STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS & ANGEL s/t (Important) cd 14.98
Ok, look. Drone records are hard to review. They're drones. Some are better than others (dronier?) but what do you say to make that case? Especially when, in trying to do so, your mind is being lulled and numbed and otherwise not wanting to think and type thoughts. You want to join with the drone, not describe and analyze it. So, if we say that this collaboration between Strings of Consciousness and Angel is a damn good drone record, then maybe you should just take our word for it, whaddya say? Or let the glowing green, desolate atmospheric artwork of Seldon Hunt, in which this is housed, convince you. Or the folks involved - Angel, who have other albums we've recommended, is in part the project of Ilpo Vaisanen of Pan Sonic, while the experimental ensemble Strings Of Consciousness includes French laptopper Philippe Petit who runs the Bip-Hop label (not to be confused with the insane tightrope walking Philippe Petit from the documentary Man On A Wire!).
But of course you want further details. Well... there's two tracks here. Long ones, of course. 22:03 and 18:41. The first track is the more spacious, slowly shimmering drone piece, featuring the cello of Iceland's Hildur Gudnadottir, along with other strings - harp, double bass, guitars... plus harmonium, accordion, and the added abstraction of electronics, effects, and oscillators. Gentle rhythms manifest, and melodies seep in. It builds into an ominous physical presence, the volume increasing, buzzing smoothly like a swarm of non-so-angry bees before the end. Quite glorious.
The second track seems as layered and organic, but more intimate. Instead of chamber strings, the "acoustic" element is limited to accordion and resonating Tibetan bowls. Along with guitars... and again plenty of electronics and effects. More "crinkly" and clanky than the first track, with mysterious rattle and rustle amidst a mix of soothing electronic washes and rather more corroded-sounding digitalized drones. But like we said, we're to busy being mesmerized by this music to really break it all down for you. We just know, we like it!
Recommended, either on cd, released domestically by Important (which allows for uninterrupted drone consumption), or on vinyl, an import on the Conspiracy label (which of course requires the listener to assist in flipping from one side to the next).
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STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS & ANGEL s/t (Conspiracy) lp 22.00
Ok, look. Drone records are hard to review. They're drones. Some are better than others (dronier?) but what do you say to make that case? Especially when, in trying to do so, your mind is being lulled and numbed and otherwise not wanting to think and type thoughts. You want to join with the drone, not describe and analyze it. So, if we say that this collaboration between Strings of Consciousness and Angel is a damn good drone record, then maybe you should just take our word for it, whaddya say? Or let the glowing green, desolate atmospheric artwork of Seldon Hunt, in which this is housed, convince you. Or the folks involved - Angel, who have other albums we've recommended, is in part the project of Ilpo Vaisanen of Pan Sonic, while the experimental ensemble Strings Of Consciousness includes French laptopper Philippe Petit who runs the Bip-Hop label (not to be confused with the insane tightrope walking Philippe Petit from the documentary Man On A Wire!).
But of course you want further details. Well... there's two tracks here. Long ones, of course. 22:03 and 18:41. The first track is the more spacious, slowly shimmering drone piece, featuring the cello of Iceland's Hildur Gudnadottir, along with other strings - harp, double bass, guitars... plus harmonium, accordion, and the added abstraction of electronics, effects, and oscillators. Gentle rhythms manifest, and melodies seep in. It builds into an ominous physical presence, the volume increasing, buzzing smoothly like a swarm of non-so-angry bees before the end. Quite glorious.
The second track seems as layered and organic, but more intimate. Instead of chamber strings, the "acoustic" element is limited to accordion and resonating Tibetan bowls. Along with guitars... and again plenty of electronics and effects. More "crinkly" and clanky than the first track, with mysterious rattle and rustle amidst a mix of soothing electronic washes and rather more corroded-sounding digitalized drones. But like we said, we're to busy being mesmerized by this music to really break it all down for you. We just know, we like it!
Recommended, either on cd, released domestically by Important (which allows for uninterrupted drone consumption), or on vinyl, an import on the Conspiracy label (which of course requires the listener to assist in flipping from one side to the next).
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STRIP MALL SEIZURES No English (True Panther Sounds) lp 10.98
Oakland's own Strip Mall Seizures spew forth a thrashing, pounding, and super noisy record on excellent San Francisco imprint, True Panther Sounds. No English is a cacophonous, damaged and ultimately danceable record for the people that like their keyboards turned WAY UP! Hella good.

STRONEN / STORLOKKEN Humcrush (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98
Members of Norwegian jazz/electronic outfits Supersilent (keyboardist Stale Storlokken) and Food (percussionist Thomas Stronen) collaborate in this duo, making their Rune Grammofon debut with Humcrush. Being fans of both Food and Supersilent (especially!) we were interested to hear this...also most Rune Grammofon stuff is pretty good. And this is! Improvised live in the recording studio but well and truly sounding like weird, tuneful 'songs', this album reminds us a bit of the Shaking Ray Levis, or maybe even a free improv version of Sagor and Swing, if you know either of them. The ramshackle rhythmic clatter of drums, the glitchy hiss and buzz of electronics, and the quirky synth tones combine quite temptingly to our ears. Not to many other 'improv' records boast cuts like "Marked East" that we want to hit repeat on right after they're over. From bright and bouncy (like that track) to moody and mysterious, Humcrush is an enjoyable ride.
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STROTTER INST. Anna Anna (Implied Sound) 7" 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now, we probably don't need to mention how much we love the turntable as instrument. And to that end, how much we love the sounds of damaged vinyl, or modified turntables, the hiss and skipping and pops and crackles and loops... Or how much we love Jeck and Tetreault and Yoshihide and Bastien and Brumit and Gum and Loop Orchestra and Marclay and anyone who ever smashed up or scraped up their records and then played them anyway, and maybe did that with two turntables or three or a hundred, creating whole new wonderful pieces of music out of misused and abused players and scratched and screwed up fragments of other folks' music. So when we discovered Strotter, aka Swiss turntablist Christoph Hess, we were already sold. Here's an older gentleman, who adds pieces of metal, and elastic bands, and extra needles and multiple tone arms to his turntables. And then uses old records and these customized turntable to create gorgeously hypnotic looped minimal soundscapes. It was only a matter of time before he decided to fuck with the actual pressing process as well. Thus we have two new vinyl only releases, an etched 12" and a super deluxe 7".
From the same label that brought us the beautifully packaged and amazing sounding Aluk Todolo 7" comes a brand new 7" from Hess and hiss Strotter project. Two tracks on each side, the outer track plays normally, outside to in, but the inside track plays backwards from inside to out, and in between, separating each track is a locked groove. Awesome.
The outside track on side A begins with thick fuzzed out low end that is quickly joined by hypnotic looped scraping that warbles and shifts in pitch. It begins to sound like the yelp of an old man and is eventually eclipsed by a simple beating pulse, thick and heavy, that almost sounds like some purloined SUNNO))) guitars. The Inside track on side A is super dense with all sorts of record crackle and rhythmic pops. Scrapes and skips and hiccuping loops. Starting off as a super spare minimal glitchy scraped vinylscape, it quickly builds in intensity, the buried music on the scratched vinyl offering up a haunting distant minor key melody. So creepy.
The outside track on side B is a totally hypnotic mechanized minimal jazzscape, a simple throbbing bass pulse over abstract rhythmic clicking like some old jazz intro chopped and looped. The inside track on side B is a dense staticky rhythm constructed from distant moans, crackling surface noise, the "bass line" getting busier and busier until it becomes a squirming tangle beneath tiny sparkling high end squiggles.
Plain black vinyl with no label, packaged in a thick clear sleeve, with white text and diagrams, printed forwards and backwards. Nice!

STROTTER INST. Bolzplatz (Everest Records) 10" 12.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Got a few copies of this avant turntable masterpiece back in, figured we'd relist it in anticipation of the almost for sure upcoming Strotter Inst instore!
We are huge fans of weird turntable music, from Jeck, to Gum, to Otomo Yoshihide, to Martin Tetrault, but as much as we love all of those folks, our heart belongs to Strotter Inst., aka, Christoph Hess, an older Swiss turntable mad scientist, who creates Frankensteinian record players with multiple arms, weird obstructions forcing the needle to jump and skip, strange strings and rubber bands, that the moving parts pluck and strike, all creating gorgeous mechanical symphonies of sound, with JUST the player, when the manipulated records are added (and they often are NOT), things only get more expansive and lush and amazing.
This latest release from Hess finds his interest in fucking with lps and their players extending to even the pressing process, with the various tracks mastered at different speeds, requiring a small diagram on the label demonstrating which part of which side plays at which speed. Not that it necessarily matters, as Hess' crazy sonic concoctions sound great at any speed.
The sounds here follow on from those on the many other records of his we've reviewed, like some sort of minimal DIY krautrock, or a band like Avarus, populated exclusively by homebuilt noise making robots, all assembled from turntables, it is unbelievable to hear these sounds and know they were designed and planned by Hess, but it's the machines that are creating these gorgeous hypnotic rhythmscapes.
Hypnotic, repetitive, cyclical, but always shifting subtly, crackle, scrape, rumble, hiss, skip, all deftly arranged into propulsive grooves, the rubber bands offering up melody, strange rubbery tones, percussive, but definitely melodic, while the turntable itself, when not striking or plucking the bands, unleashes strange grinding rhythms, peppered with percussive scapes, haunting textural whirs, the rhythms almost tribal, often skeletal and sparse, but just as often dense and layered, when the records are included in the sound making, the various manipulated grooves, spit out even more strange clicks and moans and bleeps and even some strangely appropriate counter rhythms.
Absolutely fantastic stuff, we would imagine as amazing to see as to hear, lucky for us, there's a good chance, Hess will be in the US soon, and will hopefully be visiting aQ for a demonstration / performance.

