TAKAGI, MASAKATSU Pia (Carpark) 2cd 17.98
Takagi Masakatsu's electronic ambience has been glitchified as another laptop excursion, yet he maintains a whimsical sense of melody rarely heard since Oval's "Diskont 94" and a sly use of the field recordings, allowing for the laughter of children and various sounds of domesticty to intervene in the subtly shifting glitch collages. Only disc one has audio, with disc two being a CD-Rom for both Mac and Windows.

TAKAHASHI, IKURO Domori To Sanshu (Siwa) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The packaging here is real nice and maybe should be mentioned even before the music: the cd is nestled between two white cards screenprinted in silver-and-black with someone's intricate, abstract artwork (a fine-lined tangle of grass? or bones?). These cards and cd come in a plastic sleeve, inserted into a slot in a slender wooden box. The box is itself painted/printed in dark grey and white with identical artwork. Yup, very nice! This is a limited edition, of course.
What manner of music is deserving of such special packaging? Well, Japan's Ikuro Takahashi is a percussionist who has played in or with all sorts of amazing bands from the Tokyo psych-rock underground, including Fushitsusha, High Rise, Kosukuya, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Nagisa Ni Te, Overhang Party and LSD-march. As a solo music-maker, though, he also experiments with electronics. So this release is quite different from most of those bands, though sharing a "darkness" that several of them possess! Domori To Sanshu consists of two long tracks (27 and 31 minutes apiece), one of 'em live, the other rendered on a computer. The live track comes first, immersing you in what (you might imagine) could be the night sounds from outside a rural temple...a high-pitched insectoid flutter and hum, in fact produced by the keening of Ikuro's oscillators and electronic effects. Subtle and strange. Eventually the echoing rattle and clatter of percussion enters the sound-field, but emptiness and hum are still the main attraction. This track builds in drone-ful intensity, with long notes drawn out into abstract mystery. Abstraction that continues with additional density on the second, computer-composed track, which is basically one seemly unchanging but in truth slowly undulating drone... both cuts provide some serious meditative 'music' for drone-heads to get lost in.
MPEG Stream: "Domori To Sanshu (live)"

TAKE UP SERPENTS (Prayers) From Beneath The Sand (Custodian, Color Zoo Containers) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest batch of corroded sonic mystery from this former Bay Area outfit, now headquartered somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
Recorded live on KFJC, this set is a head spinning blown out collage of processed sounds, fractured percussion, treated noise, warped feedback, a roiling, pulsing, swirling blur of muted rhythms, in-the-red sheets of sound, twisted and melting melodies, all framed by a strange narrator, his voice processed and transformed into something totally alien, a nonstop stream of political and paranoid invective, warnings, threats, advice and all manner of all woven and tangled in the ever shifting fields of abstract whir and skree. Warped tapes wrap around mumbled chants, everything hissy and hazy and washed out, bits of dialogue from films (?), field recordings, plenty of tape hiss, and degraded crumbling distortion, occasional stretches of spare almost ambience, but even those brief respites are laced with haunting sonic filigree, creaks and groans, clatter and clanks, whispers and rumbles, occasional bursts of tribal drumming pepper the streaks of high end and the stuttering low register whir, throbbing, pulsing, hypnotic and heavy in its own way. This is definitely noise, but more textural and sculpted, than just white out ear shredding pummel, plenty rhythmic, with loads of low end creep, and howling chaotic crunch, all the disparate sounds woven into a super freaky, otherworldly alien transmission from some other plane.
And like all the releases on Custodian, Color Zoo Containers, every release is stunning, most painstakingly hand assembled, these cds have super striking transparent inserts, with all sorts of symbols and strange text, that continues onto the sticker sealing it shut, the discs are printed so the disc image mirrors and blends into the cover image, and of course, these are SUPER LIMITED, only 97 COPIES, each one hand numbered!!!!
MPEG Stream: "Defining Terrorism / Invoke The Deities"
MPEG Stream: "Mythology (Part 1)"

TAKE UP SERPENTS Fragile Chess Coils Beige Ebony Set (Dolor Del Estamago) cd-r 4.50

MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

TAKE UP SERPENTS Swollen And Full Of Parasites (Custodian, Color Zoo Containers) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've all been digging the recent cassette revival. It was inevitable really, as the cd-r became more common place, the tape became the underground format of choice. And in some ways we're all for it. Nowadays you can knock out a cd and a printed cover in minutes flat, the amount of effort it takes to release a cd-r borders on NONE (apologies to the labels who do it right, with gorgeous music, and great attention to packaging, you know who you are, and we love you). But with a tape, even the copying requires more time and effort. And it seems that folks making tapes understand this and have been going way out of their way to customize their releases, and make the look as special as the sound.
But none quite as impressively as Custodian Color Zoo Containers, a new tape label, whose packaging is so intricate and over the top, each one is a work of art, stunning and intricate and incredibly time consuming. So much so that these tapes have been in the works for more than a year, and when you see them you'll understand why. Our new favorite tape label in one fell swoop.
The very first release on the label is from former SF outfit Take Up Serpents, now based in Colorado. Recorded live, the sound is gritty and lo-fi, industrial and textural. It's hard to tell what the sound sources are. But the end result is awesome. Total ghetto-tech noise rock. Tons of space, lots of hiss and whir, huge chunks of pounding percussion, sheets of blown out FX, voices buried in the mix, layers of cricket-like skitter, some muffled drumming, some total old school metal on metal pound, some subtle new wave groove. Part Wolf Eyes, part Whitehouse, think Broken Flag records, Throbbing Gristle -- if we didn't know better, we might think this stuff was recorded in a warehouse in 1982 in London. Awesome.
And the packaging is a knockout. The tape itself has text hand written all over it, liner notes on one side, random text on the other, hand numbered, LIMITED TO 43 COPIES!!! Housed in a full color hand drawn/painted fold out transparent sleeve, all simple line drawings and big blobs of markered color. COOL.

TALIBAM! Hungry Hungry Hemispheres (The Fair School) cd-r 8.98
Second blast of spastic, synth drenched, drum splattered free noise psychedelic freakout from this damaged and demented power trio, made up of Matthew Mottel on synth, Kevin Shea (Coptic Light, Storm And Stress) on drums and Ed Bear on baritone saxophone and electronics.
Anyone can kick up a huge noisy squall and call it "free jazz" or even "art" but the guys in Talibam! (yes, punctuation mandatory) aren't fucking around, deftly unfurling the perfect balance of face melting, amp destroying, noise rock pummel, skittery, tangled free jazz skronk, and droney drifty space rock blow out.
This may be a three piece, but the core of Talibam!'s sound is the relentless battle between drums and synth, Like a bear and a hippo wrestling in a bed of skronking saxophones. And the drums are always going, like someone standing at the top of a mile high stairway, tossing hundreds and hundreds of drumkits down the stairs an armful of pieces at a time, while someone stands at the bottom of the stairs, clutching a huge synthesizer, like a baseball bat, swinging wildly at every drum in the strike zone. A truly bewildering, baffling chunk off free music freakout, that manages to be pretty dang listenable, with long stretches of jazzy drone, some mesmerizing raga like buzz, and jumbled heaps of deconstructed free jazz fuckery.
Recorded live before what sounds like almost no one, these guys are on fire, filling the empty room with more sound than it was meant to hold. there's lots of between song banter and it's super cringeworthy, but knowing these guys, we're pretty sure it's meant to be as antagonistic, if not more so then their already difficult music.
As with lots of stuff like this, only the iron-eared need apply, but those so endowed will be richly rewarded with a glorious earful of convoluted groove, problematic prog and freaky freaky free jazz.
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

