierce and feral, the vocals SICK, the band unfurling lurching lumbering doomy blackness, but laced with unlikely melodies, "Slow Pain Coming" manages to be fucked up and hateful, the vocals especially harsh, but the music is surprisingly melodic, and there's an awesome breakdown partway through where the band lurches and starts and stops, while the vocals just gargle and rasp and howl. The demo of "A Valley Below" is way more low fidelity, but again, it sounds so much more fucked up and frightening, the vocals especially again, even more inhuman, makes you wonder what they did on the record proper, cuz here, they just ooze and drip, super intense and freaky, perfectly suiting the low slung slither underneath. Makes us want to go back and listen to the full length again, Or just keep listening to these two tracks over and over.
Super nice artwork on the picture disc, an appropriately gruesome painting on one side, and an original David Tibet painting on the other. LIMITED TO 777 COPIES!!!

SKOAL KODIAK Kryptonym Bodliak (Load) cd 16.98
New full length of twisted, groovy, outsider Neanderthal dance rock post punk whatthefuckery from these Minneapolis knuckle dragging, dancefloor deviants, whose sound is a splatter of synth squelch and analog blurt over dubbed out Load-rock style grooviness. Think Butthole Surfers or Chrome, but via Foetus or ESG or something equally preposterous, someone here thought it sounded like a mash up of some obscure Nirvana Bleach demo and the soundtrack to Cafe Flesh (!), although the closest noise rock analogue would obviously be Six Finger Satellite.
Kryptonym Bodliak is all sci-fi eighties retro club music and raw post punk funkiness, roughed up a bit around the edges and flecked with subtle noise rockisms, the least subtle of which are the vocals, super fucked up and heavily processed, alternately barked and howled, moaned and garbled, apparently the result of a contact mic-ed gasmask, transforming the vocals into a stuttering, mush-mouthed speaking-in-tongues sort of alien Make-Up style testifyin', all draped over lo-fi drum grooves, skronky sax, junkyard percussion, primitive keyboards, and thick slithery basslines. The band definitely seem capable of pulling off some true old school style post punk funk, but they're obvious noiseniks at heart, so that stuff is wreathed in plenty of cacophony and crunch, the results surprisingly rad, and the sort of stuff that must get a crowd of sweaty punks to shake their rumps, which is never a bad thing.
MPEG Stream: "Teapot"
MPEG Stream: "Hollidazzle"
MPEG Stream: "Asstral Assassin"

SKOAL KODIAK Kryptonym Bodliak (Load) lp 16.98
New full length of twisted, groovy, outsider Neanderthal dance rock post punk whatthefuckery from these Minneapolis knuckle dragging, dancefloor deviants, whose sound is a splatter of synth squelch and analog blurt over dubbed out Load-rock style grooviness. Think Butthole Surfers or Chrome, but via Foetus or ESG or something equally preposterous, someone here thought it sounded like a mash up of some obscure Nirvana Bleach demo and the soundtrack to Cafe Flesh (!), although the closest noise rock analogue would obviously be Six Finger Satellite.
Kryptonym Bodliak is all sci-fi eighties retro club music and raw post punk funkiness, roughed up a bit around the edges and flecked with subtle noise rockisms, the least subtle of which are the vocals, super fucked up and heavily processed, alternately barked and howled, moaned and garbled, apparently the result of a contact mic-ed gasmask, transforming the vocals into a stuttering, mush-mouthed speaking-in-tongues sort of alien Make-Up style testifyin', all draped over lo-fi drum grooves, skronky sax, junkyard percussion, primitive keyboards, and thick slithery basslines. The band definitely seem capable of pulling off some true old school style post punk funk, but they're obvious noiseniks at heart, so that stuff is wreathed in plenty of cacophony and crunch, the results surprisingly rad, and the sort of stuff that must get a crowd of sweaty punks to shake their rumps, which is never a bad thing.
MPEG Stream: "Teapot"
MPEG Stream: "Hollidazzle"
MPEG Stream: "Asstral Assassin"