STROTTER INST. Live Act At Oblo (1000+1 Tilt) cd 12.98
We've said it a million times, but it bears repeating, we love turntables, and scratchy records, and the sounds of both, we even (especially) love the sound of both with the music removed. Or at least most of the music removed. Fuzz and crackle and buzz and pop and warble and whir. All the sounds people try desperately to remove from their listening experience is exactly what we want piled on top of ours. In fact, all the crackle and surface noise that audio nerds discard, well, they should save it all up and bequeath it to us to sprinkle, dollop, pour, douse all of our music with. So it was really a no brainer that the debut cd from Strotter Inst. would be record of the week here at AQ (as it was just a few weeks ago). Strotter is the work of one man, Swiss turntablist / sound artist Christoph Hess, who takes old turntables, augments them with various wires and elastic bands, pieces of metal and all sorts of found objects, and then creates gorgeously spartan symphonies of rhythm and texture using just the turntable and the stylus, no records at all. No music. The turntable becomes an instrument capable of more than just playing other peoples' music, it is a sound making device, an instrument as viable as any other. Although with a truly unique palette of sounds, reminiscent of some strange minimal electronica, albeit with a much more organic feel.
This disc captures a performance recorded live to minidisc at Oblo Cinema in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April of 2005. And is a gloriously hypnotic soundscape of glitchy beats, warm textural drones and strange low end strums, all locked into hypnotic loops, that slowly shift and drift in and out of sync as more turntables join the fray, or as the speeds of the turntables change, or as various implements shift. The set begins with a lush drone, difficult to imagine how it's produced, but it is warm and deep and quite organic sounding. Soon the sound of the reverberating bands are introduced, sounding a lot like some muted guitar, playing a simple low end figure, the notes coming faster and faster until the whole thing stumbles into a shambolic rhythm, a loping lurch, with occasional bursts of needle squelch, eventually settling into a dreamy motorik groove. The set seesaws back and forth between strange machinelike rhythms and stretches of drone and rumble. Right toward the end there is a burst of super distorted NOISE which slowly gives way to the final rhythmic groove, that slowly winds down, notes drifting off until all that is left is a single mechanical pulse. So nice.
Comes packaged in a cool cardstock sleeve with a little diecut circle perfectly above the hole in the center of the cd. More nods to the record and its design. The picture of Christoph Hess on the inside of the booklet looks like some old faded textbook photo of Einstein Or Edison, hunched over his machines, modified turntables in this case, a study of a quirky inventor, Strotter as the sound of antiquated machinery, of objects reassigned to new tasks, the tireless pursuit of technology recontextualization, only adding to the whole vibe of Hess' music being some recently unearthed or discovered scratchy, crackly sonic artifact.
MPEG Stream: "Live Act At Oblo"

STROTTER INST. Minenhund (Hinterzimmer / Public Guilt) cd 12.98
It's been almost 3 years since we've heard from turntable mad scientist and alchemist Strotter Inst., whose haunting mechanical record player mini-symphonies evokes mysterious worlds, populated with shadow creatures and amorphous figures operating strange turntable like machinery, everything shaded grey, with a patina of rust, or perhaps dust, the machines wheezing as turntables spin lugubriously, multiple tone arms like a child's mechanical toy octopus, everything held together by rubber bands and bits of strings, a Rube Goldberg style contraption, designed to create a new world of sound, the above mentioned shadowy kingdom, where we can wander and get lost.
Strotter Inst. is Swiss musician / tinkerer Christoph Hess, who customizes old turntables, using whatever is at hand, to create loop making machines, collages of skipping sounds, but unlike the playful melodiousness of Pierre Bastien, or the gauzy ambient drift of Philip Jeck, Strotter's sound is much more raw, and almost heavy, feral even, tons of low end, drones everywhere, hiss and buzz and rumble, in fact much of the time, the turntable sounds like it has been transformed into some sort of instrument of destruction, conjuring up some seriously abject Wolf Eyesian dirgescapes, heaving and roiling expanses of looped blackness, as if some evil genius unleashed his army of automatons, a landscape dotted with Steampunk style contraptions, all gears and ratchets, spewing steam and lurching forward in unison, in fact much of the time, if one didn't know better, one might not even realize that the music of Strotter Inst. was created with turntables. Until the sound shifts, and suddenly a staticky crackly record begins to skip, and becomes the rhythmic source for whatever might come next. Sometimes the sound will hew close to that stuttering skeletal framework, other times, the skipping record is immediately engulfed by thick slabs of sonic blackness, churning machinelike whirs, and percussive low end thrum, this is industrial music for sure, especially if the industry in question was antique turntables. Seriously though, the sounds here are occasionally pretty intense, and heavy and abrasive, which sort of shames the various noisemakers who need a table top full of pedals and a bunch of amps, and a million patch cords and cd players and mixers to make their music, especially when one old man with a handful of record players, a pocket full of rubber bands, a soldering iron and a pile of turntable parts, can kick up a rhythmic din just as hard and heavy as any of 'em. But it's definitely not all hard and heavy, those blasts are balanced by long loping stretches of motorik rhythms, looped and hypnotic, locked into totally mesmerizing grooves, a symphony of percussive thumps and twanging rubber bands woven into strange alien krautrocky dirges.
So fantastic! We often forget to include him in the aQ turntable pantheon, but he absolutely belongs: Jeck, Tetreault, Otomo, Bastien, Fun Years, and Strotter Inst.!!
Packaged in a beautiful cardstock sleeve, with a super striking fold out poster.
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STROTTER INST. Monstranz (Everest) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We got TWO new amazing titles from this past record of the week honoree, so we figured we ought to also get some copies of that -record of the week- back in stock too for those of you who missed it first time around! So here you go, former AQ record of the week (list #239) and LONG time AQ fave finally back in stock!
The turntable has to be the greatest instrument ever invented. At least the greatest instrument that was never actually intended to -be- an instrument, or to be -played- at all. What was a revolutionary breakthrough in the playback of popular music, eventually became the ultimate plunderphonic device, with a sonic palette only as limited as your record collection, and then not even limited by that. Broken records, shards of different records glued together, discs made out of wax, or sand paper, or stone, or plastic, or even no records at all, just the sounds of the turntable and the needle. We're not talking DJ's playing records either. Sure we dig that stuff too, but we're talking about people MAKING music out of bits and pieces, scraps and shards, creating whole new worlds of sound. Hard to say what it is exactly about the sound of a needle on vinyl that moves us so, it's warm, and fuzzy, and imperfect, maybe it's the sound of our childhoods, our early musical discoveries, but whatever it is, we love that sound, the whir and hiss, the pop and crackle, for all the striving for pristine perfect digital sound, we can't help but lean in the exact opposite direction, loving our music to be rough and murky, thick with warm warble and rain like static, a hiss that is all age and character and texture.
A small group of like minded artists have been exploring the possibilities of the turntable for years, the early experiments of Milan Knizak and his broken music, the grand and gorgeous soundscapes of Phillip Jeck, the vinyl sculptures of Christian Marclay and Martin Tetreault, the rhythmic playfulness of Pierre Bastien, Otomo Yoshihide's turntable explorations in Ground Zero, the minimal compositions of Institut Fuer Feinmotorik, utilizing the runoff grooves, and between song ambience to construct their pieces, and on and on.
For over a decade Swiss sound artist Christoph Hess had been experimenting with turntables, tape loops, skipping records, before deciding to jettison any and all music made by other musicians, and instead using just the turntable itself to create sound. Thus was born Strotter Inst. Five customized turntables, each rigged up with pieces of metal, strings and wires, elastic bands, allowed to spin at different RPMs, each turntable contributing a subtle element, creating dense tangled soundscapes of rhythm and texture. Loping and hypnotic, repetitive and mesmerizing. Low rumbling reverberations, slow stuttering twangs, these modified turntables sound remarkably like some sort of long stringed instrument with strings tightened just enough to stay on, but loose enough that they sort of buzz and rumble, pulse and throb. The framework for each track is a sort of lowend turntable riff, the wires and bands and cords are struck and plucked by the revolving turntable, creating slow slithery rhythms, within each a very subtle muted melody, everything slowly morphs and shifts as the various turntables sync up and then drift apart. Imagine the sound of five bass players, all playing simple slow melodies on primitive one string basses, and imagine them playing similar parts, but at slightly different tempos. A slow moving, motorik soundscape of thump and thrum. And around these loping rhythms are soft fuzzy clouds of crackle and hiss, the sound of the needles scraping the surface of the turntables, or skidding across pieces of metal, these contrasting sounds are dense and rich, sounding almost like super distorted vocals at one moment, thick washes of feedback the next. The sound may be simple and subtle, but it's also intense and overwhelming, like Jeck spinning Skullflower, or Marclay armed with only some Mingus bass solo dubplates, or a Tiermes / Bastien soundclash. So dark and mysterious and totally pure and primal sounding. This is SOUND as much as it is music. This is the turntable as musical instrument. This is rhythm and rhythms, this is machine music, but a machine freed from its shackles, a new instrument, born, loosed, unleashed. Amazing.
Amazingly packaged in a die cut cardstock digipak, a large circular hole cut in the front, a smaller hole in the back, so you can see straight through. The front cover has imbedded in it an actual piece of plastic with record grooves etched into it, playable on your turntable! In fact when you listen to the cd you'll notice the first track is all silence, that's because the first track is actually on the sleeve, while the final track is only downloadable from the Strotter website, managing to subtly connect our history of recorded music, a release that is only complete as a record, a cd and an mp3.
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STROTTER INST. Schlepper (self-released) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now, we probably don't need to mention how much we love the turntable as instrument. And to that end, how much we love the sounds of damaged vinyl, or modified turntables, the hiss and skipping and pops and crackles and loops... Or how much we love Jeck and Tetriault and Yoshihide and Bastien and Brumit and Gum and Loop Orchestra and Marclay and anyone who ever smashed up or scraped up their records and then played them anyway, and maybe did that with two turntables or three or a hundred, creating whole new wonderful pieces of music out of misused and abused players and scratched and screwed up fragments of other folks' music. So when we discovered Strotter, aka Swiss turntablist Christoph Hess, we were already sold. Here's an older gentleman, who adds pieces of metal, and elastic bands, and extra needles and multiple tone arms to his turntables. And then uses old records and these customized turntable to create gorgeously hypnotic looped minimal soundscapes. It was only a matter of time before he decided to fuck with the actual pressing process as well. Thus we have two new vinyl only releases, an etched 12" and a strangely cut and mastered 7".
The 12" consists of 4 short tracks spread out over 12 vast inches of vinyl. The A side features the grooveless outer few inches, minus one locked groove every few centimeters, instead, the name of the record and the artist have been written there in silver marker. The first track is a strange world of stuttering static and slowly growing glitches and pops that build into a mini cacophony. The second track is a clattery array of clicks over a propuslive throbbing bass thud, that also builds, but in this case to an abstract low end jazz dirge, like the upright bass breakdown of some old blue note standard, chopped up and skipped into a little stutter.
The B side has no grooves on the inside half of the lp, instead it has a super detailed etching of two rats. The first track on side B sounds almost like Circle, if they were rendered in the simplest possible sonic manifestation, basic lines and shapes, super stripped down tonal colors, an ultra skeletal krautrock groove assembled from nothing but clicks and glitches and rumbling bass pulses. Track two is all reverberating low end, pulses coming rapid fire until they almost become a drone, tempered by tiny distant upper register sparkles.
The disc is housed in a thick plastic sleeve, bound to a printed, embossed thick card stock panel by an elastic band, just like the ones used on the Strotter turntables. So cool.