TALIBAM! Ordination Of The Globetrotting Conscripts (Azul Discografica) cd 12.98
Besides having one of the best band names ever (exclamation point mandatory!) this trio of noisemaking jazz dissidents and post rock outcasts create what in most cases is practically impossible, a noisy record, heck, a NOISE record, that manages to be totally listenable. And we're not talking listenable like 'on the radio' or 'your Mom might like it', no, your Mom would NOT like this, and the only time you'd hear this on the radio is after a nuclear holocaust, when some survivors hole up in an abandoned radio station, only to realize the transmitter still works, and what better way to fight back against the invaders, than by BLOWING THEIR FUCKING EARDRUMS OUT!
No, this is some unholy spawn of the freest jazz and the most tangled and aggressive of math rocks. Due in no small part to the man behind the drums, Kevin Shea, formerly of Coptic Light and Storm And Stress, although his cohorts aren't so shabby either, Matt Mottel on synth and Ed Bear on sax. Add in some electronics, some banjo, even a little 'singing'. Then toss in a handful of beehives, a bunch of smashed and scratched free jazz records, a couple tapes of aborted Don Cab practice sessions, a few Marshall stacks, wrap the whole thing in raw meat and throw it into the middle of a pack of wild dogs and record the result.
There are a bunch of guests this time around too, contributing stuff like bass, trumpet, piano, upright bass, bass trombone as well as some less recognizable instruments: diddley-bo, mouth-bow, twanger and of course wonder metal. Which makes the sound even more thick and intense and seriously HEAVY. The synth is everywhere, and sounds like one of the Wolf Eyes guys was responsible for its upkeep, a snarling, crackling, grinding spewer of fuzz and buzz and smears of new wave blur, adding tons of texture and melody to proceedings, the sax is of course skronky, but isn't everywhere, but what is everywhere is drums. It's exhausting just listening to Shea spew beats everywhere, it's like a 47 minute drum solo, deftly arranged into convoluted rhythms, and dizzying flurries of fills, but its the drums that propel the songs, all the melodies and notes, textures and tones, are hung on, wrapped around, or just plain tangled up in the confusional and relentless rhythmic onslaught.
There are moments where the chaos and intensity abate just a bit, the twisted, FUCKED UP klezmer of "Lunch Break at Naan", with a horrifying break in the middle with what sounds like scraped strings or a squealing pig, the long slow burn of "A Petroglyphic Massacre", and brief little breathers within the songs, but for the most part, Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts is a bit like sitting in a cement mixer full of ball bearings, set to music.
But then there's the epic 13 minute finale, "The Spectre of Water Wars", maybe the most 'musical' of the bunch, where the synth takes center stage, even nudging the omnipresent drums out of the spotlight, spewing thick swaths of creepy Goblin-esque whir, haunting and weirdly new wave, but super rocking at the same time, crumbling and distorted, twisted and freaked out, a propulsive alien krautrock. Imagine a horror movie in which Six Finger Satellite were dosed and lobotomized and then let loose in guitar center, to fight off a twisted psycho killer with only the instruments on hand. Might sound something like this. Seriously scary, way fucked up, but wild and amazing and weirdly sort of fun too.
MPEG Stream: "Ordination Of The Globetrotting Conscripts"
MPEG Stream: "Guns And Butter"
MPEG Stream: "Revolutionary Bummer Weed And The Syncretic Narcotraffickers"

TALIBAM! s/t (Evolving Ear) 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.
Awesome band name for sure! We were dying to hear these guys before we had any idea what they might sound like. And they do sort of sound like the name, explanation point and all. A whirling dervish of a three piece, Matthew Mottel on synth, Kevin Shea (Coptic Light, Storm And Stress) on drums and Ed Bear on baritone saxophone and
electronics. The presence of Kevin Shea should give you a hint as to what you're in for. His spastic, impossibly octopoidal drum splatter is all over this disc, a stuttering spastic free jazz soundscape dense and impenetrable. Above this tangled percussive squall, the synth and the sax do battle. And this is a serious fucking knock down drag out battle to the death. The synth seems to come out on top turning what could have been more of a free jazz record into a seriously fucked up freenoise record. Mottel is like Keith Emerson on a serious PCP bender, spitting out thick snarling sheets of synth buzz, spraying it like machine gun fire, melodies are tangled and complicated little knots hurled into the fray like cannonballs made out of steel string and roof nails. The sax is all over the place, adding tonal color, mad squawking, chittering chirps and deep fuzzy moans, this is a massive chaotic free for all. Sometimes the band members lock into a cohesive sort of drone, but even then Shea is still hurling his kit all over a huge concrete bunker, like every free jazz solo drum record played simultaneously, it's never long before the synth splinters and the sax shrieks and suddenly it a big black musical cloud, you know like in cartoons when people are fighting and there's a big black swirling cloud with arms and legs sticking out. Only now there's broken drumsticks, shattered keys from an abused synthesizer, bent saxophones as well as bruised and bloody body parts.
This an exhausting listen, but it's worth it. Heavy and thick, weirdly groovy, totally spastic and really really great.
Comes packaged in spray painted sleeves made out of old chopped up lps, each disc includes a jagged shard of some old vinyl lp as well.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

TALKDEMONIC Ruins (Glacial Pace Recordings) cd 15.98
We had never heard this Portland duo before, until their new record showed up at aQ. Obviously the band name was intriguing, and when we threw it on, we were pretty blown away, a haunting sort of electronic flecked rhythmic post rock, or blackened ambient electronica, hard to know exactly how to describe them, one thing we definitely would not have guessed is that they were a drums / viola duo!! The drummer is also the programmer, who we imagine is the one who fills out the sound with all manner of buzz and crunch, but the viola adds some dreamy drama to the proceedings, drifting over percolating rhythms, and wreathed in wild swirls of space-y effects. The opening track "Slumber Verses" sounds like the music from some soundtrack, remixed and revamped, the melancholy melodies are blurred and buzzy, the sounds are streaked with feedback, and hazy droned out chordal shimmer, the heartbeat like pulse, blossoms into a distorted drum beat about halfway through, while the guitars explode into a blissed out sky full of shoegaze high end. It's a pretty dreamy mix, darkly rhythmic, but also noisy and fuzzy and seriously psychedelic. The second track though, the title track, is the first song we heard and the one that really won us over, with a skeletal skittery beat, and a sky full of crumbling distortion and buzzing melody, some electronic bleep and little bits of glitch, washes of hiss and hum, while the viola offers up dreamy melodies, the drums getting super distorted at one point, a totally psychedelic freakout, the electronics freaking out to match, and then when the viola comes back in, so dramatic. Every track here sounds like it could be the music from that super intense movie in some quirky indie film, without the music being quirky itself, which is rare indeed.
Oh did we mention how the title track tumbles though some in-the-red backwards drum damage before slipping right back into a sixties Stereolab like groove? The songs are super varied, but manage to all work together, dreamy and hushed and droney one second, wildly propulsive and blown out the next, fuzzy and poppy one moment, hazy and dreamy and washed out the next. So good! Released on the dude from Modest Mouse's new label.
MPEG Stream: "Ruins"
MPEG Stream: "Slumber Verses"
MPEG Stream: "Revival"

TALKDEMONIC Ruins (Glacial Pace) lp 22.00
NOW ON LP!
We had never heard this Portland duo before, until their new record showed up at aQ. Obviously the band name was intriguing, and when we threw it on, we were pretty blown away, a haunting sort of electronic flecked rhythmic post rock, or blackened ambient electronica, hard to know exactly how to describe them, one thing we definitely would not have guessed is that they were a drums / viola duo!! The drummer is also the programmer, who we imagine is the one who fills out the sound with all manner of buzz and crunch, but the viola adds some dreamy drama to the proceedings, drifting over percolating rhythms, and wreathed in wild swirls of space-y effects. The opening track "Slumber Verses" sounds like the music from some soundtrack, remixed and revamped, the melancholy melodies are blurred and buzzy, the sounds are streaked with feedback, and hazy droned out chordal shimmer, the heartbeat like pulse, blossoms into a distorted drum beat about halfway through, while the guitars explode into a blissed out sky full of shoegaze high end. It's a pretty dreamy mix, darkly rhythmic, but also noisy and fuzzy and seriously psychedelic. The second track though, the title track, is the first song we heard and the one that really won us over, with a skeletal skittery beat, and a sky full of crumbling distortion and buzzing melody, some electronic bleep and little bits of glitch, washes of hiss and hum, while the viola offers up dreamy melodies, the drums getting super distorted at one point, a totally psychedelic freakout, the electronics freaking out to match, and then when the viola comes back in, so dramatic. Every track here sounds like it could be the music from that super intense movie in some quirky indie film, without the music being quirky itself, which is rare indeed.
Oh did we mention how the title track tumbles though some in-the-red backwards drum damage before slipping right back into a sixties Stereolab like groove? The songs are super varied, but manage to all work together, dreamy and hushed and droney one second, wildly propulsive and blown out the next, fuzzy and poppy one moment, hazy and dreamy and washed out the next. So good! Released on the dude from Modest Mouse's new label.
MPEG Stream: "Ruins"
MPEG Stream: "Slumber Verses"
MPEG Stream: "Revival"