SKULL DEFEKTS, THE 2013-3012 (Thrill Jockey) 12" 15.98
Swedish rhythmic post everything combo Skull Defekts have always been tough to pin down, their sound changing dramatically with seemingly every release, although it seems that gone are the days of the dense and brutal drones that defined their early records, the band blossoming into their current form, meditative and repetitive, rhythmic and sort of post rocky actually, this latest record culled from a single day's recording session, undertaken mid US tour, with Daniel Higgs accompanying them on vocals, and aQ faves Zomes opening up, so given the opportunity everyone piled into the studio, and recorded three tracks, the first of which is a loping, drum heavy groove, with Higgs laying down his unique and twisted vocalizing over the top, even bellowing at one point "The Skull Defekts salute you!", the music lush and gorgeously mesmerizing, with organs swirling, guitars churning, loping and hypnotic and trancelike. The second track starts off with just drums, then some detuned dirgelike riffage, again Higgs in full shaman mode, delivering another selection of cosmic wisdom, crooning, bellowing, mewling, the music slithery and lugubrious, all manner of random percussion peppering that dirgelike groove, like the first track, all about repetition, circular, cyclical, total ritualistic sonic trance out.
Finally, the last track, which is a gorgeously understated bit of meditative mesmer, hazy organ drones, wheezing harmonium, a minimal mini raga, Higgs practically whispering, his delicate croon wreathed in those lush, layered drones. So lovely.
And as if that wasn't enough the whole record is repeated on the B side in reverse, the record playing from the inside out, as if the B side is literally taking up right where the A side leaves off, and as you no doubt know about us by now, we love backwards sounds, they just make everything sounds more tripped out and psychedelic, which is true even here, the backwards versions somehow also darker, and more intense, more demonically harrowing, the perfect balance for the A side, forwards and backwards, light and darkness, good and evil.
MPEG Stream: "Children Of The Skull Defekts"
MPEG Stream: "Beyond Within"
MPEG Stream: "Stkefed Lluks Eht Fo Nerdlihc"

SKULL DEFEKTS, THE Blood Spirits and Drums are Singing (Conspiracy) cd 15.98
Fuck yeah! Another Skull Defekts record. Hard to believe they were once one of those super obscure bands with practically no releases outside a cassette or a cd-r or two, considering now it seems like every decent label around wants a piece of these guys. And for good reason. SD are a total AQ sonic dream team, heavy and hypnotic, looped and rhythmic, clattery and chaotic. Usually we get a bit fed up when a band suddenly releases record after record after record, but in some cases, we're willing to make an exception, and we'll of course make one for these guys, since we're dying to hear more and more. Every label around wants a piece of these guys and that's just fine, cuz every disc we've heard we love, and this one is no different.
Well, no different in that respect, but sonically, there is a big difference. Whereas all the other records we've heard have been super abstract affairs, rooted heavily in rhythm for sure, but mostly ambient and drone-y and looped, with the various rhythms part of a bigger whole, dark soundscapes of creaks and groans and rumbles and whirs, all held firmly in place by fragmented rhythms, and looped percussion, this one sounds more like the work of a band. A -rock- band. Not to say it isn't still dark and hypnotic, looped and rhythmic, it's just this time, there's, well, there's singing for one, and while vocals may have been present on the other discs, here's it's as much a part of the music as the riff or the rhythm. The fact that it's a quartet, two guys handling guitars and "machinery", two other guys handling percussion and drums and again "machinery", the sound here starts to make more sense. Essentially two drummers and two guitarists, who lock into killer hypnotic grooves, that slowly mutate and spread out, change shape and transform. The core rhythm stays the same, with subtle variations, the guitars too remain mostly static, with little flourishes and filigree here and there, but they seem to be traveling through a world of sound that is constantly changing, thick washes of distorted grime, flurries of glitchy static, haunting alien FX, and of course the occasional bit of new wavish sounding vocals. The opening track is the perfect example of this, an extended nine minute jam, totally motorik and hypnotic, the background noise building and building to a frenzy, a the drums pound along relentlessly. Like Dutch hypno metallers Gore crossed with Australian minimalist jazzbos the Necks.
But then something strange happens in track two. The track starts off with just drums, then some angular guitars, then the vocals kick in, some cool percussion, and suddenly we're not so much in some European art rock mathrock jam, or some avant minimal kraut groove, no we're on some late eighties post punk dancefloor. All black lights and throbbing bass, downright funky, the vocals a snarling sneering punk rock scowl. Not hard to imagine this sound fitting right in between Television and Suicide and ESG. Or maybe imagine some modern day East Coast post punk mathrockers getting their Wire on. Weird, unexpected, but it sorta suits them. The next track, combines the two, an awesome angular postpunk riff, some more distorted new wave vocals, over a churning bass and some pounding drums, into a churning repetitive metallic post punk groove.
The rest of the disc continues in the same direction, the band spewing out some killer looped repetitive post punk metallic new wave pound. Makes you want to pogo and bang your head at the same time. Each track only one or two parts, transformed into extended dronedirgedancefloor workouts, the highlight being the nearly 11 minute "The Sound", a static jagged stab of sound repeated metronome like over a chugging distorted guitars, a simple pounding snare, wreathed in lots of low end bass rumble and guitar noise and some slithery sexy vocals, which made us think of a much heavier, more abrasive Girls Against Boys.
We've been digging this record like crazy, after we got over the initial surprise of the new songier sound, and while that might alienate some of the more industrial dronescape folks out there, the rest of you should definitely check it out, and maybe this 'Defekts record is just the thing to get some of the kids digging all this postpunknewwave revival stuff, into something a bit more fucked up and far out. Either way, we love it!
MPEG Stream: "Unholy Drums Are Singing"
MPEG Stream: "Rhythm Is The Key"