STUMPS Split Fleet Dodge (Palindrone) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Stumps are total NZ noise rock royalty. Antony Milton (AM, Mrtyu, Nether Dawn, etc.) James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles) and Stephen Clover (Seht). With some special guest action from Birchville Cat Motel's Campbell Kneale. phew, what else needs to be said? Much like the 3" cd released on the Grey Daturas' label recently (and of which we have a VERY few copies left), somehow, the combined sum of the Stumps' parts is less than the what you might imagine. More minimal at least. The record opens with a ghostly keening whir, way off in the distance, murky and fuzzy... eventually drums kick in giving the proceedings a definite Dead C vibe, a laid back blown out noise rock peppered with free jazz drum splatter, that sort of careens haphazardly over thick slabs of distant distorted riffage. This goes on for a whole side, and while there are different songs, they sort of drift together into one glorious whole.
Side two is similar, in that there are three songs that all seem to be movements of the same song. But this second suite starts off with wild disembodied prog keyboards, swirly and splattery, with little bits of drum damage here and there, some sort of 'noise rock prog' which is most definitely a good thing. Eventually the track morphs into a heavy, groovy, fuggy Pink Floyd seventies fuzz jam, albeit more warbly and damaged, sounding a bit like someone was fucking with the pitch control while it was being recorded. Eventually the fuzz dissipates and the track settles into a dreamy and mellow SUNNO)))-lite fade out of crumbling distant guitars and soft focus barely there melodies, a murky low end ambience that eventually fades into nothingness.

STUMPS, THE Dry Eyed Twitch (Cycle) (Diagnosis...Don't! ) 3"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.
One of three new 3" cd-r releases on the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis ... Don't! label, each super limited, and housed in cool hand made packaging.
Pretty much impossible to imagine a more star studded NZ free rock band than this. Sure Mr. Kneale's absent, as are a Russell and a Morely, but shit this trio is already bursting at the seams and ready to blow. The Stumps, the trio of which we happen to be speaking, is made up of equal parts
Antony Milton (AM, Mrtyu, Nether Dawn, etc.), James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles) and Stephen Clover (Seht). Holy shit is right (that is what you were thinking, right?)! Three tracks, nineteen minutes. Total transcendental free noise drone rock bliss!!
The opening track is nine minutes of deeeeeeeep dreamy drone. Distant melodies smeared into fuzzy clouds, occasional bursts of distorted guitar muted and stretched apart into shimmery drones, a final build into a thick wall of white noise whir, high end peals and crumbling feedback. The second track is a full on rock jam, a stumbling Dead C like groove, lurching through a dense swirl of fuzzy synths, grinding guitars and squealing feedback. A killer slab of off kilter, drone drenched psych rock. The final track falls somewhere between the first two, droney and abstract, but with fuzzy bass, and jagged streaks of psychguitar, thick swirls of cymbal sizzle, and distant squalls of guitar freakout. Awesome.
AS ALWAYS, ULTRA SUPER LIMITED!! We only got about 30, and probably won't be able to get more...
Packaged in thick textured paper black mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
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STUMPS, THE Dry Eyed Twitch (Cycle) (Diagnosis...Don't! ) 3"cd-r 6.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
One of three new 3" cd-r releases on the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis ... Don't! label, each super limited, and housed in cool hand made packaging.
Pretty much impossible to imagine a more star studded NZ free rock band than this. Sure Mr. Kneale's absent, as are a Russell and a Morely, but shit this trio is already bursting at the seams and ready to blow. The Stumps, the trio of which we happen to be speaking, is made up of equal parts
Antony Milton (AM, Mrtyu, Nether Dawn, etc.), James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles) and Stephen Clover (Seht). Holy shit is right (that is what you were thinking, right?)! Three tracks, nineteen minutes. Total transcendental free noise drone rock bliss!!
The opening track is nine minutes of deeeeeeeep dreamy drone. Distant melodies smeared into fuzzy clouds, occasional bursts of distorted guitar muted and stretched apart into shimmery drones, a final build into a thick wall of white noise whir, high end peals and crumbling feedback. The second track is a full on rock jam, a stumbling Dead C like groove, lurching through a dense swirl of fuzzy synths, grinding guitars and squealing feedback. A killer slab of off kilter, drone drenched psych rock. The final track falls somewhere between the first two, droney and abstract, but with fuzzy bass, and jagged streaks of psychguitar, thick swirls of cymbal sizzle, and distant squalls of guitar freakout. Awesome.
AS ALWAYS, ULTRA SUPER LIMITED!! We only got about 30, and probably won't be able to get more...
Packaged in thick textured paper black mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
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STUMPS, THE The Black Wood (Last Visible Dog) cd 9.98
In a dream, you've gotten yourself lost in an endless cavern... you've been curiously wandering in the darkness, down down into the earth, for a long long time. When you stop to rest, you realize that the silence that had surrounded you is different now. You think you can hear music... drifting from someplace deeper in the darkness. Drifting, droning, dark, dark, dark... that's this music, the reverberant, cavernous, quiet sounds of The Stumps. Sleepy and creepy at the same time. You move closer, and The Stumps get louder. Troglodytic thud and rumble begins to build. That's the beauty of this album, these tracks are part whale call mystery, part trashy crashy garage rock clangor. Ambient eeriness flows into plodding free rock chaos, with heavy distortion blanketing all. The twelve and a half minute untitled track number 5 (none have titles, as far as we can tell) is all about that drone-drift, whilst track 7, for instance, rouses itself to a spaced-out, slow-motion spasm of psychedelic guitar grind-gunk and percussive splatter-clatter.
The Stumps trio of drummer James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles), bassist Stephen Clover (Seht), and guitarist Antony Milton (Mrtyu, AM, Nether Dawn, etc.) is a New Zealand underground supergroup, by the way. No wonder they're so easily so shambolic, somnolent, and sinister sounding... Outside of their own cd-r littered island realm, we couldn't compare this to much else besides, maybe, Fushitsusha.
Welcome to the cavern, welcome to the dream.
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STUNT ROCK Regret Instruction Manual Issue 03 (Addict / CLFST) 10" / book / sticker / poster / button / cd-r 15.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Holy crap those suicidal black metallers have nothing on Stunt Rock. At least in terms of pure self loathing misery. They talk a good game, and the music is appropriately miserable and melancholy, but their depression is so abstract, so much so that in some cases, it sounds as much like a gimmick as 'Satanism'. But this is indeed depression. Misery. REGRET. Past Stunt Rock releases didn't really give any idea that all this lurked below the surface, but this release more than hints at it, it takes his Stunt Rock heart, and pins it open, like a high school dissected frog, letting us poke and prod, and examine all the blackness inside.
It's also pretty funny too, if you think folks like Ivan Brunetti are hilarious, which we do. In fact, this is totally the record we could imagine Brunetti releasing. And it is in fact a sort of instruction manual, covering such topics as to how to choose a new mate, and to avoid the mistakes you made in past relationships. A page of little tags to place on your belongings for after you die when people dig through your stuff (for your pornography stash, for your box of old love letters, etc.), a very Brunetti like comic detailing a botched suicide attempt among other things.
The Prescreening A Potential Love Interest multiple choice form is amazing, it goes on for pages and pages, and is so gloriously black hearted. The there's the Learning To Forget & Adjusting To Living Alone section, also pages and pages, teaching you to do just as the title says, try different routes to work, repaint, get a new social circle, new wardrobe, but it's super well written, wry and bitter, fucking brutal here and there. There's also an activity section, with a form to write down all the songs you want played at your funeral (the first is filled out for you, Creed's "My Own Prison" haha), as well as a sort of last will style form, with spaces for things you want to leave for folks, as well as spaces for the people you want to make sure DON'T get anything (and the specific things you want to make sure they don't get. There's also an amazing section called Upsetting Things You Wrote When You Were Young. Poems, letters, lists of people who wronged you. But they're all blacked out CIA document style, leaving just the caustic comments by the author. All of this is gorgeously hand drawn and printed in a 10" book housed in a super nice cardstock screen printed hand numbered cover, each one hand numbered, the front a three color illustration of a blood splattered sink.
And there's a record. a 2 song 10", two parts of the same piece, titled somewhat cryptically "Dear Christian Girl (Parts One And Two)", a DJ Shadow style indie rock soundscape, lots of amazing (and amazingly depressing) samples, funny, fucked up, sad, melancholy, the song simple and hooky, but stretched out into a more electronic sort of groove, with thick buzzing synths wrapped around the Slint-y guitars, loping rock drumming, subtle hooks, no proper vocals, instead, the tale of the mysterious Christian Girl and Stunt Rock's saga of regret is told in a continuous mix of voices and sounds, of vignettes and fragments, in shuffling beats and melancholy melodies. Pretty great. And the perfect companion for the book. And as if that weren't enough, you also get a cd-r, with the same music as on the 10". All told, you get a 10" vinyl record, a 32 page book with hand silk screened covers, 3 Stickers, 1 Button, a cd-r and 1 of 4 different hand silk screened posters.
And we know all those forms are jokes, but we're really tempted to fill them out. Fun and funny, but only if you're a twisted bitter old crank, like us!

STURM, BOB. L. Music From The Ocean (Composer Scientist Recordings) cd 9.98
This record seems like it was made for AQ. A scientist, Bob Sturm, attaches microphones to buoys to record different oceanic events. These events translated into sound become gorgeous deep drones, and haunting alien soundscapes. Right up there with the singing telephone wires of Alan Lamb or the subtle vibrations recorded by Toshia Tsunoda. A natural phenomenon that can be studied and explored as sound. That would be enough right there, since the sounds speak for themselves. Gorgeous shimmery ripples, dark muted metallic buzz, if we didn't tell you, you'd probably believe this was some strange limited drone cd-r or a new release from Jonathan Coleclough or Andrew Chalk. But Sturm is a scientist, and these sounds are just one part of his study of the ocean, the atmosphere and their behaviors. So the booklet is packed with serious scientific data, graphs, measurements, algorithms and photos. Included is a research paper AND a Flash presentation on the "sonification of ocean buoy spectral data" originally presented at the 2002 International Conference On Auditory Display held in Kyoto, Japan. Holy crap. This is some dense stuff. But even if the science is way over your head, or all you want is some deep dark mysterious music, then dig in. The track lengths tend to be short, but they manage to blend into long stretches of drifting dreamy drone, very minimal and soft focus, many of the tracks have a strange metallic tang, that sounds more like some alien reverb, giving the drones a steel string like buzz, a few tracks are much more active, high end hiss, and prickly fuzz, but for the most part, the oceanic data translates into huge cavernous rumbles, delicate glistening murmurs, or soft billowing clouds of whirring vibration. So completely captivating. And for the drone obsessed among you, absolutely essential!
MPEG Stream: "5000V"
MPEG Stream: "3000V"
MPEG Stream: "35000v + 30"
MPEG Stream: "2800v - 1330"
MPEG Stream: "15000v - 10360"
MPEG Stream: "Flipl(Cumsum(Randn(1,64)))"
MPEG Stream: "9-Band"
MPEG Stream: "Random Spectral Bins"