TAMAGAWA L'Arbre Aux Fees (Basses Frequences) 3x3"cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Not sure how we discovered the Basses Frequences, and yes that is correct. Basses Frequences. Maybe an email, a recommendation, a chance discovery on the web. It hardly matters, what is important is that we DID discover them, and with the first handful of releases, we're already convinced they might be one of our new favorite cd-r labels.
Not only is the music amazing, but the packaging is totally elaborate and handmade, and quite original, some of the releases in metal tins, this one, the first release from a person / group called Tamagawa, comes in an oversized envelope, with an assortment of small cards and a huge folded cardstock replica of a mini stage lamp, which you can cut out and assemble and store these three mini 3" cd-r's in. Wow.
But cool packaging is never enough, the music on these here discs is divine. And quite varied, from warm washed out ambient dreaminess, to buzzing crumbling drones, to squiggly spaciness, to gorgeous glistening sun baked post rock, to reverb drenched guitar drift, to thick super distorted dirgedrone, and each of those allowed to shift and shimmer, change shape, and alter sound, transform from one into the other, and then back again, the drone is definitely the root of the music here, but even that is sometimes relegated to whirring way off in the distance, while harmonics sparkle and rhythms shuffle, but just as often, the drone wipes the slate clean, and all the OTHER elements drift and whirl in the background while the drone rumbles and buzzes.
The recordings are gorgeous, the sound crystalline, even at its heaviest and most distorted, the music still glows warmly, the edges soft and rounded, the vibe gentle and tranquil, meditative and hypnotic.
Way recommended for fans of drone and drift, of post rock and abstract ambience, and folks who are obsessive about releases from PseudoArcana, Digitalis, Students of Decay and other like minded labels, might just have to add Basses Frequences to that list.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! Packaged in an oversized sealed envelope with printed cards and a replica cut-out-and-assemble stage lamp!
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

TAMARU Figure (Trumn) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Tamaru is a Japanese minimalist, who's not terribly well known outside of Japan, as this is only his second cd in well over a decade of making music. Both on this record and in performance, he uses little more than his bass guitar, a volume pedal, and a delay pedal; and with this process, he restricts himself to an open tuning, using only those four notes as the basis for his harmonic and subharmonic overtones. His thrumbing drones are the results from a decade of refining his craft, discovering which tones he can master, and seamlessly layering sound on top of itself. The eight tracks on Figure are all essentially variations on this same theme for lugubrious undulations of sound that organically ripple, echo, and hypnotize as if they were the cyclical patterns from waves moving across a relatively calm body of water. The first couple of tracks are pretty heavy constructs of tonal interplay within thundering drones stretched upon elongated bowings from his bass guitar, somewhat not all that dissimilar to the longform works by Jonathan Coleclough or Yoshi Wada. On "Stream," Tamaru allows for more of a traditional means of playing the bass, as rounded clouds of tone billow forth like some of the amorphous material from Rothko. "Juju" is a wavering mirage for overlapping drones and slippery swells of bass timbre; and "Room" is downright playful exercise in delay driven phase patterns. Any number of these pieces could be rendered successfully as sustained duration compositions, but Tamaru's economy of scale renders everything as a precious, tightly encapsulated gem of low end frequencies. Nicely done!
MPEG Stream: "Torso"
MPEG Stream: "Stream"
MPEG Stream: "Juju"

TAMARYN Figure (Trumn) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Tamaru is a Japanese minimalist, who's not terribly well known outside of Japan, as this is only his second cd in well over a decade of making music. Both on this record and in performance, he uses little more than his bass guitar, a volume pedal, and a delay pedal; and with this process, he restricts himself to an open tuning, using only those four notes as the basis for his harmonic and subharmonic overtones. His thrumbing drones are the results from a decade of refining his craft, discovering which tones he can master, and seamlessly layering sound on top of itself. The eight tracks on Figure are all essentially variations on this same theme for lugubrious undulations of sound that organically ripple, echo, and hypnotize as if they were the cyclical patterns from waves moving across a relatively calm body of water. The first couple of tracks are pretty heavy constructs of tonal interplay within thundering drones stretched upon elongated bowings from his bass guitar, somewhat not all that dissimilar to the longform works by Jonathan Coleclough or Yoshi Wada. On "Stream," Tamaru allows for more of a traditional means of playing the bass, as rounded clouds of tone billow forth like some of the amorphous material from Rothko. "Juju" is a wavering mirage for overlapping drones and slippery swells of bass timbre; and "Room" is downright playful exercise in delay driven phase patterns. Any number of these pieces could be rendered successfully as sustained duration compositions, but Tamaru's economy of scale renders everything as a precious, tightly encapsulated gem of low end frequencies. Nicely done!
MPEG Stream: "Torso"
MPEG Stream: "Stream"
MPEG Stream: "Juju"

TAMBURO, MIKE Dance Enis Dance (Barl Fire) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Mike Tamburo is another in the burgeoning free folk cd-r underground who through no fault of his own has been overlooked on our weekly new arrivals list. We do our best, but it's pretty dang impossible to keep up with the hundreds of new releases every week, but now we've got the chance to introduce you to the amazing dark musical world of Mr. Tamburo.
Dance Enis Dance is a 32 minute piece for acoustic guitar, Tibetan bowls, chromatic harmonica, e-bowm slide, hammered dulcimer and effects. The result is a modern raga, an epic multi part piece, that could have just as easily been a series of songs, but they are all deftly woven together into the whole. The first part is a simple bit of Appalachian strum that is gradually smeared into a blurry, fuzzy ambience, an effulgent streak of slow shifting buzz. The second 'movement' is super subdued, a dark dark drift, with bells and chimes ringing out over a muted background of warm chords and steel string shimmer, eventually drifting off only to be replaced by a flurry of dulcimer notes, a dense cloud of tangled melody, which is eventually overtaken by thick slabs of crumbling guitar distortion, throbbing and pulsing. The last few minutes are a see-saw, veering back and forth between delicate steel string folk with dreamy slide guitar offering up haunting minor key melodies, to wild fervent strumming and back again, culminating in a strangely atonal bacchanalian psychedelic denouement. Really good stuff. We can't wait to hear more.
This cd-r is packaged in a full color sleeve with a huge insert, art on one side, liner notes (and a poignant tale) on the other.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Dance Enis Dance (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Dance Enis Dance (excerpt 2)"

TANAKH Villa Claustrophobia (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98
Tanakh are a new quintet (led by Jesse Poe from Richmond, VA) that just may pique the interest of those who've enjoyed the recent works of Michael Gira / Angels Of Light, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Larsen. Creating mysterious and expansive music with a rich earthiness and spiritual resonance. The complex, droning tones emitted from the various acoustic, electric and handmade instruments at times suggest the multi-layered sounds of throat singers. The raw, folky male vocals bring to mind those of the aforementioned Gira and the ghostly female voices drift across the soundscapes. A particular highlight is their rendition of the song "Gently Johnny" from The Wicker Man film soundtrack. The list of Villa Claustrophobia personnel is an impressive one with guest appearances by members of Palace, The Dirty Three, Lofty Pillars, Cracker and Ravi Shankar's band. Recorded and mixed by Joh Morand (Sparklehorse, Labradford) and Brian Paulson (Royal Trux, Slint).
RealAudio clip: "Devil's Interval"
RealAudio clip: "Gently Johnny"
RealAudio clip: "Tells"
RealAudio clip: "Mashah"

TAPE Milieu Plus (Hapna) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Hapna has reissued the second album from the Swedish trio Tape, in a digipack with new artwork and four bonus tracks (hence the Plus in the title) from the original 2003 recording sessions. They've done the same with Tape's first album as well (now Opera Plus) but for some reason that disc didn't excite us nearly as much as Milieu did (though we should probably use this opportunity to revisit it and see if we feel differently now). Actually, we didn't even ever review Opera, yet were immediately taken with Milieu. It's simply great, gorgeous.
Theirs is a melodic yet abstract soundworld, very Jewelled Antler in approach, and very delicate. Field recordings + instruments in a calming, semi-improvised setting of simple song-sketches. Acoustic guitar, harmonium, trumpet, electronics, tapes... Hushed, droned, very pretty but not precious. A most pleasant half-hour (plus) indeed! From the Hapna label, who previously brought us Tape member Johan Berthling's marvelous drone collaboration with Oren Ambarchi, My Days Are Darker Than Your Nights. (Hapna is also the home to AQ-faves Sagor & Swing as well amongst many others, by this time hopefully you all have some Hapna in your house).
MPEG Stream: "Oak Player"
MPEG Stream: "Edisto"

