TERRESTRIAL TONES Blasted (Psych-O-Path) lp 14.98

TERRESTRIAL TONES Dead Drunk (Paw Tracks) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "Car Fumes"
MPEG Stream: "The Sailor"

TERRESTRIAL TONES Oboroed / Circus Lives (UUAR) cd 14.98

TERRORAZOR / H4180V21.C Noise Alliance (Deathstrike) 7" 8.98
Evil Avenger has to be one of the weirdest and demented and most original sonic alchemists in black metal. Besides being the mastermind behind 'wooden metal' horde Varghkogarghasmal, and playing in Front Beast, Necroslaughter, Szarlem, Witchslaughter, Angel Of Damnation, Black Priest of Satan, and about a million others, he also is the psychotic genius behind one man blackened grind metal 'combo' Terrorazor, which just might be the weirdest of the bunch.
Ultra chaotic, murky, muddy, noise drenched blackened free metal. Or something like that. This stuff is really far out, and difficult to describe. Disintegrating riffs, splattery free jazz rhythms that only occasionally coalesce into beats, blast and otherwise, guitars swirl and grind and buzz beneath grunted inhuman vox, imagine a black metal Faxed Head, or even a more avant, free jazz Abruptum, or some sick combination of both!
As if Terrorazor wasn't enough madness, the flipside comes from electronic metal weirdos H418ov21.C, named for a record by Finnish metal gods Beherit, but don't be expecting anything like Beherit, or really like anything you've ever heard. The music of H418ov21.C is a totally bizarre blown out tangle of impossibly distorted drum machine and low slung, throbbing free-form downer doom bass. Like Joy Division basslines were stripped from their original songs, and layered over a cacophony of ancient drum machines gone totally haywire and run through a bank of distortion pedals with dying batteries. So fucking bizarre and so amazing.
LIMITED TO ONLY 150 COPIES. Housed in a plain gold sleeve with a printed transparent front cover. Cool.

TERRORISM Skyguide (Hospital Productions) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A few weeks ago we got a killer batch of 'metal' tapes from Hospital Productions, two of which we reviewed, the 2nd album from Vegas Martyrs, and the debut from death-obsessed doom flecked black metal weirdos Curved Blade, both of which sold out and went out of print crazy quick.
In the same batch we also got two other releases, twisted lo-fi outsider sci-fi death metal weirdness from a band called Time Crypt, and super blown out noise metal damage from Terrorism. The bummer is that we intended to check these out, and then order more to review, but before we knew it, both of these were sold out and out of print as well. But we do still have THREE copies of each, they're both bizarre and baffling and perfect for folks into fucked up confusional metal, so at least a few folks will get to check them out...
Terrorism traffic in some seriously terrifying sounds, totally blasted out, in-the-red, screechy, caustic, harsh and hellish noise drenched black metal, think Bone Awl or Akitsa, Ancestors, Malveillance, that sort of raw primitive pound, but then bury it beneath squalls of harsh high end skree, wild chaotic drum splatter, malfunctioning electronics, moaning low end bellows, a crashing, careening, noise metal juggernaut, the sound slipping from total abstract free noise howl, to murky ploddy drift, to brittle blown out black metal blast, to industrial power electronics and back again. Seriously brutal, but pretty dang great. Too bad we only have 3 copies...
Twisted, shrill, harsh, hateful,