STYGIAN STRIDE s/t (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
Fans of Emeralds and Oneohtrix, here's another fine slab of spacey cyclic synth throb that ought to be right up your alley - the Thrill Jockey debut from Stygian Stride, aka Jimmy SeiTang of AQ faves Rhyton and Psychic Ills. On this solo effort, SeiTang offers up seven tracks of mesmeric electronic pulsations and zoned-out 2001 space odyssey atmospherics, created via vintage analog machines, all very krauty & kosmische, a la Cluster and Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in the '70s, and also very much beholden to Jean-Michel Jarre (whom we should probably name-check more often, really almost as much as we do John Carpenter!).
It's good stuff, definitely up there with the aforementioned Emeralds and OPN, and Steve Moore and Majeure, also reminding us a bit of Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury's rejected Judge Dredd soundtrack Drokk, the more rhythmic parts anyway, while elsewhere Stygian Stride's machine-based improv does the does the ambient drifting-in-space thing, sometimes slightly sinister soundtrack-sounding, quietly creeping but quite pleasant too. Very much recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Celestial Stems"
MPEG Stream: "Drift "
MPEG Stream: "Taiga"

STYGIAN STRIDE s/t (Thrill Jockey) lp 17.98
Fans of Emeralds and Oneohtrix, here's another fine slab of spacey cyclic synth throb that ought to be right up your alley - the Thrill Jockey debut from Stygian Stride, aka Jimmy SeiTang of AQ faves Rhyton and Psychic Ills. On this solo effort, SeiTang offers up seven tracks of mesmeric electronic pulsations and zoned-out 2001 space odyssey atmospherics, created via vintage analog machines, all very krauty & kosmische, a la Cluster and Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in the '70s, and also very much beholden to Jean-Michel Jarre (whom we should probably name-check more often, really almost as much as we do John Carpenter!).
It's good stuff, definitely up there with the aforementioned Emeralds and OPN, and Steve Moore and Majeure, also reminding us a bit of Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury's rejected Judge Dredd soundtrack Drokk, the more rhythmic parts anyway, while elsewhere Stygian Stride's machine-based improv does the does the ambient drifting-in-space thing, sometimes slightly sinister soundtrack-sounding, quietly creeping but quite pleasant too. Very much recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Celestial Stems"
MPEG Stream: "Drift "
MPEG Stream: "Taiga"

SUBARACHNOID SPACE Eight Bells (Strange Attractors) lp 22.00
Now available on vinyl!
Back in the old days, when space rock heavies SubArachnoid Space called SF home, we sort of took them for granted, they played all the time, and opened for pretty much every cool band that came to town, so without trying, it was easy to end up seeing them play every week or two. But then two things happened. They moved away, so suddenly they weren't ever playing around town, and second, and maybe more importantly, they started to get heavier, and more fucked up, and way more metal, which made us want to see them so we could check out the new, more heavy SubSpace.
But we've been keeping tabs on them through recordings, 2005's The Red Veil was the last one we reviewed, and even back then, we were already talking about them appealing to fans of Kinski and Yeti and Tarantula Hawk, and if anything in the 3 years since, they've gotten way spacier and way heavier, and this is the proof, Eight Bells, released on weirdo heavy label Crucial Blast, and it's a pretty good fit, 5 songs, the shortest a little over 5 minutes, the longest well over 13, every one a tripped out Hawkwinded blow out, effects drenched and psychedelic, propulsive and super rocking, epic and intense, the guitars thick and distorted, the arrangements pretty complex and intricate for space rock, none of that jam at the same tempo for 10 minutes (not that there's anything wrong with that) but it definitely keeps things interesting, and in fact, if we had to classify the new SubSpace, we'd probably call it metallic space prog, which is obviously a good thing.
"Hunter Seeker" starts off all eighties Big Country style, with a cool effected stuttery guitar part, before the rest of the band launches into a woozy doomy dirge, and over the course of the next 12 minutes, flits from spaced out dreamy ambience, to chugging almost metal, to soaring Godspeed like drama, to full on noise rock. The last three tracks find the band slipping from droney drift to dense psychedelic blowout to pounding space/math rock and back again, culminating in the super frenzied explosive last couple minutes that has us imagining how good this stuff must sound live these days.
Produced by Stephen Ray Lobdell (Faust, Davis Redford Triad), who's now a SubArachoid member weirdly enough! And it boasts cool Stephen Kasner cover art...
MPEG Stream: "Lilith"
MPEG Stream: "Hunter Seeker"

SUBARACHNOID SPACE These Things Take Time (Release) cd 12.98
Another new one from effects-laden guitarist Mason Jones and his prolific SF-based space rock combo. Lots of deep, trancey grooves to sink into, with '70s haze galore. At turns murky and then shimmering, slowly oozing and then propulsive.

SUDDEN INFANT Invocation Of The Aural Slave Gods (Blossoming Noise) cd 10.00
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"Featuring former SPK/Lustmord member Annie Subbs on vocals/percussion and Joke Lanz of Catholic Boys in Heavy Leather and Schimpfluch-Gruppe fame on 'noise toys', London duo Sudden Infant begin their industrialised invocation with a soothing, wave crashing, meditation instruction tape that sounds eerily like the voice of Margaret Thatcher before a barrage of broken glass, pump action shot gun blasting and ugly machinery shreds the illusion. 'Noise Relaxation' sets the mood for the rest of the album, a fearsome yet playful crashing together of mechanical noise with slivers of Suicide, tremors of early Current 93 and even a nod to Pierre Henry imbedded into it. These are then occasionally invaded by distorted cover versions of Cabaret Voltaire and Roxy Music tunes, or overlaid wit unsettling Phil Minton-like throat warblings and regurgitations. A strange beast indeed, all topped of with cover art that samples an unaccredited arcane drawing from magician, poet and mountaineer Aleister Crowley's Satanic sketchbook." For a comical, vomit splattered reinterpretation of Wolf Eyes, look no further!

SUDDEN OAK Banquet Years (Stunned) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Been hearing lots about Portland's Stunned records, and we're happy to finally have one of their beautifully packaged tapes for your listening/viewing pleasure. This one comes from San Francisco's own sax and guitar duo Sudden Oak. Matt Erickson, who also rips it up solo under the name Radiant Husk, sends soaring sax tones up through the atmosphere while John Ward's guitar feedback freak-outs lay bubbling below. Together the duo travel through strange noise-jazz lands, up and over urban creep zones that move and flow into fluid rhythms and fucked up loops. Picture an old Pharaoh Sanders tape echoing through a blown out amp in a water tank, so weird and so rad. Limited to an edition of 111, each with pro-printed j-cards plus insert, these are already sold out at the source, so act fast if you want one of these beauties.

SUFFER THE SHARDS OF THE LOST CULT OF SILENCE Cult Is Religion Vol. 1 (Video Horror Show) VHS + download 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
OK all you underground obscuro black metal freaks and obsolete format obsessives and fucked up video nasty collectors and super limited release weirdos, gather round this awesome audio/sonic artifact, you are definitely gonna want one of these. And you better act fast, cuz it's limited to 50 copies, and is already out of print, and we have the LAST 12 COPIES! Why should you care? Well for one, it's a brand new 30 minute improvised track of blasting droned out psychedelic black metal mesmer from some mysterious horde called Suffer the Shards Of The Lost Cult Of Silence, which features members of aQ black metal faves Woe and Absu, AND it's the soundtrack to a twisted nightmarish video collage, an eye popping video mashup of all manner of demented scenes from horror movies, sci-fi flicks, giallos, and who knows what else, a dizzying head spinning barrage of twisted imagery, the perfect accompaniment to STSOTLCOS's sprawling blown out black buzz, "inspired by the endless depths of infinite darkness", the sound lurching from noise drenched chaotic black pound to spaced out murky creep, to gnarled atonal doomic pound to blazing Norwegian style epic majesty, the whole thing lo-fi and wreathed in a cavernous gauze of blurred and blackened production, raw and grim and spooky and fucking awesome.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in white clamshell VHS cases with two color hand screened inserts, recorded onto purple VHS tapes, and comes with a download code (just for the music) as well!

SUGIMOTO, TAKU Fragments Of Paradise (Creativeman Disc) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Real beautiful, slow, quiet, stringed-instrument improvisations from Sugimoto and cohorts.

SUGIMOTO, TAKU Guitar Quartet (Bottrop-Boy) cd 16.98
We're always been interested in the work of Japanese improvisor Taku Sugimoto. There's no one else quite like him, though one could draw some parallels to the work of sometime collaborator Kevin Drumm, the solo guitar work of David Grubbs, and certainly several of Sugimoto's peers in the Tokyo "onkyo" improv scene like Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Otomo Yoshihide -- three gents who, not surprisingly, constitute Sugimoto's Guitar Quartet on this disc along with Sugimoto himself, some playing acoustic, and some playing electric guitars. Now, usually we prefer to hear Sugimoto just by himself, because recordings with collaborators usually get cluttered up with other people's playing, which tends to detract from the beauty of Sugimoto's restrained, minimal aesthetic. But this guitar quartet doesn't suffer from that at all -- indeed, it's really hard to imagine that there's actually four guys playing on this, as the results sound like they were barely there at all! Over these two half-hour plus tracks, the ratio of sheer silence to notes actually played is quite high, as we of course expect from Taku Sugimoto & co., whose careful placement of sound in silence leads to active, anticipatory listening from the audience. This leads us to wonder about their working practice in recording this -- it's over an hour long, but maybe there's actually ten minutes, if that, of audible "music" spread out over that hour. So, did they just play ten minutes worth and then "stretch it out" in ProTools? Or did they play for hours and hours and then edit the recording down to cd-length, picking the best stuff, silence included? Even if this is simply the entirety of a live performance (which it probably is), it's interesting to imagine the silent interaction of non-verbal gestures and delayed musical cues between the musicians, to say who was going to play something and when, with everybody most of the time just sitting there. All that's not to imply that this isn't worthwhile, you just have to be ready for what goes to a particular extreme of "difficult" listening. I personally enjoy it very much. Patience, and anticipation, and concentration, are required of the listener -- it's a meditative experience of sorts, and its beauty is in part your heightened awareness of your own environment.
RealAudio clip: "Aria"

SUGIMOTO, TAKU & ANNETTE KREBS Eine Gitarre Ist Eine Gitarre Ist Keine Gitarre Ist Eine Gitarre... (Slub Music) cd 15.98
Japanese guitar improviser Taku Sugimoto (whose gentle, sparse style has made him an AQ-fave) teams up with German electro-acoustic guitarist Annette Krebs (who must live in Japan, as she constantly collaborates in that scene), to make a duo record of popping, scraping, droning, hissing, chiming, buzzing, crackling sounds for Sugimoto's Slub label. Sugimoto's measured, quiet playing, with his isolated melodic moments, is almost too fragile to successfully blend with the random percussive sound-events being conjured by Krebs (we assume, though of course it's hard to tell who is making what sound). This Eine Gitarre Ist... disc certainly IS worthy of investigation by Sugimoto and/or Krebs fans (and Keith Rowe or Kevin Drumm fans too for that matter), but to be honest we'd rather have seen this live, and just listen to a solo Sugimoto disc at home. There IS plenty of the silence and near-silence that characterizes Sugimoto's style, it's just that it too often comes as a relief from the parts that sound like someone (Krebs most likely) is slowly breaking her guitar into little bits. We like to listen to stuff like that too, just not when Sugimoto is playing. But others may disagree, so check it out.
RealAudio clip: "track 1"
RealAudio clip: "track 3"

SUGIMOTO, TAKU / DRUMM, KEVIN Den (Sonoris) cd 14.98
Another meeting between these two friends and improvisers, Tokyo guitarist Sugimoto and Chicago guitarist Drumm. Their guitars (and electronics) will gently and delicate scrape at your brain. It's all very abstract and pretty and full of tiny sounds, good with earphones. Quite nice.