TAPE Opera Plus (Hapna) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

TAPE Revelationes (Hapna) cd 16.98
We knew after their breathtaking collaboration with Bill Wells last year that Tape were really reaching a zenith in their career. With a back catalog rich with so many beautiful records, it's so nice to see them continue to reveal subtle shifts in their sound and sonic scope. Revelations flows with such melancholic grace. Instrumental songs that are filled with rich tones and warm melody, taking you to some perfect place, evoking that feeling of staring out the window on a long drive, late at night when there is nothing left to say to the person in the seat beside you.
Other bands that have tried to create a sound like this end up falling so short, coming off as nothing more then post rock band with more moody intentions, but lacking the means or depth to make something really substantial. Tape exist on a totally different level, absolute masters of their craft. Nothing ever feels forced or contrived in their songs. There is an integrity in their compositions that allows you to sway back and forth and get lost in swirls of musical memory and long lost images of other times and places... An utterly gorgeous record.
MPEG Stream: "Dust And Light"
MPEG Stream: "Gone Gone"
MPEG Stream: "Byhalia"

TAPE Revelationes (Immune) lp 16.98
Now we've also got enough of Immune's vinyl version to list, here's what we said about the cd on Hapna a couple weeks ago:
We knew after their breathtaking collaboration with Bill Wells last year that Tape were really reaching a zenith in their career. With a back catalog rich with so many beautiful records, it's so nice to see them continue to reveal subtle shifts in their sound and sonic scope. Revelations flows with such melancholic grace. Instrumental songs that are filled with rich tones and warm melody, taking you to some perfect place, evoking that feeling of staring out the window on a long drive, late at night when there is nothing left to say to the person in the seat beside you.
Other bands that have tried to create a sound like this end up falling so short, coming off as nothing more then post rock band with more moody intentions, but lacking the means or depth to make something really substantial. Tape exist on a totally different level, absolute masters of their craft. Nothing ever feels forced or contrived in their songs. There is an integrity in their compositions that allows you to sway back and forth and get lost in swirls of musical memory and long lost images of other times and places... An utterly gorgeous record.
MPEG Stream: "Dust And Light"
MPEG Stream: "Gone Gone"
MPEG Stream: "Byhalia"

TAPHEPHOBIA House Of Memories (NOTHingness) cd-r 8.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Three new sonic missives from the ether, from whatever mysterious alternate sonic universe the NOTHingness label exists in. A world of bleak emptiness, massive expanses of barren rumbling tundras, of glassy black surface sonic pools... Every disc dark and lovely, creepy and ominous, haunting and super intense. And of course outrageously limited...
This shadowy shimmer is the work of Taphephobia, a side project of the more well known dark ambient outfit Nothaunt, and actually treads somewhat similar sonic ground, but maybe even more abstract. The true audial essence of nothingness for sure, not so much dark ambience, as a mysterious series of soundscapes, of imagined field recordings, the sounds of strange goings on beneath the surface of the earth, massive slow moving machinery, a series of nearly abandoned mines populated by strange shuffling creatures and the occasional ghostly spirit. The clang and shudder of huge pieces of metal being moved across rock strewn plains, the hiss of steam and the grinding of gears, steeped in the shimmering reverb of bottomless pits and mile high caverns overhead, clank and clatter, spread out over strangely rhythmic backdrops, reverberating shimmers, huge pulsing thumps, a gorgeous hellish underworld industrial symphony of minimal lowercase crawl.
LIMITED TO ONLY 111 COPIES!! Packaged in a slimline dvd style case with full color cover.
MPEG Stream: "Fibromyalgia"
MPEG Stream: "Machinery"
MPEG Stream: "Tired Of Living"

TAPIO, JORMA & TERJE ISUNGSET Aihki (Ektro) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK! While the name Jorma Tapio may not be familiar to you, the name Terje Isungset sure as heck should. He's the man responsible for the Igloo record, a past record of the week, recorded entirely on instruments made from ice. We've been selling that like CRAZY, when all of a sudden we got an email from Jussi (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, etc.) letting us know that his label Ektro was releasing a brand new record by Isungset, teamed up with some guy names Tapio. We were of course intrigued, but had no idea what to expect. And had we actually expected something, we probably never would have guessed how weird and wonderful this record would be. No ice instruments sad to say, but armed with flutes, bells, voices, kantele, percussion, Jew's harp and lots and lots of drums, these two whip up a super wild and wooly, ultra dense blast of what we can only describe as tribal forest folk free jazz. Or something like that.
Free jazz is probably the closest comparison, the first few tracks are dense psychedelic percussive freak outs, lots of splattery spastic free jazz drumming all over the place, deep bowed bass, steel string zings, and super creepy strangled and howled vocalizations. Everything sounds very primal and tribal, thick swaths of rhythmic throb underpinned by shimmering washes of cymbal sizzle and warbly mumbled melodies. Isungset proves to be a pretty bad ass drummer, whipping up some seriously wild squalls of spastic skitter, and octopoidal crash and bang. The vocals grunt and chant, sort of yodel, and hoot and holler, very festive and just a little nuts sounding. When the drums recede a bit, the band sort of wonders through some ancient forest, fluttering flutes, simple subtle percussion, distant drones. A bit reminiscent of Avarus or Anaksimandros for sure. The 20+ minute centerpiece, the track "Selainin Tuli / Sacred Fire" lets the duo spread way out, and lay out an expansive tribal soundscape, like the earlier 'free jazz' tracks but stripped way down. Hints of No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand definitely surface now and then, the track eventually building to a howling shrieking psych drone freakout before settling back to almost complete silence. then a gentle lilting smudge of soft flutes and abstract clatter. That smeared clatter sort of drifts into the next two songs, disembodied scrapes and creaks, random bits of percussion, thick washes of low end thrum, quite dark an lovely.
The final track is a flittering flutescape, a spare landscape of woodwinds and distant shimmer, which is soon joined by a buzzing Jew's harp, and the harp and flutes get all tangled up into a strangely propulsive groove, some sort of skeletal prog laced with primal psych rock primitivism and festive Renn Faire revelry, like stumbling into some clearing in the woods and finding some strange open air market, with a very strange duo performing before a crowd of rapt onlookers. Weird, but pretty darn cool as well. Finnish music obsessives need this no matter what. Lovers of that modern free folk new weird America thing might just find that this pushes all their buttons, and REALLY REALLY open minded jazz heads might also want to give this a try.
Highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Seita"
MPEG Stream: "Nocturnal Wind From The Lake"
MPEG Stream: "Alone In Public"

TARA KING TH Uncolored Past (Part1&2) (Moon Glyph) cassette 4.98
From local label Moon Glyph (local now, recently relocated to the East Bay from afar!), comes another gem, this one a dreamy collection of shimmering French psychedelic pop, from the oddly named Tara King Th. A group who traffics in fuzzy, prismatic, Technicolor retro dream pop, lush and lovely, baroque and blissful, lilting pop songs laced with Morricone-ish twang, and futuristic Stereolab style dreaminess, shuffling busy drumming, chiming melodies, droning keyboards that occasionally build to near psychedelic squalls, and of course some seriously swoonsome vox, often woven into lovely harmonies, but just as often crooning dreamily over a spare backdrop of groovy shuffling shimmer. Fans of another recent Moon Glyph outfit, the New Lines, as well as Still Corners, with whom they shared a split, will dig big time, the same sort of sixties style space age retro pop that evokes shag carpeting in sleek silver penthouses, cocktail parties and secret agents, the dreamier numbers making us imagine rainy afternoons in Paris, sitting by the window, drinking tea, looking out at the steel grey sky and the glistening city below. Really great!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "The Hum And The Hiss"
MPEG Stream: "Slow Quest And Misery"
MPEG Stream: "Hole Of Birds"