TERRORS Inequipoise (Monorail Trespassing) cassette 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A tremendous cassette only release from the Terrors, an unknown project presumably based out of Los Angeles who offers up some totally desolate, bedroom recordings for cheap synths, guitar, voice, and -- because it's on Monorail Trespassing - snippets of noise. The first track has this creepy, nocturnal repeating motif of minor key melody that is trying to be a Rhodes keyboard but is probably something much more disposable, but that melody could be something easily found on a Labradford album or even a Bohren and Der Club of Gore track, but run through William Basinski's tape machinations. Ghostly splashes of droning guitar ebb and flow around that melodic passage, furthering the darkened gloom which settles around the track. This alone is worth the price of admission! The next track and a few fragmented moments on the other side feature vocals from the Terrors. It's a painfully lonely voice singing into a crappy microphone, which accentuates the melancholy vocal melody wrapped with plenty of tape hiss and an occasional downer strum on an acoustic guitar. These songs appear as a cross between Devendra and Grouper, as these roughly hewn takes on whatever was at hand with the pure emotion coming through the songs, cast in a hue that is profoundly depressed for the Terrors. The last track on this cassette ends with a arcing wash of white noise, that almost sounds like Terrors set up his recording under the flight path of LAX, just to get the rush of a plane taking off to conclude this track. It's a C-30 tape, and limited to 125 copies. Really great!

TETRAGRAMMATON Point of Convergence (Utech) cd 14.98
The latest batch from Utech is all excellent stuff (as usual), we're reviewing three this list, including the Locrian double disc (one of our Records Of The Week), the new Gog, and this, from Japan's Tetragrammaton.
The first thing one of the AQ Overlords here said when he heard this one is, if not entirely accurate, a good starting point for a description: "Sounds like a black metal Taj Mahal Travellers!" While it's NOT black metal, there's a menacing, mesmeric vibe here that some black metallers might appreciate. Possibly also some Buddhist monks, too. Part freeform psychedelic rock exploration, part dronological soundscapery, Tetragrammaton's Points Of Convergence is a beautiful and frightening trip into the void-dark expanses... that this trio is Tokyo-based is no surprise, seems like if Utech hadn't put this out, PSF should have. Band members TOMO, Cal Lyall, and Nobunaga Ken utilize a wide array of instruments to conjure up intense music that's both detailed and active, and droningly atmospheric: hurdy-gurdy, guitar, saxophone, crystal bowls, percussion, voices, Rhodes piano, hydrophone, gongs, drums, bells, bowls, taisho-koto...
Track one, "Disjecta Membra", begins as if recorded inside of a giant cauldron; echoing, haunting, with mysterious scrapings and billowing distortion, it builds up and up, over the course of 14+ minutes, spiralling into dense hypnotic drones, before a climax that takes the form of a free improv freakout, an electric tangle of guitar, sax, percussion... As quick as that erupts, it subsides, and track two, "Portrait Of Turab (Part I)" starts in with sustained bell tones, shimmering in the cauldron-blackness. Later still, the textural drones of "Sol de Paula" evoke all the awe of the 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith! And elsewhere watery textures and strange pipe-fighting percussion take center stage.
This unit's previous release, a double disc, was one of Julian Cope's Records Of The Month some time ago (btw, whatever happened to his Record Of The Month? the Head Heritage site hasn't been updated with one since the summer). If there's enough interest in this (which there should be!), perhaps we can import some of those, too.
The usual Utech packaging, nicely designed, slim sleeve, oversized. Lots of black.
MPEG Stream: "Disjecta Membra"
MPEG Stream: "Portrait Of Turab (Part I)"
MPEG Stream: "Sol de Paula"