SUMMONS OF SHINING RUINS Bud Variations (Dead Pilot) cassette 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Summons Of Shining Ruins is the nom de plume of Japanese post-shoegazing guitarist Shinobu Nemoto, who had released a rather exceptional piece of cinematic ambience for Experimedia in 2009 that came and went rather quickly. This is another one that will disappear in the blink of an eye as well, given the tiny edition of this pressing. There's only 53 copies around, probably due to the inclusion in the packaging of an antique chemists label culled from chain of British drug stores that at one time sold such things as 'liquid extract cascara sagrada' and 'camphorated oil.' A nifty piece of esoterica to go along with this tape of woozy, muffled drones from Nemoto. The tracks are much less dramatic than the album he did for Experimedia, instead these sullen ambient movements slowly waver along grey streamlined tones with upwelling melodies moving to the foreground from time to time. Certainly on par with the murky cassette work that Maeror Tri and Troum produced way back when, or maybe even some of the Lovesliescrushing driftworks but given a tape hiss makeover. Nice.

SUN I'll Be The Same (Staubgold) cd 15.98
The sun is warm, the sun lights the way, the sun brings life... what's in a name? Well, it's certainly no misnomer for this group. It'll Be The Same is the second album from Sun, not to be confused with SUNNO))), although these guys are also a duo (Oren Ambarchi and Chris Townsend) and half of 'em (Mr. Ambarchi) have collaborated with SUNNO))) in the past. This Sun isn't from Southern Lord, but from the southern hemisphere (Australia), and play purely pop music, slow and soft and hushed but nothing doomy or blackened at all... some gentle droniness certainly does creep in, experimental glitch techniques n' textures that are of course what we might expect from Oren Ambarchi, who after all is known for solo albums along those lines (in fact, there's a great new one by him, actually on Southern Lord, reviewed on this list too). There are layers of static and field recordings (Townsend's children's voices, perhaps?) that along with Oren and Chris's own voices and guitar strums are formed into six moodily relaxed, truly sun-dappled, electro-acoustic folky-pop songs... a calm, cryptically detailed setting for lovely, wistful vocals that remind us of the Skygreen Leopards' Glenn Donaldson and Richard Youngs.
We loved Sun's first self-titled album (and extra disc of experimental remixes) back in 2003, and are happy to finally hear this excellent follow-up!
MPEG Stream: "Mosquito"
MPEG Stream: "Help Yerself"

SUN I'll Be The Same (Important) lp 16.98
Also now on vinyl! Here's our review of the cd, highlighted last time: The sun is warm, the sun lights the way, the sun brings life... what's in a name? Well, it's certainly no misnomer for this group. It'll Be The Same is the second album from Sun, not to be confused with SUNNO))), although these guys are also a duo (Oren Ambarchi and Chris Townsend) and half of 'em (Mr. Ambarchi) have collaborated with SUNNO))) in the past. This Sun isn't from Southern Lord, but from the southern hemisphere (Australia), and play purely pop music, slow and soft and hushed but nothing doomy or blackened at all... some gentle droniness certainly does creep in, experimental glitch techniques n' textures that are of course what we might expect from Oren Ambarchi, who after all is known for solo albums along those lines (in fact, there's a great new one by him, actually on Southern Lord, reviewed on this list too). There are layers of static and field recordings (Townsend's children's voices, perhaps?) that along with Oren and Chris's own voices and guitar strums are formed into six moodily relaxed, truly sun-dappled, electro-acoustic folky-pop songs... a calm, cryptically detailed setting for lovely, wistful vocals that remind us of the Skygreen Leopards' Glenn Donaldson and Richard Youngs.
We loved Sun's first self-titled album (and extra disc of experimental remixes) back in 2003, and are happy to finally hear this excellent follow-up!
MPEG Stream: "Mosquito"
MPEG Stream: "Help Yerself"

SUN s/t (Staubgold) 2cd 16.98
Aussie guitar experimentalist Oren Ambarchi has been a prolific gent of late, mainly doing droney improv glitch stuff we've been diggin'. But we know there's other musical sides to his personality as well -- after all, we first encountered him playing in the loud n' noisy scatological Boredoms/Buttholes influenced band Phlegm back in the early '90s. So now here's another, new and different Ambarchi project, a duo by the name of Sun (not to be confused with the doomster duo Sunn) that pairs Ambarchi with one Chris Townend (described as an "Australian music figurehead" whatever that means). And it's not noise, or drone, or improv, or electronics -- it's full on indie-pop! Really nice too, with laid back drum beats, gentle vocals, and pretty guitar strum. They're called Sun (and there's some la la las sung) but they'll have you thinking of rainy days too with their lazy, wistful songs. It's got that 60s Beatles/Floyd filtered through 90s indie-pop thing, like a Elephant 6 band or the Aislers Set or something.
Originally released in 2001 in Australia only, Sun's debut has now been licensed by Staubgold for the rest of the planet. What's great is that they've also tacked on a 2nd bonus disc of remixes, featuring all the tracks from the album redone (or done in) by the likes of Pluramon, Hrvatski, Christoph Heeman, Rafael Toral, Pimmon, Mapstation, Tom Recchion and Norbert Moslang of Voice Crack! Quite an international lineup of experimental artists there, reinterpreting the music of Sun in ways closer to what you're used to hearing from Ambarchi. Droney and fucked up, these mixes add a lot to the package, making it not just real nice but really interesting as well. And what other pretty pop duo would get Voice Crack to do a remix?? I guess Ambarchi might just be angling to become the next Jim O'Rourke...
MPEG Stream: "Sleepin'"
MPEG Stream: "Reach For The Sky (Pluramon mix)"

SUN s/t (Staubgold) 2lp 17.98
Vinyl now available! Aussie guitar experimentalist Oren Ambarchi has been a prolific gent of late, mainly doing droney improv glitch stuff we've been diggin'. But we know there's other musical sides to his personality as well -- after all, we first encountered him playing in the loud n' noisy scatological Boredoms/Buttholes influenced band Phlegm back in the early '90s. So now here's another, new and different Ambarchi project, a duo by the name of Sun (not to be confused with the doomster duo Sunn) that pairs Ambarchi with one Chris Townend (described as an "Australian music figurehead" whatever that means). And it's not noise, or drone, or improv, or electronics -- it's full on indie-pop! Really nice too, with laid back drum beats, gentle vocals, and pretty guitar strum. They're called Sun (and there's some la la las sung) but they'll have you thinking of rainy days too with their lazy, wistful songs. It's got that 60s Beatles/Floyd filtered through 90s indie-pop thing, like a Elephant 6 band or the Aislers Set or something.
Originally released in 2001 in Australia only, Sun's debut has now been licensed by Staubgold for the rest of the planet. What's great is that they've also tacked on an extra two sides of remixes, featuring all the tracks from the album redone (or done in) by the likes of Pluramon, Hrvatski, Christoph Heeman, Rafael Toral, Pimmon, Mapstation, Tom Recchion and Norbert Moslang of Voice Crack! Quite an international lineup of experimental artists there, reinterpreting the music of Sun in ways closer to what you're used to hearing from Ambarchi. Droney and fucked up, these mixes add a lot to the package, making it not just real nice but really interesting as well. And what other pretty pop duo would get Voice Crack to do a remix?? I guess Ambarchi might just be angling to become the next Jim O'Rourke...
MPEG Stream: "Sleepin'"
MPEG Stream: "Reach For The Sky (Pluramon mix)"

SUN ARAW Ancient Romans (Sun Ark Records) cd 14.98
For all the deserved attention and press the whole Los Angeles musical underground has been receiving in the last couple years, we still think that Sun Araw, aka Cameron Stallones, is perhaps the most unique musical visionary to come out of that scene. Beyond being so prolific, the quality of his proper records just gets increasingly better and better. On Patrol was one of our favorite albums of 2010, and with Ancient Romans, Sun Araw continues to move forward from that dubbed out blueprint and expand on what has become one of the most singular sounds of any new band of the last decade.
The moment the album starts, you immediately understand that you are at the beginning of a ceremony, some sort of stange sonic ritual, which requires the listener to open up to completely, wholly trusting in these sounds to carry you away. With dirty, hypnotic organs for the opening tones, setting the stage for the textured and layered dubbed out trip that will unfold over the next 80 minutes. More then almost any band we can think of, Sun Araw is a master of creating a unified vibe. The tracks on Ancient Romans just melt in and out of each other, you lose track of what song is playing, and instead just get lost deep in the fuzzed out grooves, and tripped out meditations. It's hard to explain when music feels this spiritual, it's just something you feel and trust. And with Sun Araw we get that feeling so intensely. It places you in some dusty, archaic temple that we could imagine was transported directly from Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain. Once inside the temple, you forget about the trivial details of the everyday, and instead leave your body and find yourself somewhere mystical, magical and totally transcendent. This is going to be a contender for record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Lucretius"
MPEG Stream: "Fit For Caesar"
MPEG Stream: "Crete"