TARAB Shards Of Splinters - Fragments Of Scratches (Semperflorens) cd 14.98
Too long has passed since we've heard anything new from Tarab - the solo project of Australian sound artist Eamon Sprod. His process involves the recontextualization of field recordings into dense collages of acoustic noise, natural disruptions, violent crackling, and grandiose crescendos of activity bracketed by periods of a unsettled calm. In listening to each of his records, we can easily see how much time and attention he puts into these increasingly complex compositions; so it's no wonder it can take two to three years for a new album to emerge. Sprod collected all of the sounds for Shards Of Splinters while on a month-long residency at MoKS in Estonia. He purposefully chose to go to Estonia in the middle of a very cold, very bleak Baltic winter, in stark contrast to the fire-season and sweltering temperatures he would have found at the same time in his native Australia. As with his small back catalogue, Shards Of Splinters navigates along the boundary between the natural and the industrial - where factories had been left to collapse and to be consumed by vegetation, where tin sheds were torn asunder by hurricane force winds, where rusted pipes eerily resonate chorale drones from unseen cisterns deep under the surface of the earth. Many a field recordist and sound ecologist uses this boundary space to collect a beguiling array of recordings, but Sprod focuses almost entirely on mapping an apocalyptic poetry through his profoundly broken sounds. The unforgiving cold of the Estonian winter threads his recordings of slushing ice, crumbled concrete, and scraped metal that he deftly arranges into ruptures and disturbances that churn through tactile squeaks and metallic vibrations. There is a violence front and center in Sprod's work as if he's forecast the globe itself waking from hibernation to exterminate humanity once and for all. Aesthetically, Shards Of Splinters finds common ground with Eric La Casa or the more narrative work of Chris Watson; but conceptually, Sprod takes a much darker approach akin to Small Cruel Party or G*Park, that gives his recordings a magnificent depth. Brilliant.
MPEG Stream: "Shards Of Splinters 1"
MPEG Stream: "Shards Of Splinters 2"
MPEG Stream: "Shards Of Splinters 3"

TARAB Surfacedrift (Naturestrip) cd 16.98
BACK IN STOCK!
Eamon Sprod (aka Tarab) is a name you don't come across everyday; and I (Jim) swear that I've heard something by this Australian sound artist somewhere along the way. While we could be remembering a track on some obscure Australian compilation, we are probably mistaken as Surfacedrift is his debut recording. Given the high quality of this record, we should have been listening to Sprod's work for many years along with all of those Hazard, Francisco Lopez, and Loren Chasse records that we constantly return to. This unfortunate lapse of memory could also be the result of wandering through Sprod's psychogeographic soundfields. Surfacedrift is a disorienting album, which implodes the perspectives of sound by amplifying the miniscule and softening the impact from environmental recordings. Sprod massages richly textured passages from crumpled leaves, spilled water, and tumbling rocks; he couples these haptic events with field recordings. As everything is so seemless, it's hard to tell if Sprod had actually recorded these rock garden symphonies out of doors (a la Blithe Sons), or if there's a fair amount of production work synthesizing the field recordings with the performative elements. A very impressive debut to say the least!
MPEG Stream: "Surface"
MPEG Stream: "Leaf"

TARAB Take All The Ships From The Harbour, And Sail Them Straight Into Hell (23five Incorporated) cd 14.98
With a huge clamorous slash of metal grinding against metal, Eamon Sprod (aka Tarab) introduces the aptly titled album Take All The Ships From The Harbour, And Sail Them Straight Into Hell. This Australian sound artist has in the past already deeply impressed us with his incredible albums of field recordings interspliced with found object manipulation. In previous recordings, Tarab has exhibited sleights of hand in turning the sounds of the dry scrub lands outside of Melbourne into watery, sinewy compositions with haunted ambience lurking throughout. Here, Tarab activates the resonance of abandoned spaces (including a handful of recordings made at Angel Island with all of its crumbling beauty housed here in the San Francisco Bay); and the watery details, which emerged as illusion before, are pronounced in an ominous rumble of surf, rain, and wind rattling the undercarriage of this album. An album of extreme dynamics, Take All The Ships evolves quite effortlessly from that opening metallic klang through a series of softened white noises culled from oceanic sources and cutting into a quiet passage of vacant spaces with sand and pebbles pushed slowly across the stereo's surface. Through these events, Tarab presents his album with a cinematic grandeur and an orchestral pacing, despite the fact that all of the sounds are derived from those field recordings and found objects. Aside from a few choice backwards masked tracks and the timbral emphasis of EQ, there's no apparent electronic manipulation in his sympathetic layering of sound. The details have all of the presence of the best sound ecologists (e.g. Chris Watson, Douglas Quin, Eric La Casa, etc.), and have been enhanced through the unveiling drama of Tarab's compositions. This is best noted in the album's concluding 15 minutes which gradually build out of a concoction of insect chorales, piles of tumbling sand, and corroded metal handrail being coaxed to emit a gong-like resonant drone. A series of ramped accumulations of sound are cut away to reveal a thicker set of reverberant drones and humid ambience which swell and grow more in keeping with those minimalists we love so much (Chalk, Coleclough, Svarte Greiner, Xela, Peter Wright, etc.). As infernal as the opening of the album is and as prophetic as the title is, this coda to Take All The Ships is uncannily beautiful, almost hallowed, and certainly imbued with melancholy. A damn great record!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 3"

TARAB Wind Keeps Even Dust Away (23five) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK!!!
Wind Keeps Even Dust Away is the second album from the brilliant Australian sound artist Tarab (aka Eamon Sprod) originally released in 2007; yet in his small discography of manipulated field recordings and agitated objects, he's proven himself a masterful sound artist, on par with all time aQuarius favorites Chris Watson, Toshiya Tsunoda, Matt Shoemaker, and Loren Chasse. In comparison to those esteemed artists, Tarab's work is considerably darker; and he has mentioned in a rare interview a somber sympathy for the views of extreme ecologists who posit that the world would be better off if humanity were to succumb to nuclear annihilation. As such, his albums loom as sonic harbingers of the end of the world. He builds all of his work through the overlay of multiple field recordings, augmented by the complementary sounds of Sprod rustling leaves, flaking rust, crumbling dirt, and shattering glass, all of which get mulched into seamless compositions swollen with expansive low end drones and electrocuted vibrations. Wind Keeps Even Dust Away navigates barren landscapes between the industrial wasteland and the wilderness of the outback, whose epic suites wander through the exploded view of locust swarms transmogrified into an electro-static hiss coupled with wind-borne drones and thrumming metallic vibration. Toward the end of the record, Tarab hits an ecological density through his arid sources that would imply the monumental forces of the Amazonian rainforest, but where Lopez seeks to pummel, Tarab is far more subtle in his approach, being inclined to show that weird beetle scurrying through the loose soil. He'll also make you aware of that bug's toxic qualities well after it has already crawled up and down your arm. Brilliant!
MPEG Stream: "Wind"
MPEG Stream: "Keeps"
MPEG Stream: "Away"

TARENTEL Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun Vol. 1 (The Music Fellowship) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When we first heard the title of this new Tarentel FOUR LP series, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, these lps ARE all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrocky pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of each song is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
Volume 1 is six tracks, a little over a half an hour, a dense assemblage of abstract rhythms and brooding, swirling psychedelia, heavy on the This Heat worship, beats stretched out over huge expanses of industrial whir and jagged angular guitars, very loping and hypnotic, brooding and drone-y, mysterious tribal rituals stretched out into epic spaced out, abstract rhythmic jams.
As much as we dig pretty much everything Tarentel does, Ghetto Beats is by far the best stuff we've ever heard from these guys. So fantastic!
MPEG Stream: "Everybody Fucks With Somebody"
MPEG Stream: "All Things Vibrations"