SKULL DEFEKTS, THE DFX (Cut Hands) cd-r 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**
Another new one from Swedish noisemakers Skull Defekts, who like much of the new breed of cd-r underground outfits, have gone from unknown to prolific in the blink of an eye. This latest comes courtesy of the Cut Hands label, and is crazy limited, only a hundred copiesÉ
And while past Defekts records have been strongly rooted in rhythm, this two tracker is much more about texture and mood, timbre and ambience, with any rhythm merely a muted pulse, a submerged throb, or a bit of dizzying skipped looping. The opening track is 21 minutes of low end murk, soft shimmering drift, smeared pixilated glitch, moaning bass tones, a distant swirl of disembodied voices, croaks and creaks, blurred into another buzzy layer, the track building in intensity, the tones growing thicker and more corrosive, streaks of feedback draped over sonorous tones, all wrapped in a whirring cloud of soft insectoid buzz.
The second track, also 21 minutes, is much more chaotic and confusional, voices swirl dizzily, chunks of glitchy electronics suspended in a roiling sea of constant low end buzz, smears of malfunctioning effects, sine wave skree and crumbling distortion, all looped into some haunting post industrial collage, eventually smoothing out into a long stretch of layered rumble and whir, but still shot through with jagged shards of percussive clatter and sizzling electronic grind. Sort of Pan Sonic meets Wolf Eyes which is most definitely a good thing.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in cool oversized, textured paper, three color silkscreened gatefold sleeves, the disc attached to a nub on one of the panels, a printed black and white insert, each disc hand painted.
MPEG Stream: "DFX 1"
MPEG Stream: "DFX 2"

SKULL DEFEKTS, THE Magnetic Skulls & Intense Sound Stimulations (Conspiracy) lp 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Last copies of these, still at the super reduced price!
Couldn't be more perfect timing. As the world at large catch on to the fractured musical beauty of the Skull Defekts, with their Skulll cd, reviewed last list, flying off the shelves, we discovered a little stash of these super limited and now long out of print lps. Only a handful though, so act fast or be prepared to be disappointed. Here's our review from when we originally reviewed it a while back:
Our pals at Conspiracy Records, a label/distro based in Belgium, who in the past have brought us records by Boris, Jesu, Shora and more, are this year celebrating their 10 year anniversary. A decade of amazing music. From a bedroom based punk rock label, to one of Europe's most important and influential labels and distros, all we can say is HURRAY! And HUZZAH! It's always so exciting, when a bunch of folks get together to spread the word about great music, great WEIRD music, and survive, even thrive. Such is the case with Conspiracy. And as if that weren't already enough, just knowing that some great people were selling some amazing music, those sweeties at Conspiracy have decided to share the love with us. And you.
To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they've decided to do a super limited subscription series, 12 records over 12 months, each limited to somewhere between 200-500 copies, ONLY available to series subscribers. EXCEPT, they've decided to let AQ have copies of each, we're the only store with copies of these subscriber only lps, and for a brief moment, we can offer them to you, our loyal AQ customers. Needless to say we are thrilled, as the series lineup reads like a who's who of AQ faves, as well as including a handful of lesser knowns. All pressed on super thick vinyl, and packaged in killer hand screened original art sleeves.
We haven't heard much from Sweden's Skull Defekts, but what we have heard we like. A lot. In fact, if there was any justice in the world, these guys would be battling Wolf Eyes for the hipster noise rock crown for sure. It's not that these guys sound like Wolf Eyes, although they do a bit, it's more that they are exploring the same territory, but without the goofy in your face vibe of Wolf Eyes, instead choosing to open up their sound a bit more, make it lighter, more abstract, and in the process a whole lot more compelling.
The A side is a side long drift through a wondrous world of noise and noises, atmosphere and ambience. A heady ambient buzz, disrupted by little whorls of distorted crumble, endlessly shimmering, the sound twisting and mutating, changing color and texture, sometimes sounding blissful and serene, but just as quickly becoming damaged and dangerous. An epic exploration of a multi-layered glacial drift, not so much 'noise' as noisy in parts, not so much brutal as intense and dark.
Side B is split into three tracks, the first features a simple cavemen pound, around which swirl and streak stretched out sheets of grinding guitar noise and abstract sonic fields. A slowly shifting soundscapes of layer after layer of buzzing fuzzed out noises. And again, not 'noise' just dreamily noisy. The second track is the most Wolf Eyes sounding, although it's a much more blissed out spaced out version, not so aggressive, a roiling landscape of damaged electronics, abused guitars, and abstract percussion, all twisted into a slithering sonic beast. The final track is the most mellow, but even then, the sound is harrowing and ominous, the perfect blend of low end buzz and rumble, and coruscating upper register psych guitar shimmer. Very hypnotic and leaves us wanting to hear a LOT more from these guys.