SUN ARAW Beach Head (Sun Ark) lp 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A reissue of record number two from Sun Araw, aka Magic Lanterns guitarist Cameron Stallone, and much like the other SA releases, Beach Head is a fuzzy, druggy, washed out, effects heavy psychedelic krautdrone new age blow out. Four extended tracks of smoldering minimal drift, soft cacophonies of bells and chimes wrapped in streaks of feedback and swirls of spaced out FX, undulating tendrils of sitar buzz, warped calliope melodies, and muted almost folky twang, everything sun dappled and Technicolor ear candy.
"Thoughts Are Bells" is indeed a bell heavy intro, a slow building, dronescape of percussive swirl, smoothed out angular guitars, and a slow motion avalanche of effects and buried melodies. "Horse Steppin'" is all laid back tropicalia via Ariel Pink, and broadcast through loud speakers hung from palm trees on some deserted tropical island. Flirting with Ducktails style lo-fi tropical garage pop, but transforming it into a reverb drenched bit of slow dreampop, that almost sounds like Animal Collective being spun manually at about 10rpm, the guitars glisten, the drums are muted and barely there, the vocals are soaked in echo and delay, everything laid back and stretched out and washed out, hazy and lazy and bleary and deliriously dreamlike.
The rest of the record doesn't deviate too much from those first two tracks, "Beams" manages to fuse the two, the sort of raga drift of the first with the slowcore blurpop of the second, into a Spacemen 3 style druggy drone, replete with woozy basslines, ethereal guitar atmospherics, and all the other various elements, vocals, drums, buried in a glorious sonic murk, while "Bridal Filly", takes the same combination, but stretches it WAY out into something even still more indistinct, an almost Tim Hecker-ish landscape of blurred grit, and pixelated melody, softly pulsing melodies, weightless wordless vox, muted percussion, swaths of thick buzz, eventually coalescing around another lumbering bassline, into some total stoner zoner psych drone spacerock drift. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Thoughts Are Bells"
MPEG Stream: "Horse Steppin"

SUN ARAW Heavy Deeds (Not Not Fun) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Jeez, guitarist Cameron Stallones has been on a roll lately with his solo endeavor Sun Araw. His third lp on the hugely prolific Not Not Fun label, Heavy Deeds picks up where the Phynx left off, more slow grooving jammers that fall somewhere between psych soul and pop-hop. Wailing delayed-out guitar, tons of wah and tons of soul, catchy vocal passages call out over and over as a leisurely turning lumber plods on with a hypnotic groove. Kinda like listening to a Suicide song on half speed while starring at the sun on a warm beach in Florida, whip out the hula shirts and Robitussin, it's going to be a trippy afternoon. All five tracks are so densely layered with all kinds of organ flutters, ripping solos, mumbling vocals its easy to get lost in Sun Araw's psychotic world of ultra catchy, mind melting blues. There's no doubt this kid has loads of talent, and is super productive, and we have to say we really dig Sun Araw's ability to balance pop sensibility with over the top psychedelic melt-down. There's enough here to get a song or two stuck in your head, without the music being at all straight forward or simple, pretty rad. Oh and by the way, the cd version comes with a killer bonus track titled "Hey Mandala"!
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Deeds"
MPEG Stream: "Hustle And Bustle"

SUN ARAW Inner Treaty (Sun Araw) cd 14.98
Cameron Stallones is back from his pilgrimage to Jamaica, where he made that FRKWYS album with The Congos, and now offers up a new Sun Araw album on his own Sun Ark imprint, full of damaged grooves and new twisted strain of avant dub weirdness, fragmented and spaced out, stumbling and super loose, the guitars spidery and echoey, the rhythms skittery and a bit abstract, the vocals doused in effects and WAY up in the mix, the whole thing sounds like it's melting, gradually decaying, peppered with blasts of fuzzy synth, swaths of swirly organ, percussion that sounds like clinking bottles, shuffling processed glitches. The tracks stutter and hiccup, never locking into a groove, so much as drifting and slipping from sound to sound, a series of swells, often fading out to near silence, before slipping back into it, some folks here thought it sounded kinda like Blues Control making a reggae album, while someone builds furniture next door (!), but some of us definitely got a serious Fastest vibe, total fractured outsider whatthefuck weirdo reggae action that will definitely have lots of folks scratching their heads and wondering what the hell is happening here. Although plenty of other folks will flip for Stallones' new, more damaged incarnation. Listen to the sound samples, and you'll know pretty much right away, which side you'll find yourself on.
Meandering and gloriously unfocused, The Inner Treaty definitely lacks some of the catchiness and groove of past Sun Araw releases, but for what it lacks in those areas, it makes up for in confusional weirdness, lacing its sundappled WTF dub with James Ferraro weirdo-wave retro VHS wooziness, and Ariel Pink / John Maus style avant drama-pop, and tangles it all up into something totally bizarre, something in fact that is so fucked up, it's like a musical car crash, we don't necessarily WANT to keep listening really, but somehow can't seem to stop ourselves. Very reservedly recommended, and even then, only for folks who like their music a bit baffling. Which come to think of it, is probably a whole lot of you.
MPEG Stream: "Out Of Town"
MPEG Stream: "Grip"
MPEG Stream: "Like Wine"

SUN ARAW Inner Treaty (Sun Araw) 2lp 17.98
Now here to list on vinyl too!
Cameron Stallones is back from his pilgrimage to Jamaica, where he made that FRKWYS album with The Congos, and now offers up a new Sun Araw album on his own Sun Ark imprint, full of damaged grooves and new twisted strain of avant dub weirdness, fragmented and spaced out, stumbling and super loose, the guitars spidery and echoey, the rhythms skittery and a bit abstract, the vocals doused in effects and WAY up in the mix, the whole thing sounds like it's melting, gradually decaying, peppered with blasts of fuzzy synth, swaths of swirly organ, percussion that sounds like clinking bottles, shuffling processed glitches. The tracks stutter and hiccup, never locking into a groove, so much as drifting and slipping from sound to sound, a series of swells, often fading out to near silence, before slipping back into it, some folks here thought it sounded kinda like Blues Control making a reggae album, while someone builds furniture next door (!), but some of us definitely got a serious Fastest vibe, total fractured outsider whatthefuck weirdo reggae action that will definitely have lots of folks scratching their heads and wondering what the hell is happening here. Although plenty of other folks will flip for Stallones' new, more damaged incarnation. Listen to the sound samples, and you'll know pretty much right away, which side you'll find yourself on.
Meandering and gloriously unfocused, The Inner Treaty definitely lacks some of the catchiness and groove of past Sun Araw releases, but for what it lacks in those areas, it makes up for in confusional weirdness, lacing its sundappled WTF dub with James Ferraro weirdo-wave retro VHS wooziness, and Ariel Pink / John Maus style avant drama-pop, and tangles it all up into something totally bizarre, something in fact that is so fucked up, it's like a musical car crash, we don't necessarily WANT to keep listening really, but somehow can't seem to stop ourselves. Very reservedly recommended, and even then, only for folks who like their music a bit baffling. Which come to think of it, is probably a whole lot of you.
MPEG Stream: "Out Of Town"
MPEG Stream: "Grip"
MPEG Stream: "Like Wine"

SUN ARAW Phynx (Not Not Fun) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Take the blown-out pop psych euphoria of Les Rallizes Denudes, throw in a dash of Parson Sound's hypnotic kraut feel, and you're getting close to honing in on the futuristic yet tribal psych jams effortlessly conjured up by Cameron Stallones, a member of Long Beach's Magic Lantern who goes it alone as Sun Araw. From the prolific folks at Not Not Fun, Phynx resounds with a heavy California daze, a drugged out, bluesy blend of face melting drones, fuzzed out guitar riffs, and repetitive clangy rhythms. Ritualistic and somehow modern, Sun Araw walks the line between pop and drone. Moments of the album are dense with catastrophic buzzing thickness, and other parts are more rockin' with a pretty defined heavy groovin' psych feel. All very guitar based, we're reminded of dudes like Ignatz, but less lo-fi and intimate, definitely more rhythmic and percussive. We're even sort of reminded of Brightblack's older stuff, heavy lethargic blues on Robitussin.
But Phynx is much more dense and perplexing. Layers of fuzz on top of layers of vocals on top of layers of drones...you get the idea. A seriously engaging album, there's tons of variety and small details to get all wrapped up in. And not to mention the sweet picture on the cover of some mysterious blindfolded figure in the dim hall of a library! Don't miss out on this California tribal psych gem!

SUN ARAW & M. GEDDES GENDRAS MEET THE CONGOS FRKWYS Vol. 9 (RVNG ) lp 24.00
FINALLY!! Repressed or something. Now we finally can list this great album, on vinyl!!
Some deep and heady devotional vibes from this unlikely dream collaboration of Sun Araw, M Geddes Gendras and Reggae legends, The Congos for the latest installment of the RVNG label's FRKWYS series. Reminding us of a more churning and lysergic exploration of Dadawah's long form Nyabinghi jams, Icon Give Thanks as this disc is called turns the standard dub-reggae expectations on their heads and instead offers a strange brew of soft swells, smoky psych drift and oceanic dub interludes, punctuated by the honeyed falsetto vocals of elder statesmen Cedric Myton and Roydel Johnson. This release has garnered the most divisive stance of the FRKWYS series among us at aQ so far, with some of us considering it one of the better collaborations and for others a squandered opportunity smacking of colonialism. Granted, the sound design relies heavily on the Sun Araw side of the coin, but his approach is hardly "the white boy playing reggae" criticisms this release has occasionally garnered. The sound, for one, hovers hazily in the air like swirling smoke while the grounding bass is pushed back way in the mix instead of anchoring it rhythmically. Each member of the collaboration has come together on the premise of praise and invocation of thanks, making this project a more spiritual concern than just a good-times-get-high-let's-jam together record. By the end of it, we're in a completely different headspace altogether, in reverent clouds of the Divine.
MPEG Stream: "Happy Song"
MPEG Stream: "Sunshine"
MPEG Stream: "Thanks and Give Praise"

SUN ARAW & M. GEDDES GENDRAS MEET THE CONGOS FRKWYS Vol. 9 (RVNG ) cd + dvd 16.98
Some deep and heady devotional vibes from this unlikely dream collaboration of Sun Araw, M Geddes Gendras and reggae legends The Congos for the latest installment of the RVNG label's FRKWYS series. Reminding us of a more churning and lysergic exploration of Dadawah's long form Nyabinghi jams, Icon Give Thank as this disc in the series is titled, turns the standard dub-reggae expectations on their heads and instead offers a strange brew of soft swells, smoky psych drift and oceanic dub interludes, punctuated by the honeyed falsetto vocals of elder statesmen Cedric Myton and Roydel Johnson from Congos. This release has garnered the most divisive stance of the FRKWYS series among us at aQ so far, with some of us considering it one of the better collaborations and for others a squandered opportunity smacking of colonialism. Granted, the sound design relies heavily on the Sun Araw side of the coin, but his approach is hardly "the white boy playing reggae" criticisms this release has occasionally garnered. The sound, for one, hovers hazily in the air like swirling smoke while the grounding bass is pushed back way in the mix instead of anchoring it rhythmically. Each member of the collaboration has come together on the premise of praise and invocation of thanks, making this project a more spiritual concern than just a good-times-get-high-let's-jam together record. By the end of it, we're in a completely different headspace altogether, in reverent clouds of the Divine.
And along with the cd, you get an hour-long dvd disc, called Icon Eye, a travelogue/documentary all about the collaboration process.
MPEG Stream: "Happy Song"
MPEG Stream: "Sunshine"
MPEG Stream: "Thanks and Give Praise"