TARENTEL Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun Vol. 2 (The Music Fellowship) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When we first heard the title of this new Tarentel FOUR LP series, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, these lps ARE all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrock pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of each song is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
Volume 2 is 4 tracks, 40 minutes, two epic jams, both 16+ minutes, separated by two shorter tracks. The opener starts with an endlessly hypnotic, near metal drum jam, over which guitars and sound makers creak and keen, a crystalline web of high end sonics over a swirling tribal rhythm. It could seemingly go on forever, and it sort of does, but near the end it dissipates into a dark spacious soundscape of distant clatter and thick rumbling buzz. After a one minute rhythmic experiment, all freaked out psych rock effects and super distorted drum sputter, the second lengthy jam kicks in, and it's definitely the most mellow and blissed out track on the first two volumes, some muted free jazz skitter, over a slow burning expanse of chiming guitars and smears of abstract melody all stretched into a near static glacial groove. So nice. As if that weren't enough, the last 5 minutes is some of that fuzzy crumbling blurry ambience we can never seem to get enough of. Soft focus and indistinct, shimmering guitars wrapped in thick crumbling guitars and a glistening sonic glow, like Tim Hecker, Fennesz, and that sort of thing, a gorgeous late night coda of dreamy drone-y bliss.
As much as we dig pretty much everything Tarentel does, Ghetto Beats is by far the best stuff we've ever heard from these guys. So fantastic!
MPEG Stream: "Sun Place"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Dust"

TARENTEL Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun Vol. 3 (The Music Fellowship) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When we first heard the title of this new Tarentel FOUR LP series, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, the first two of which we raved about a little while back (both of which we still have in stock, although there are only a handful of copies left!) we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, these lps ARE all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrock pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of most of these songs is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
On volume three, the group start out by moving even further out into space (rock) on the ten minute "Stellar Envelope", blown out crumbling sheets of distorted psych guitar and dizzying FX wrapped around propulsive tribal beats, feedback everywhere, it almost sounds like Hawkwind with all the structure sucked out, leaving a huge swirling mass of psychedelic tribal ambience, while managing to still rock somehow. The rest of volume three area gorgeously obfuscated drift through a sonic landscape at once rough and lo-fi and blissfully lush, strange industrial clatter and clang is muted and smeared into mumbly ambience, guitars are looped into hypnotic stretches of throbbing drone, bits of dreamlike melody, simple spacious piano, are wreathed in fuzz and warped into gorgeous slabs of pop ambient fuzz, the whole thing is surprisingly tranquil and shimmery, especially after that opening salvo, and the dense rhythmic intensity of the first two volumes, but within the context of Tarentel's epic 4 part Ghetto Beat symphony, it couldn't sound more perfect.
As much as we love pretty much everything Tarentel does, volume three of Ghetto Beats only further convinces us that this is by far the best stuff we've ever heard from these guys. So fantastic!

TARENTEL Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun Vol. 4 (The Music Fellowship) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
When we first heard the title of this new Tarentel FOUR LP series, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, the first two of which we raved about a little while back (both of which we still have in stock, although there are only a handful of copies left!) we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, these lps ARE all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrock pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of most of the tracks is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
The final volume in the series, offers up Ghetto Beats' heaviest moment in the form of "Somebody Fucks With Everybody", a sidelong doom dirge blow out, referencing everyone from SUNNO))) to Growing to Nadja, a thick glacial swirl of downtuned guitars, wreathed in effulgent streaks of damaged outerspace FX and psychrock solar flares, all underpinned by Neurosis style tribal rhythms, constantly sounding as if any second the song will kick into the heaviest riff of all time, but instead, it stretches on and on, building and building, some sort of cosmic lo-fi krautrock ambience, massive and heavy, but strangely dreamy and blissful.
The second side pretty much eschews the titular beats entirely, instead offering up several brief ambient drifts, the far away foresty folk hovering above slow moving slabs of glacial low end of "Where Time Forgot", the ultra brief scrape and shuffle of "Isalais Delay", the murky disembodied post rock of "You Do This. I'll Do That", a strange landscape of fuzzy melodies and indistinct song fragments, all woven into some sort of soft focus fever dream, and finally, "Lake Light", a two minute outro, the glorious final flurry of sound in this epic sonic travelogue spread out over 4 lps, a gorgeously hopeful, sparkling glistening drift of shimmery harmonics, and misty minor key flutter. So lovely.
We've loved everything Tarentel has done in the past, but this is by far our favorite, and how could it not be after drifting dreamily through all 8 sides of Ghetto Beats, immersing ourselves in a gloriously murky world of drifting space drones and propulsive beats, of fuzzed out shimmer and barely there ambience... So amazing!

TARENTEL Live Edits Italy / Switzerland (Digitalis) cd 12.98
It's been over a year since we've heard from Tarentel. Not since their Ghetto Beats release in 2007. Since then the various members have been doing their own things, recording solo records, playing in other bands, running labels, and while this is not an actual new record it will go a long way to tiding us over until the next proper Tarentel release.
Live Edits, as the title suggests, are various recordings from their 2005 European tour, short excerpts and edits from looooong live performances. The first thing you notice, in one of the Switzerland shows, which was hinted at on Ghetto Beats, is how much more rhythmic they can get live, the drums seem to be THE driving force. Offering up dense flurries of tribal rhythms, pounding out mysterious rituals, while the rest of the band contribute sounds and textures in the background, high pitched sine waves, sheets of feedback, processed guitar scrabble, whirring drones, very abstract and tripped out. But at another show in a different Swiss city, the drums are ditched completely, or if they are present, they are processed into another layer of buzzing drone, to pile atop the already intense wall of sound being conjured up, lots of rumble and hiss, a deep mysterious pulse buried beneath, which eventually builds to something much more blissy and melodic, guitars ringing out, chiming, woven into an ethereal shimmer.
Back at the first Swiss show, the group create a mysterious soundscape of creaking machinery, haunting loops, and heavily effected guitars, left to drift through a super abstract dubby drift.
In Italy, Tarentel offer up yet more minimalism, guitars scrape and groan, creating a rough smear of textured hum, over a distant soft focus shimmer, before letting the guitars growl and buzz, building to a thick throbbing swirl.
The above were just the longer tracks, those are actually separated by brief snippets of various performances, from awesomely chaotic glitched out synthscapery, to deep FX drenched dark ambience, to creepy expanses of low end sprawl and whirring blackened rumbles, all of the tracks, are deftly placed to create the flow of a proper record, the various performances, and the varied sounds, smeared and blurred into one stretched out abstract freeform whole.
Packaged in a cool 2 color silkscreened cardstock sleeve, and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Geneva, Switzerland"
MPEG Stream: "Bern, Switzerland"
MPEG Stream: "Perugia, Italy"

TARENTEL Live Edits: Natoma (Root Strata) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Local ambient drone rockers Tarentel have kept a pretty low profile as of late. Jefre Cantu has focused on his solo recordings as well as running the amazing Root Strata label, while the other members have had their fingers in all sorts of Bay Area exploits. But it seems like maybe Tarentel is starting to gain momentum again, a recent tour with Pelican, a flurry of upcoming releases as well as this here live cd (a cd, NOT a cd-r, although still limited to 500 copies). Recorded last year, this 40 minute set displays some new facets of Tarentel's sound. The opening track is a dense collage of aggressively strummed acoustic guitar amidst swirls of feedback, guitar grit and what sounds like chantlike vocals. A thick cloud of tribal skree that sounds like it could be some lost NNCK track or a Sunburned Hand jam. The next track, the disc's 15 minute long centerpiece, is a murky drift of abstract percussion, haunting horns, muted melodies all in a cloud of room sound and natural reverb. Pretty and space-y and dreamily delicate. The last two tracks, each about nine minutes, find Tarentel dabbling again in New Weird America, albeit offering their own slant. Random percussion, shakers and bells, moaning horns and bits of clatter and clank, cloudy ambience, a muted scrape and scrabble, adding a drone like background texture, peals of feedback drift through a whirring sheet of amp hum and staticky FX, whistles send squiggly little melodies fluttering into the ether, the whole thing a deliriously laidback jam, free and unmoored, a deliriously druggy drift. So nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Packaged in beautiful brown and metallic silver hand screened cardstock sleeves, with a photocopied insert.
MPEG Stream: "Two"
MPEG Stream: "Three"

TARENTEL You Can't Hide Your Love Forever Vol. 3 (Geographic North) 7" 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The third in a new series of 7" singles from some very familiar names. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the first two volumes, one from local boys Tussle and the other from A sunny Day In Glasgow, and now this one, number three, comes from another bunch of local boys, Tarentel, who have been a bit quiet as of late, the various members pursuing their various solo projects, leaving us to enjoy little bits of Tarentel here and there, archival recordings mostly, as we wait patiently for a new full length.
We recently reviewed Tarentel's Live Edits disc on Digitalis, a collection of, well, live edits from various performances, and one of the things we noticed was how rhythmic and almost heavy some of the performances were. The A side, here, or the North side, in keeping with the series theme, sounds like it could have come from the same performance, very drum heavy, a loping groove that sounds almost looped, as the drums are subtly effected and all around them swirl bits of feedback and blurred noise, very krautrocky, with that noisy backdrop surprisingly caustic at points, but just as often smoothed out into buzzing snarling dronescapes, still littered with jagged shards of feedback, and still hovering over that relentless rhythm.
Turning South (to the B side) we find the band ditching the drums completely, for a brooding soundtracky drift, spidery abstract guitars, warm whirring buzz, lush smears of hazy ambience, subtle effects and mysterious rumblings, all woven into the theme music for some late night rainy day wander through some crumbling city, culminating in a haunting bit of cacophony, a corrosive blackened drone, that plays out to the very end of the side before suddenly blinking out.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Super simple, striking covers, mint green vinyl!