TETRAS Pareidolia (Flingco Sound System) 2lp 27.00
Jason Kahn has come a long way, now a respected sound artists and minimalist composer, it's still a little hard to believe he played in bands like the Leaving Trains, Trotsky Icepick and the Universal Congress Of, and normally, this is where we would say, but actually you can hear much of those past groups in his new sound, but actually you can't. Not at all. Kahn's new work is world's removed, and we've come to love that stuff nearly as much as we love(d) the late great Leaving Trains.
Which brings us to Tetras, a trio featuring Kahn, whose sound is a sprawling rhythmic abstraction that touches on everything from This Heat (especially This Heat!) to Aussie minimalist jazz combo the Necks, exploring the same sort of stretched out propulsive mesmer and textured dronescaping, each of the four side long tracks here a totally mesmerizing sprawl of layered buzz and deftly arranged melody, but with the rhythmic element really holding it all together. The songs, for as minimal and abstract as they are, not at all static, alive and full of energy, with a barely contained momentum, that makes the tracks seethe and thrum. The Necks vibe is huge, especially on the opener, which takes the cyclical slow build of that group and gives it a sort of avant / post industrial makeover, the drums a skittery shuffle, the bass loping and looping, all beneath layers of blurred organ chords, static wreathed melodies, and all manner of constantly shifting textures.
The other three tracks follow suit, subtly altering the equation, part two is much more droned out and noisy, the clouds of hiss and static ebbing and flowing, over a buried jazzy shuffle, the bass bowed unfurling long moaning tones, everything wreathed in an insectoid buzz, the result hazy and hypnotic. Part three opens up with a wall of crumbling chaotic white noise, a squall of warped blown out psychedelia, which gives way to some hushed shimmer, which is soon overtaken by some weirdly gorgeous feedback drenched melodies and distorted dynamics which soon explode into some awesomely blown out jazziness that reminds us of Laddio Bolocko or the Psychic Paramount, but so in-the-red, the tones blossom and expand transforming the sound into some strange heavy psychedelia. And finally, part four finishes things off with something a bit more dialed back, a scattering of tribal drum splutter, more bowed strings, and moaning melodies, this time under weird digitally processed guitar skree and crumbling distorted drones, eventually slipping into something slightly more straight forwardly jazzy, which also eventually morphs into a weirdly abstract but druggily dreamy electronic noise drenched jazziness.
Housed in a super thick, ultra deluxe, hand screened heavy cardboard jacket, and includes a download coupon as well.
MPEG Stream: "Pareidolia I"
MPEG Stream: "Pareidolia II"

TETRAULT, MARTIN / OTOMO, YOSHIHIDE 1. Grrr (Ambiances Magnetiques) cd 15.98
First in a planned trilogy of live recordings from this turntablist duo's Europe 2003 tour. Grrr 'cause it's noisy.

TETREAULT, MARTIN & OTOMO YOSHIHIDE 2. Tok (Ambiances Magnetiques) cd 15.98
More turntable strangulation from two masters of that very avant-garde (even today!) art form. Quebec's Martin Tetreault and Japan's Otomo Yoshihide (the latter of which, at least, should need no introduction to most AQ customers, known as he is far and wee for various projects, among them his famed Ground Zero band) have tangled before, and right away get down to business here, in a selection of live duo performances recorded on their tour of Europe in the Spring of 2003. Together they manifest an intriguing sound-world, liberating from old LPs variously sandpaper textures, helicoptering drone, and spluttering screams. Volume 2 of a planned trilogy, 2. Tok concentrates on their most "fragmented" improvs of the tour. We didn't review it, but we do also have the first volume, 1. Grr, so-named as it's devoted to what the duo deemed their noisiest material.
MPEG Stream: "Nijmegen No. 4a"
MPEG Stream: "Lyon No. 3"

TETREAULT, MARTIN & OTOMO YOSHIHIDE 21 Situations (Dame) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"An electromechanic meeting around turntables. 21 improvisational settings dealing with science fiction, education, jungle, cartoons and 17 other surprising themes!" says the top-obi. From Quebec and Japan, respectively, Tetreault and Yoshihide (of Ground Zero fame among other things), certainly don't sound like conventional DJs as they positively torture the vinyl on their turntables.