SUN CIRCLE Lessness (Arbor Infinity) lp 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We first discovered the raga drone duo Sun Circle via a cd-r sent to the store, direct from the band, and as mentioned in the review of that very cd-r, somehow the disc got lost, only to be discovered literally YEARS later, only for us to finally listen to it, and be totally blown away. The band was as adept at growling howling humming dronemusic as it was at ephemeral atmospheric ambience, crafting their own variations of classic ragas, filtered through an aesthetic as informed by modern music, noise rock and who knows what else, as it was Indian classical music and 20th century minimalism.
On their newest, Lessness, as the title suggests, the band do indeed work with less, each side of the double lp performed on single instrument, either drums, tamboura or gong, but in doing so, manage to transform the minimal instrumentation into something lush and expansive, rhythmic and hypnotic.
The first side is just drums, and is most definitely the most minimal of the bunch, maybe too minimal for some, with just a very simple spare rhythm, pounded out on a drum, maybe several, but the sound is spare, and simple, but listen close, and listen for the whole of the side, and the sounds grow ever more complex, on the surface the rhythm never wavers, but as you get sucked in, the sounds do seems to come alive, the overtones, the subtle shifts in timbre, constantly evolving, but so subtly, it might not be noticeable unless you're in it for the long haul and have those headphones strapped on tight. Total rhythmic raga bliss.
The second two sides are both produced with just tambouras, and the sound is incredible, thick and layered, gorgeously lush, an organic, and living sound, the subtle colors of the sound reflective and prismatic, constantly shifting, intense and mesmerizing and strangely meditative and psychedelic. On the second tamboura side, the sound becomes a bit more structured, but only a bit, buzzing steel strings, subtly rhythmic, locked into a looped groove, deep rumbles beneath a repeated fragmented melody, the most traditionally raga sounding of the bunch, and like the two sides before it, seemingly unchanging, as if it really was looped, but this is the sort of sound that rewards deep listening, and blossoms into a world of complex sound, just below the surface.
Especially on the final side, which is all gongs, and very much like the Karen Stackpole records on Dielectric, the sounds is deep and resonant and so sonorous, ringing out, layered here and there, but more often left to just hover in space, before fading away, only to have another tone take its place, no processing, just the glorious sound of vibrating metal, dark and mysterious, meditative and hypnotic. So gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!

SUN CIRCLE s/t (Lichen) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available as a super limited lp, ONLY 525 COPIES, housed in cool heavy weight jackets with paste on artwork and a gold metallic sticker on the back. Includes an insert with liner notes, each one hand numbered. Here's what we had to say about the cd version:
This mysterious musical missive showed up here way back in 2007, and quietly slipped through the cracks, and sat huddled on a shelf in the closet, until just a matter of days ago, it was so long ago, we're ashamed to admit, we don't remember much about the band or what they're all about, so we'll go purely on sound (which is probably what we should do anyway).
Two looooong tracks, the first begins quite strangely, a thick undulating dronescape made from voices, howls and hums and croons woven into a strangely soothing wall of textured sound, we kept expecting it to shift but it never does, 19 minutes of pure voice raga, it's super intense, and so raw and intimate and organic, when it ends, like all dense drones, it feels like all the air gets sucked out of the room.
After the fervent intensity of the first track, the tranquil beginning of track two is almost jarring in it's softness, drifting clouds of bells and chimes, spread out over lots of space. Once again, we kept expecting the song to kick in, but instead, it's another exercise in space and tension, ultra minimal and percussive, the chimes and bells ring out and are allowed to decay to almost near silence, before the next flurry of tinkling and chiming. Really gorgeous and strangely zen.
This sort of stuff requires dedicated close listening, headphones help, but that sort of listening is indeed rewarded.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

SUN CIRCLE s/t (Lichen) 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.
This mysterious musical missive showed up here way back in 2007, and quietly slipped through the cracks, and sat huddled on a shelf in the closet, until just a matter of days ago when we re-discovered it, and thus, we present to you, the last 10 copies of this long out of print cd-r, released in a limited edition of 100.
It was so long ago, we're ashamed to admit, we don't remember much about the band or what they're all about, so we'll go purely on sound (which is probably what we should do anyway).
Two looooong tracks, the first begins quite strangely, a thick undulating dronescape made from voices, howls and hums and croons woven into a strangely soothing wall of textured sound, we kept expecting it to shift but it never does, 19 minutes of pure voice raga, it's super intense, and so raw and intimate and organic, when it ends, like all dense drones, it feels like all the air gets sucked out of the room.
After the fervent intensity of the first track, the tranquil beginning of track two is almost jarring in it's softness, drifting clouds of bells and chimes, spread out over lots of space. Once again, we kept expecting the song to kick in, but instead, it's another exercise in space and tension, ultra minimal and percussive, the chimes and bells ring out and are allowed to decay to almost near silence, before the next flurry of tinkling and chiming. Really gorgeous and strangely zen.
This sort of stuff requires dedicated close listening, headphones help, but that sort of listening is indeed rewarded.
Packaged in a beautiful cardstock sleeve, with paste on liner notes and abstract cover, a metallic gold sticker, and a cd spray painted gold. Once again, there were only 100 copies and that was a year ago, so these are definitely the last copies we'll see...
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

SUN CIRCLE Tapes (Autumn) 2cd 23.00
Originally released for a Japanese tour with Grouper and Ben Vida, Tapes is a collection of, yep, you guessed it, tapes, from this drone duo, whose last two records were big hits around here, SC's sound a super minimal blend of hushed layered dronemusic and cosmic ragas, often creating epic pieces from single sound sources, like the gong piece on the Lessness lp, which might be one of our favorite Sun Circle tracks ever, a sprawl of deep sonorous shimmering metallic thrum.
Tapes, as we mentioned, collects a handful of previously released, and now out of print, cassette releases, and offers them on cd for the first time, along with two previously unreleased tracks, none of the songs here titled, instead, presented with a description of where they came from, how they were created and sometimes how limited the original release was.
Six tracks, the longest 22:24, the shortest 13:05, all gorgeously minimal, and each displaying a different side of Sun Circle's sound. The opener is from a 2007 split tape limited to just 50 copies, and is a 21+ minute synthscape/rage, beginning with pulsing analog synths, very tranced out and hypnotic, before a metallic buzz begins to form, and slowly builds, eventually blossoming into a thick layered drone, rich and lustrous, there also seems to be voices, all these sounds woven into thins softly undulating streak of warm effulgent sound, which continues on even as that initial synth fades out, finishing with a hazy bit of metallic shimmer and buzz. the second track is from another split tape, this one from 2008 and limited to 100 copies, and begins as a slow burn bit of abstract drone/drift, smoldering and humid, that initial drone laced with streaks of complimentary sound, longform tones, swirling overtones, the whole thing almost sounding like a symphony in slow motion. Hazy and shimmery and dreamy. The final track on the first cd is a collage of ALL of the live sets from a 2007 tour, just voice and organ, but 11 different performances layered on top of each other, resulting in a sweet slab of thick warm blur and buzz, super mesmerizing, culminating in an explosive noisy final movement.
The second disc begins with a live track, taken from a 2009 tour tape, limited to 100 copies, and begins as a delicate drift, which is soon joined by some bagpipe like buzz (harmonium?), wheezing chords over that warm minimal shimmer, very ritualistic sounding, just drifting and drifting, until the second half where the sound seems to become more muted, the edges worn to a dull glow, the sound a bleary blurred expanse of soft metallic shimmer, driven by a simple rhythmic beating drum. The second track is taken from the same tour tape, and was recorded in 2009 right here in SF at the Swedish American Hall, and is the most rhythmic of the bunch, starting out with some tribal drumming, all over a distant low end thrum, it's not until about 3 minutes in, that a buzz begins to surface, quickly burying the drums beneath its unwavering, slow shifting whir, some serious soft noise mesmer, that goes on and on and on, completely sucking the listener in, before fading out about 12 minutes later, leaving just those drums to finish things off.
Finally, the last track is previously unreleased improvisation, overtone singing performed in a acoustical echo chamber, and then layered over recordings of gongs from an earlier tour, and if there's anything we can think of that could sound better than that, we sure don't know what. The voices and gongs wreathed in reverb and natural echo and delay, the notes stretching way out, all manner of harmonies and overtones, totally heavenly minimal dronemusic, and barring a brief squall of crunchy distorted noise, the whole track is hushed and delicate, drifty and dreamlike. So good.
Nice packaging too, two color silkscreened origami style folded cardstock sleeves, with a printed insert, featuring all the liner notes.
MPEG Stream: "1"
MPEG Stream: "2"

SUN CITY GIRLS 98.6 Is Death (Abduction) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
After an almost three year hiatus (Sublime Frequencies seems to have been garnering the Girls' attention and finances these days) the Sun City Girls have racheted up the Carnival Folklore Resurrection project with two new titles, both of them live performances by the trio on the radio. This second set, CFR volume 13 was recorded on Kim Sorise's show on WFPK in Louisville, Kentucky in April of 2004. Both sets are quite similar in execution, spanning the gamut of SCG's musical tendencies. Either of these performances could be seen as a great introduction to the group or, equally, one for serious fans only. It's all here: overseas shortwave and field recordings, Uncle Jim rants, skronky improv madness, pretty instrumental interludes, re-engineered soundtrack themes and bizarre mixes. If there's a noticeable difference in the balance of material on the two releases we'd say that Radio One & Two has more Uncle Jim ranting and field recording mixing, while 98.6 Is Death has more actual live rocking, jamming and skronking in the studio.
MPEG Stream: "Sangkala #4 / Sour Smells In Nevada"
MPEG Stream: "Man Without A Harmonica"

SUN CITY GIRLS Beginnings Dark (Enterruption) lp 36.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
An absolutely essential, vinyl-only Sun City Girls release, one of our all time favorite SCG records since Torch Of The Mystics. The bad news is, A. it's really expensive, and B. we only got 15 copies and it's totally out of print. So SCG fanatics best act fast if they want one of these, cuz holy shit is this one mindblowing and ear tickling release...
The packaging alone makes this worth the price tag. An ultra thick, eye popping sleeve, housed in a die cut lp slipcase, with metallic embossing on the front. Inside, it's a one sided white vinyl lp, with the flip side gorgeously silkscreened. And there's so much stuff crammed inside the sleeve, it weighs a ton. There's multiple 12"x12" full color flats that seem to be alternate cover art, lots of random sized artwork, all on thick cardstock, two sheets of stickers, a band photo, a childhood photo of SCG Charlie Gocher (who passed away recently) and a page of confusing SCG linernotes from some zine from way back in 1999. Hard to say if that means this was previously released, but none of us have ever heard it.
So when you go to play the record, don't be confused by the needle hovering endlessly on the edge of the disc, it plays from the inside out, backwards, so set the needle down next to the label and let 'er rip. And as if the direction of play was any indicator, the music is almost entirely backwards! And it's amazing. Dark and droney, creepy and haunting, a little bit circusy, but mostly dizzying and hypnotic. Imagine listening to the darkest scariest SCG album backwards.... (and in fact, this is apparently the backwards version of "The Venerable Song (The Meaning Which Is No Longer Known)" from the LP Bright Surroundings Dark Beginnings released on Majora way back in 1993!)...
Haunted vocals and mysterious chants and howls, fluttering flickering flutes all drift and hover over a gorgeous landscape of backwards drones and strange pulsing rhythms, created from that swooping backwards 'ffffzzzzt' sound that music makes in reverse... We weren't sure what to expect, but we've been listening to this nonstop, over and over and over, so goddamn good.
Not sure how limited this was (other than REALLY), and apparently there were a million different variations of color and inserts and whatnot in this already tiny micropressing, but we only have 15, and once these are gone, they are gone forever.