TARGODIE Against The Sky (Mobilization) cd 12.98

TARKATAK Lur (Prion) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Lur" is another cd-r release for the exceptional German drone ensemble Tarkatak -- who have a number of tiny editioned releases. With perhaps only using tape speed modulation and a few effects (mostly reverb), Tarkatak beautifully processes a series of heavy bell tones into dark shimmering ambience on par with Andrew Chalk's amazing "East Of The Sun" album. "Lur" comes packaged with a sewn blue hessian bag (a similar idea to :Zoviet France:'s early album entitled "Hessian") which tends to fray easily, so please be careful when handling it.

TARKATAK Skok (Trummer Kassetten) cd-r 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The German drone outfit Tarkatak has been a little too low profile for their own good, with a handful of super limited edition releases that have sadly been pressed as cd-rs. Fortunately Jef Cantu of Tarentel plans on releasing a Tarkatak album on his newly christened dronological label Blessed / Cursed, which could very likely get Tarkatak the attention which they deserve. But until that day comes, we'll try and keep as many of the tiny editions of Tarkatak records as we can. "Skok" is a fairly recent release, though the recordings date back to winter of 96 / 97. Tarkatak keeps things very quiet with some beautiful deep drones punctuated by subaquatic washes. The tonal palette is remarkably similar to Zoviet France's "Digilogue." Excellent work!!!

TARKOVSKY, ANDREY Andrey Rublyov (Toei) cd 32.00
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Over the years, I have met many people who have taken the pains to make cassette dubs of the "Stalker" soundtrack straight from the video. No longer necessary. Dark and heavy orchestrations and vibrations resonating from the claustrophobic cloak of the cold, cold iron curtain. And one folk dance. Very highly recommended. And if you have seen (heard) "Solaris" lately, you know how beautiful and mysterious it is too. Japanese imports, hence the price (nice packaging though.) "Ivanovo" is a little cheaper because it's a little shorter.

TARKOVSKY, ANDREY Ivanovo Destvo (Toei) cd 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Over the years, I have met many people who have taken the pains to make cassette dubs of the "Stalker" soundtrack straight from the video. No longer necessary. Dark and heavy orchestrations and vibrations resonating from the claustrophobic cloak of the cold, cold iron curtain. And one folk dance. Very highly recommended. And if you have seen (heard) "Solaris" lately, you know how beautiful and mysterious it is too. Japanese imports, hence the price (nice packaging though.) "Ivanovo" is a little cheaper because it's a little shorter.

TARKOVSKY, ANDREY Solaris (Toei) cd 34.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Over the years, I have met many people who have taken the pains to make coldhave seen (heard) "Solaris" lately, you know how beautiful and mysterious it is too. Japanese imports, hence the price (nice packaging though.) "Ivanovo" is a little cheaper because it's a little shorter.

TARKOVSKY, ANDREY Zerkalo/Stalker (Toei) cd 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Over the years, I have met many people who have taken the pains to make cassette dubs of the "Stalker" soundtrack straight from the video. No longer necessary. Dark and heavy orchestrations and vibrations resonating from the claustrophobic cloak of the cold, cold iron curtain. And one folk dance. Very highly recommended. And if you have seen (heard) "Solaris" lately, you know how beautiful and mysterious it is too. Japanese imports, hence the price (nice packaging though.) "Ivanovo" is a little cheaper because it's a little shorter.

TASKERLANDS s/t (Time Released Sound) cd 14.98
While we've raved about the insane and insanely elaborate packaging from local boutique label Time Released Sound, we try to stress that all this fancy pants packaging wouldn't mean shit though if the music wasn't able to stand on its own, and thankfully, since a lot of the TRS releases sell out before we can get our hands on them, or are just a bit too pricey for some folks, they also come available as more affordable discs in less extravagant packaging, which is especially good news, cuz it would be sad for music like this to only make it into the ears of the 80 people who managed to nab the deluxe version.
Taskerlands is a duo consisting of Michael Tanner, aka Plinth, who was responsible for that incredible Collected Machine Music disc all created from the sounds of vintage music boxes, and David Colohan from psych folk outfit United Bible Studies. Tanner and Colohan each strap on a guitar, run it through some pedals, and out comes some gloriously dreamy pastoral psychedelic folk, lush and sun dappled, the notes and chords wreathed in reverb and echo and allowed to drift weightless over darkly delicate piano, and the sweet melodies from a bass clarinet fluttering just below the surface. Two twenty-one minute tracks, each one a softly smoldering sonic rumination, slipping from dense tangles of abstract Appalachia to brooding low end swirl, flickering melodic drift to dark distorted droned out minor key dirges, from haunting hypnotic thrum, to washed out hazy psychedelic shimmer. Lovely, lovely stuff.
Not as limited as the deluxe version, but limited nonetheless, so grab one before they're gone!
MPEG Stream: "In Forests Submerg'd, No Season Brooks Heeding"

TATE, DARREN A Strange Artifact (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
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This is the second pressing of A Strange Artifact which dates to 2004. The second edition, like the first, comes by the way of Darren Tate's own Fungal imprint, although he's vastly improved the artwork with reproductions of Tate's stain-and-ink drawings adorning the sleeve. Given the limited nature of the original edition, this one is certainly new to us; and for better or for worse, the second one will soon depart from these doors.
Darren Tate has been a regular fixture here at Aquarius with his self-produced constructs of eccentric droneworks, although he's best known for his impressionist compositions with Andrew Chalk and Colin Potter, in Ora and Monos respectively. A Strange Artifact is a suitable title for this album, which Tate composed as a fictional piece of automatic music through accordion, guitar, and field recordings. The accordion tentatively seesaws a quizzical arpeggiation that when brought up to speed sounds like a primitive variation of Phillip Glass's early work, but mostly is a slow meander through notes providing something eerily carnivalesque like a Svankmajer soundtrack. Spindly guitar plucks float amidst the accordion, and subterranean field recordings churn in the distant. Perhaps this is the least droning piece we've encountered from Darren Tate, certainly one of the weirdest, too. Limited to 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "A Strange Artifact (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "A Strange Artifact (excerpt 2)"

TATE, DARREN Another Sunday (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
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Another Sunday is another self-released micro-edition from the British drone maestro Darren Tate, best known for his work in Ora and Monos. Here, Mr. Tate presents three lengthy tracks of analogue synth variations on a theme and one pastoral field recordings of the birds flitting around his country garden. The analogue sounds revolve around a kosmische swirl of filter-sweep minimalism dappled with oceanic, tonal glissandos which gently sway up and down for a subtle hypnotic effect. Tate weaves into these ambient modulations a chorus of sympathetic vibrations, which taken on their own could easily be confused for the glacial pacing of Eliane Radigue's compositions. The coda of birds is a nice touch, countering the navel-gazing circuitry of the electronic sound with a fanciful chorus of avian calls. For those of you who have picked up any number of those field recording documents from Sittelle, try your hand at identifying all of these birds. In any case, Another Sunday is super limited, with an edition of 100 copies. We've got only a handful!
MPEG Stream: "Another Sunday 2"
MPEG Stream: "Another Sunday 4"