TETREAULT, MARTIN / KID KOALA Phon-o-victo (Les Disques Victo) cd 15.98
By now, most readers of the aQ list know just how much we love the turntable, and all the non musical sounds associated with it, hiss and crackle and pop, skips and scrapes, we've reviewed records featuring turntables without records, recordings of ONLY the surface noise of lps, we love it. So of course we love folks like Philip Jeck, Martin Tetreault and Strotter Inst., who have truly stretched the boundaries of turntable as instrument, but our first exposure to what could be done with a turntable, as was probably lots of folks', was via hip hop and DJs. aQ used to be the source for all things turntablism, Qbert, Invisbl Skratch Piklz, and especially Kid Koala, who had amazing DJ skills, but gave them his own distinct spin (remember the Charlie Brown "I gotta rock" jam?, Or the warbly record player horn solos?). For whatever reason, that stuff seemed to fade back into the underground, or the more under, underground, whatever happened, we hadn't heard a peep from Kid Koala in almost 3 years.
But what a return! Two masters of the turntable, both approaching it from different backgrounds and with different influences, a dizzying mash up of textures and beats, of loops and song fragments, a live multiple turntable jam session captured on tape, and holy shit is it good.
Scratchy old jazz records begin to skip before morphing into big booming low end rhythms, wild drum solos are looped and layered, strange voices surface and then fade away, scratches are transformed into bird calls, blurred streaks of melody, crackle everywhere like rainfall, gorgeous sheets of low end buzz underpin skittery squiggles and jagged shards of hiss, effects drenched scratching unfurls like wild spaced out psychedelic freakouts, groovy fractured funk assembled from strange voices, nature records, and who knows what else, left to drift through a sea of haunting rumbles and mysterious grinding noise, finishing off with a wild assemblage of manipulated voices, super minimal click and thump beats, deformed music box melodies, and a symphony of scrapes and scratches and pops and clicks. Really amazing stuff. Weird and dark and playful and wild. Turntable freaks will dig this big time.
MPEG Stream: "Drum-o-scope"
MPEG Stream: "Pluto attack (la revanche des exclus)"
MPEG Stream: "The DJ Factory turn crazy"

TETREAULT, MARTIN / SACHIKO M / YASUHIRO OTANI / OTOMO YOSHIHIDE Four Focuses (Amoebic) cd 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A collection of solos and duets for turntables and samplers from these four vangardists, incorporating a distinct rhythmic edge previously alien to the Fluxus / electro-acoustic improvisational schools.

TEXT OF LIGHT 052402 echo 4 (Table Of The Elements) 12" 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another volume in Table Of The Element's amazing Lanthinides series of silkscreened single sided 12"s. This is the first offical release from Text Of Light, a loose ensemble made up of Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, DJ Olive, Christian Marclay and Uli Krieger. Originally formed to improvise to the silent films of Stan Brakhage (Brakhage's film Text Of Light is the band's namesake), Text Of Light rumble and drone and meander through a dark and moody sonic soundscape, littered with the detritus of music concrete, avant turntablism, dronology and dark ambience. Dark and minimal and quite beautiful.
And it's got an unfinished Christmas ornament designed by Harry Smith is silkscreened in glow in the dark ink on the non-playing side. And in response to the complaints of folks who bought any of the first eight 12"s and experienced the brittle / easy-cracking plastic sleeves, these new 12"s come in an improved sleeve, much softer, and way less fragile.

TEXT OF LIGHT Rotterdam 1 (Room 40) cd 16.98
Live document of a TOL performance recorded at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January of 2005. This rotating collective of improvisers, which this time around include Alan Licht and Lee Ranaldo on guitars, DJ Olive on turntables, Tim Barnes on percussion and Ulrich Krieger on sax, continue their practice of performing to the films of Stan Brakhage and other members of the avant-garde cinema of the fifties and sixties. While only 20 minutes long, each musician is allowed their moment to shine before the piece culminates in an otherworldly full band racket. Although, it would be nice to see the film with the music meant to accompany it, the overall piece works well without the aid of visuals, and is a good introduction to anyone curious about this organic collective of experienced free-players.
MPEG Stream: "Rotterdam 1 (excerpt)"