SUN CITY GIRLS Eye Mohini: Sun City Girls Singles Vol. 3 (Abduction) cd 16.98
The second volume in the ongoing series of singles compilations from legendary outfit the Sun City Girls was one of the many duds that frustrate so much of the die-hard SCG fanbase. It was especially frustrating given that the first volume - You're Never Alone With A Cigarette (which as of spring 2013 is sadly out of print) - was so fucking good, mostly due to the fact that much of that material was made up of tracks that were left off the group's masterpiece, Torch Of The Mystics. At one time, TOTM was slated to be a double lp set with the Girls working towards fleshing out the whole album with a bunch of similar sounding tracks. So when the album dropped just as a single slab of wax, all of the remnants ended up finding their way onto various singles back in the early '90s. As Volume One did feature many of those leftovers, Volume Three thankfully completes the task, with two of those discarded Torch tracks culled from the Three Fake Female Orgasms 7" (released on Majora in 1991) as well as all of the cuts from the Eye Mohini and Borungku Si Derita singles (both released through Majora in 1992 and 1993 respectively, the latter featuring a different version of "Esoterica Of Abyssynia" from Torch Of The Mystics, just to make things all the more confusing). There's also a different version of "Kickin The Dragon" from the other SCG masterpiece 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, as well as a live version of another Torch classic, "The Flower".
The title track here in particular is a classic Sun City Girls jam, with Richard Bishop's desert-blues inspired fingerpicking seamlessly shifting from Arabic flourishes to Southeast Asian folk-pop and the more commonplace No Depression styled Americana, all with brother Alan plaintively sounding out syllabically a maudlin melody that may or may not be complete nonsense or some polyglot of languages dialed in by the Girls' esoteric antenna to all sorts of wild and wonderful songs from around the world. "Gum Arabic" is a terse re-interpretation of heavy Turkish psychedelia which would certainly foreshadow Sublime Frequencies eventual reissue collection of Erkin Koray's works. "Abydos Carousel Tapsel" has a bad-ass south-of-the-border vibe which shifts into an unhinged jubliant psych-folk in "Borungku Si Derita" which strangely sounds a lot like Comus! With so much of the Sun City Girls catalogue terminally out of print, getting a hold of anything from the band is a cause for celebration; but getting an album as great as this, even a collection, maybe especially a collection, is all the more reason to rejoice. And for those uninitiated into the demented psych-punk weirdness of SCG, this is a really great place to start.
MPEG Stream: "Eye Mohini"
MPEG Stream: "It's Ours"
MPEG Stream: "Kal el lazi kad ham"

SUN CITY GIRLS Funeral Mariachi (Abduction) cd 17.98
Yay! Repressed and back in stock!!
This recent Record Of The Week, NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! Packaged in a mini-lp style sleeve.
We had long heard rumors that the Sun City Girls had been working on a cinematic album as something of a follow-up to Torch Of The Mystics and 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, two of our all-time favorite, classic albums from the Girls' idiosyncratic catalogue of punky psychedelia dissolved through Southeast Asian pop, free jazz, and Ennio Morricone soundtracks. But with the tragic death of drummer, poet, and polyglot savant Charles Goucher in 2007, it seemed that the Girls would end their career with the grand tease of an album of this sort never to be released. Fortunately, those recordings were not the stuff of urban legend or of unfounded fantasy, and the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop has finally completed the album with the help of long time SCG cohort Scott Colburn! So here it is, the final SCGs album, and it's a worthy (and really quite accessible) capstone to their idiosyncratic discography.
Morricone has long been an influence and inspiration for the Sun City Girls, and especially Alan Bishop. In fact, he's been responsible for some of the best Morricone compilations issued over the years (i.e. Morricone 2000 and the Crime & Dissonance 2cd on Ipecac). As much as Bishop had been infatuated with Morricone, the homages to Morricone had been heavily disfigured and mutilated within the playfully murderous aesthetic of the Sun City Girls, where nothing is sacred and everything is fair game with the Girls' crosscultural appropriation. But for Funeral Mariachi, the Morricone riffs are situated in beguiling songs wholly devoid of the Sun City Girls' curmudgeonly fuck-you stances. In other words, Funeral Marachi is a damn good record. So good that it will probably invite a lot more people to investigate the wonderfully frustrating and woefully inaccessible back catalogue of the Sun City Girls.
Introspective, haunting, and at times beautiful, Funeral Mariachi opens with "Ben's Radio" where the Bishop brothers breakthrough a mid-tempo spy thriller number with a staccato duet of call and response avant-weirdness coupled with blurting atonal horns. Unmistakably Sun City Girls. In "Black Orchid", the group turns in the first of many Morricone references, where the Girls' are equally enamored by the incidental vocal melodies that worked throughout all of his scores. Here the Girls' offer a sad ballad for Richard Bishop's always stunning acoustic guitar and Alan's falsetto vocals bellowing his polyglot language. "Blue West," with its high-lonesome chorales, bad-ass guitar licks, and a mournful arrangements, could have been straight out of a John Ford movie. "Holy Ground" might as well be the Girls' answer to Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls to the Heart of the Sun" with Alan's caterwauling voice droning behind the diabolically chanted vocals, beautiful guitar leads, shadowy atmospherics, and weirdly playful calliope melodies. "Mineral Wells" and "El Solo" turn towards the more saccharine moments of the Morricone oeuvre with loungy piano, reverb whistled melodies, and actual female vocals (and not Alan mimicking a woman's voice). "Come Maddalena" is in fact a Morricone cover, from the 1971 Italian film Maddalena, perhaps known only for its soundtrack. Again, a rather moody atmosphere is set for plaintive, yet fuzzed out guitar melody. So fucking good!
MPEG Stream: "Ben's Radio"
MPEG Stream: "Black Orchid"
MPEG Stream: "Blue West"
MPEG Stream: "Come Maddalena"
MPEG Stream: "Funeral Mariachi"

SUN CITY GIRLS Funeral Mariachi (Abduction) lp 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We had long heard rumors that the Sun City Girls had been working on a cinematic album as something of a follow-up to Torch Of The Mystics and 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, two of our all-time favorite, classic albums from the Girls' idiosyncratic catalogue of punky psychedelia dissolved through Southeast Asian pop, free jazz, and Ennio Morricone soundtracks. But with the tragic death of drummer, poet, and polyglot savant Charles Goucher in 2007, it seemed that the Girls would end their career with the grand tease of an album of this sort never to be released. Fortunately, those recordings were not the stuff of urban legend or of unfounded fantasy, and the Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop has finally completed the album with the help of long time SCG cohort Scott Colburn! So here it is, the final SCGs album, and it's a worthy (and really quite accessible) capstone to their idiosyncratic discography.
Morricone has long been an influence and inspiration for the Sun City Girls, and especially Alan Bishop. In fact, he's been responsible for some of the best Morricone compilations issued over the years (i.e. Morricone 2000 and the Crime & Dissonance 2cd on Ipecac). As much as Bishop had been infatuated with Morricone, the homages to Morricone had been heavily disfigured and mutilated within the playfully murderous aesthetic of the Sun City Girls, where nothing is sacred and everything is fair game with the Girls' crosscultural appropriation. But for Funeral Mariachi, the Morricone riffs are situated in beguiling songs wholly devoid of the Sun City Girls' curmudgeonly fuck-you stances. In other words, Funeral Marachi is a damn good record. So good that it will probably invite a lot more people to investigate the wonderfully frustrating and woefully inaccessible back catalogue of the Sun City Girls.
Introspective, haunting, and at times beautiful, Funeral Mariachi opens with "Ben's Radio" where the Bishop brothers breakthrough a mid-tempo spy thriller number with a staccato duet of call and response avant-weirdness coupled with blurting atonal horns. Unmistakably Sun City Girls. In "Black Orchid", the group turns in the first of many Morricone references, where the Girls' are equally enamored by the incidental vocal melodies that worked throughout all of his scores. Here the Girls' offer a sad ballad for Richard Bishop's always stunning acoustic guitar and Alan's falsetto vocals bellowing his polyglot language. "Blue West," with its high-lonesome chorales, bad-ass guitar licks, and a mournful arrangements, could have been straight out of a John Ford movie. "Holy Ground" might as well be the Girls' answer to Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls to the Heart of the Sun" with Alan's caterwauling voice droning behind the diabolically chanted vocals, beautiful guitar leads, shadowy atmospherics, and weirdly playful calliope melodies. "Mineral Wells" and "El Solo" turn towards the more saccharine moments of the Morricone oeuvre with loungy piano, reverb whistled melodies, and actual female vocals (and not Alan mimicking a woman's voice). "Come Maddalena" is in fact a Morricone cover, from the 1971 Italian film Maddalena, perhaps known only for its soundtrack. Again, a rather moody atmosphere is set for plaintive, yet fuzzed out guitar melody. So fucking good!
The vinyl of Funeral Mariachi is undoubtedly limited, but a cd is scheduled for release later in October, we're told.

SUN CITY GIRLS Radio One & Two (Abduction) 2cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
After an almost three year hiatus (Sublime Frequencies seems to have been garnering the Girls' attention and finances these days) the Sun City Girls have racheted up the Carnival Folklore Resurrection project with two new titles, both of them live performances by the trio on the radio. This first set, CFR volumes 11 & 12, was recorded in November of 2002 on Brian Turner's radio show on WFMU in New Jersey and was actually originally released a year or so ago as a super limited edition available only through the group's website. Both sets are quite similar in execution, spanning the gamut of SCG's musical tendencies. Either of these performances could be seen as a great introduction to the group or, equally, one for serious fans only. It's all here: overseas shortwave and field recordings, Uncle Jim rants, skronky improv madness, pretty instrumental interludes, re-engineered soundtrack themes and bizarre mixes. If there's a noticeable difference in the balance of material on the two releases we'd say that Radio One & Two has more Uncle Jim ranting and field recording mixing, while 98.6 Is Death has more actual live rocking, jamming and skronking in the studio.
MPEG Stream: "Not In My League"
MPEG Stream: "Krung Thep Cut-out"