TATE, DARREN Calm In A Teacup (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
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Stranger and stranger Darren Tate gets, even as he releases this set of previously unreleased archival material from 1986-87, which finds Tate rummaging around in his garden shed and garage with an unnamed collaborator creating all sorts of clamorous textures, metallic klangs, and screeched bowed drones in a picnic-on-a-summer-afternoon take on the bleak industrial ritualism that was oozing up from the European soils (e.g. Metgumbnerbone, Zero Kama, Ain Soph, and plenty of lesser acolytes from the Temple of Psychick Youth). The spaciousness of Calm In A Teacup does recall the documentary / field recording agenda that Organum offered forth a year later on the magnificently mysterious Vacant Lights album; and a similar metaphysical time/space warp occurs here in Tate's recording through the interplay between the environmental sounds and the hands-on clattering. Very little of the sounds have much in the way of effects or treatments, mostly just the natural echo within the garage and / or shed. Nonetheless, the whole album is pretty zonked-out along a similar axis to Richard Youngs, Taj Mahal Travellers, or Avarus. One would hardly believe Tate would have made records with Andrew Chalk and Colin Potter that would sound so bloody sensible in comparison to this. Signed and number by Darren Tate himself. Just 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 2"
MPEG Stream: "track 3"

TATE, DARREN Close Timid Night (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Close Timid Night is another hand-fabricated, super-limited production from the British eccentric sound artist Darren Tate. His field recording and drone-based work was part of the seminal collective Ora, which found Darren working closely with Andrew Chalk, Colin Potter, Michael Northam, and Jonathan Coleclough. Since then, he's loosened his grip on the drone and has encouraged atypical interactions between long passages of field recordings and an outsider approach to guitar and / or synth. He populates this piece with nocturnal domestic events of creaks from the attic, the ticking of a wind-up clock, the murmur of passing cars, the meowing of cats, and the occasional rattling water pipe all tied together with recordings of distant bursts of fireworks with none of the celebratory cheer and reveling that always echo the flashes of light and thunderous cracks. There's plenty of space for these starkly described environmental sounds, and Tate overlays a monotone hum and his meandering clusters of notes on his synthesized harpsichord. It gives the feel that Tate is allowing his mind to wander whilst peering through the window at the fireworks streaming over a nearby village. Not too sure how limited this one is, but probably somewhere around 50 copies would be our guess.
MPEG Stream: "Close Timid Night"

TATE, DARREN Late Afternoon (For Keijo) (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
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Once a collaborator many years ago with Andrew Chalk in a project called Ora, Darren Tate has been steadily self-releasing his own diversions of drone, field recording, and eccentric sound-design at quite a brisk pace. Late Afternoon is already the fourth album he's released in 2010, and we might have actually missed one or two. We're pretty sure that the Keijo he's dedicated this album to is the freaked-out Finnish psychedelic minstrel with boatloads of albums on PseudoArcana, Digitalis, Last Visible Dog, etc. Unlike many of the recent Tate records, which had been heavy on the weirdo-synth tip, this one finds Tate adopting the beloved Jewelled Antler strategy of recording out in the wilderness, allowing all of the incidental sounds - manmade, natural, and otherwise - to tread upon whatever musical notes might be generated. Tate doesn't let on to where this recording was made, but it's got something of a natural concrete reverb, it's near an airfield, and it's infested with pigeons. Tate's minor intrusions include a set of chimes which tinkled gently in the thickened reverberations, an acoustic guitar which Tate strums occasionally in brightly ringing chords that again cascade in that reverb, and there's one big cough about 18 minutes into the disc, which Tate purposefully leaves in the mix. Forest folk minimalism meets field recordings! Limited to about 100 copies, of which we have only a handful.
MPEG Stream: "Late Afternoon"

TATE, DARREN Nature In The City (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
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Darren Tate has quietly amassed a substantial catalogue of treated field recordings and electrical eccentricities over the past twenty years, most notably through his collaborations with Andrew Chalk in Ora and more recently through his drone-centric project Monos, which typically features Colin Potter as Tate's trusted foil. While billed as a solo record, Nature In The City was to be the follow-up to the well received (and now out of print) Monos 2cd Generators released on Die Stadt in 2005. That album with its science fiction bleakness through analog electronics was the jumping off point for many of the recent Darren Tate experiments, and was clearly something that Nature In The City comes out of. However, Die Stadt decided to drop Nature In The City from their release schedule, leaving Tate to put this recording out through his own Fungal imprint. Here, Tate concentrates upon atonal flares of sawtooth synth tones and phaser-shot guitar noises that jump out from beds of undulating drones, bellowing loops, and eerie LFO-driven frequencies. Oblique half-melodies nervously flicker out of these constructions, occasionally joined by dreamy flickerings of pixel dust, all awash in nocturnal reverberations. Limited to a mere 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"

TATE, DARREN No Longer Here (ICR) cd-r 13.98
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The eccentric British sound artist Darren Tate delves back into the drone for this nocturnal album of slippery surfaces. His earliest recordings with Andrew Chalk in Ora and later on with Colin Potter as Monos explored the crepuscular regions of dronemuzik as dappled with sodden field recordings and occluded gestural noise. Yet his solo work of late eschews more and more of the drone quotient, emphasizing the erratic if subdued expressionist elements found in his blorping synths and anti-everything guitar fragments, all of which are bracketed by prolonged periods of quietude. The brilliant producer / engineer Colin Potter (the most sure handed colleague for Stapleton's recordings & performances through Nurse With Wound) amends and adds to recordings provided by Tate on No Longer Here, perhaps transforming the source material into the elegant, mercurial drones found within. A deep thrumming, low end frequency sprawls from end to end of this 45 minute epic, with eerie spectral tones ebbing between synthetic filigrees of cosmic electronics, hallowed reverberations, and watery elongations of sound. Beautiful stuff! The more times we hear this record, the more Tate's outsider strategies become more evident amidst the oceanic currents of drone, making this one of the best "solo" records we've heard from him in a very long time and another exemplary drone album from the whole Chalk / Coleclough / Potter / Tate axis. Not sure how limited this edition is; but probably won't be around for long!
MPEG Stream: "No Longer Here"

TATE, DARREN Old Pointed Hat (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
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A wayward psychedelia and an English eccentricity sets Darren Tate apart from many of his psychedelic dronework counterparts. He's unashamed to declare his infatuation with cats and gnomes throughout his many productions. His early recordings with Andrew Chalk (amongst others) as Ora had self-released through their imprint Gnome Records with a few of Tate's kooky watercolors of cats gracing the covers of those albums. Old Pointed Hat was ostensibly to be Tate's "Christmas" album, but he decided to go with the gnome theme once again... at least for the cover art. It's hard to see how gnomes fit into this primitive recording for electronics and guitar, which sounds more like something that should have come out on Snatch Tapes back in 1982, and was only now rediscovered by the bloggers. It's clear by now that Tate has become less interested in the pure drone, pushing more towards an expressive urge through gesture and abstraction. Tate sets up his Roland 101 synthesizer to randomly shuffle through a stoccatic sci-fi bleepity-bloop that slowly evolves into a malcontent post-TG turgid pseudo groove. Throughout this evolution, Tate interjects with a metallic splatter of splintered guitar noise coupled with radio interference and warbles of odd distortion. Growled sawtooth low-end noise and horror / sci-fi half melodies elsewhere on the album give an early Maurizio Bianchi / Hospital Productions vibe. Limited to a 50 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Old Pointed Hat 1"
MPEG Stream: "Old Pointed Hat 2"

TATE, DARREN Organ Of Sight (Fungal) cd-r 13.98
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One of the dronescapers behind the seminal Ora project, which also prominently featured Andrew Chalk and Colin Potter, Darren Tate has been quietly churning out tiny edition CD-Rs. Most of his self-released discs have completely evaded us, but we managed to snag the last batch of copies of Organ Of Sight from Mr. Tate himself, who has warned us that these are indeed the last copies to be found. The limited availability of this album is not reason alone to investigate, as Darren Tate has long been an exemplary proponent of otherworldly, long-form abstraction and Organ Of Sight is no exception. A spectral vibrato of an analogue synth set to UFO hover is the foundation for Tate's untitled opening piece, which flashes with eerie electronics on par with much of the '60s esoterica genius mined found in the Creel Pone series. These paranoiac ambient gestures also resemble the general tone of Tate's contributions to the Monos album Generators, from 2005. While the second track rumbles with a deep space frequency and echoes with unsettled sonar pings, Tate counters his isolationist sentiment with a languid series of synthetic harpsichord melodies which make for a dreamy, blissful atmosphere. The final number rattles with a deadened vacuum cleaner hum spotted with smallish events and spooky sound effects cracking the event horizon, which altogether resembles something like Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense. Limited to a mere 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 3"