TEXT OF LIGHT s/t (Starlight Furniture Co.) cd 13.98
This is the first full length release (after a 12" on Table Of The Elements) by the group Text Of Light, named for a 1974 Stan Brakhage film and made up of Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, DJ Olive, Christian Marclay and Uli Krieger. Originally Text Of Light was formed to perform along with Brakhage films, and while Brakhage was an inspiration for these recordings they are not "potential Brakhage soundtracks". Text Of Light weave spare soundscapes of clatter and creak, enviornmental sounds, free jazz splatter, No Neck Blues Band style hippy rock-brut, avant turntablism, deep drones and abstract ambience.
MPEG Stream: "Knitting Factory (Quartet)"

TEXT OF LIGHT Text of Light (Dirter Productions) 3cd 41.00

MPEG Stream: "052901 Tonic 5/4/6"
MPEG Stream: "052901 Tonic 1"
MPEG Stream: "05291 Tonic 7"

TH. Afflux (Small Doses) 3" cd-r 5.98
Another mysterious little noisy sonic gem from the Small Doses label, one of our new favorite small labels, due in part to the cool shit they put out, but also the fact that no matter how limited a release is, the packaging is super deluxe.
tH. is the work of a guy named Taylor Holdgraf, and Afflux is a strange composition for glitch and static and feedback and basically all the parts of music that aren't traditionally music. On the surface, Afflux sounds a bit like someone dragging a needle across an lp, or changing radio stations while driving through a tunnel, but it's arranged and structured into strange little microrhythms, drawn out expanses of super minimal drone, high end sine waves waver and shimmer, chunks of white noise are chopped into stuttering sort-of grooves, bits of feedback transform into what sounds like chirping crickets, some parts the hiss and glitch and crackle are smoothed into thick whirring textures, while other parts the grind and crunch are unfettered, allowing for little jagged bursts of super dynamic buzz and speaker rattling bzzzt.
Very noisy for sure, but structured and arranged in a surprisingly listenable, and surprisingly musical way.
As always, gorgeous packaging, a miniature three panel two sided full color vellum sleeve. And again LIMITED TO 77 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "Afflux"

TH26 La Haine (A Silent Place) cd 10.98
We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have only THREE of theseÉ
We reviewed a handful of releases from Italian post-industrial / dark pop combo T.A.C., all part of this batch of Small Voices releases, along with those albums proper, came this, TH25, a project of T.A.C. member Simone Balestrazzi, which the label describes as: "Hard electro-core, pure rhythmic & synthetic EBM sounds, rumoristic experiments & great filtered vocals." Not sure what 'rumoristic experiments' are, but the rest is pretty spot on. Super pulsing, pounding minimal electronics, skittery and stuttery, with darkly crooned vocals, occasionally sung/spoken, for those of us without deep roots in electronic music culture, it's difficult to make any sort of sonic cultural references, but much of this sounds to us like a more gothic/gloomy Meat Beat Manifesto, if that makes any sense, there's also some references to old Ministry, which is never a bad thing, it's that sort of industrial pound, fused to dark minor key synths, and deep vocals, creating a sort of beat heavy gloom pop if you will, the vibe in many places more new wave or cold wave, minus those step sequenced synths and pulsing beats, but the vibe is definitely dark enough, that this would probably appeal to folks into the whole new wave of dark pop and cold wave electro. We're actually digging this quite a lot!
MPEG Stream: "TV Germs"
MPEG Stream: "The Enemy Inside"
MPEG Stream: "Second Skin"

THAEMLITZ, TERRE Die Roboterrubato (Mille Plateaux) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Kraftwerk songs "interpreted" on the piano, with extensive liner notes explaining Thaemlitz's approach. Quite beautiful, although the Kraftwerk component is not always immediately obvious. One of several now domestically-priced releases from the European electronica label of the moment, Mille Plateaux.

THAEMLITZ, TERRE Oh, No! It's Rubato (Mille Plateaux) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The third in trangressive experimental musican Terre Thaemlitz's series of unlikely piano recitals... Previously he's turned the melodies of both Kraftwerk and Gary Numan into gorgeous, sort-of-ambient piano meditations. Here, completing a twisted trinity of '70s/'80s new wavy electronic-rock genius, he interprets the music of Devo! (Risking cries of sacrilege from those of us who consider Devo holy -- he's even calling himself General Grrl!) Yup, "Jocko Homo", "Whip It", "Through Being Cool", "Mongoloid", and a bunch of others are given Terre's treatment. Sure, just reading about it, it seems kinda gimmicky, but the results are more than schtick -- this is lovely lovely stuff. And truthfully, you can barely recognize the source material -- this is slow and melanchonic rather than hectic and poppy. This disc and those two others are certainly our favorites amongst Thaemlitz' varied ouevre, and indeed are rather atypical of his usual output. The cover art (a parody of Oh, No! It's Devo! with Terre's head on a spud) is scary, though.
RealAudio clip: "Jocko Homo"
RealAudio clip: "Whip It"

THAI ELEPHANT ORCHESTRA s/t (Mulatta Records) cd 15.98
First it was Frogs of North America invading our record bins, then it was Antarctic Seals and Penguins, followed by Insects in Stored Foodstuffs... now it's Elephants from Thailand! Brilliant recordings by non-human, um, sound-artists that we just can't get enough of here at Aquarius. In this case, the elephants are not just making their natural noises, they are indeed playing instruments! You may have read about this project in the New York Times -- when we found out about it we immediately contacted the label and ordered a whole bunch (based also on the on-line sample we heard at www.mulatta.org) and now here they are. These are elephants from a elephant preseve in Thailand who have been trained to play specially-built instruments (many marimba-like instruments similar to the traditional Thai renat, as well as such things as harmonicas, drums, and even a stringed "electric bass"), but they haven't been trained *what* to play, it's all improvised with minimal human guidance! Yet it's definitely music. It was kind of an experiment to find out how the creatures might express themselves, and we'd say it was very successful indeed. If we didn't know these were elephants, we'd think this was a strange No Neck Blues Band recording or something. Imagine a stumbling, primitive hippy folk jam on gamelan instruments, but not one that's random or erratic. The elephants play steady beats, the struck gongs or chimes interspersed with their vocalizations as well. With no overdubs and few edits this is certainly a very impressive recording!
The Thai Elephant Orchestra was dreamed up, and this disc produced, by David Soldier (New York musician and academic) and Richard Lair (American expatriate elephant expert, who advises the Thai Elephant Conservation Center where this project goes on). The two came up with the idea that elephants, being social animals, might enjoy playing music together, and proceeded to investigate... Happily, not only did the elephants enjoy playing, they were good at it, demonstrating that they were able to decide what sounded good (to them) and what didn't.
The booklet features photos and detailed, fascinating liner notes by both men. Here is what Soldier says the criteria was for the construction of the instruments, which were made by New York instrument builder Ken Butler (of "Gravikords, Whirligigs..." fame):
"1. The instruments must be suitable to the elephant's anatomy, which means large instruments operated by the trunk.
"2. The instruments must withstand jungle heat, humidity -- and the elephants.
"3. The instruments should require minimum upkeep.
"4. The instruments should have a Thai sound, because the regular daily audience is Thai, the mahouts would enjoy the music more, and the elephants have heard Thai music all their lives."
Some more great tid-bits from the notes: "The elephants took easily to the harmonica, which sparked the first elephant music fad: one morning I arrived to hear the sound of harmonicas from all over -- from the hills and from the river. The elephants were walking in from the forest playing harmonicas, which they hold easily in the tip of their trunks."
"The elephants didn't seem interested in the bells or theremin. At first they were spooked by the synthesizer keyboard, but later two animals were entranced by it. They disliked playing Ken's reed instruments with a large mouthpiece, or rather, trunkpiece. A mahout told me they were afraid that a snake might jump into their nostrils!"
As sort of bonus tracks, in addition to the forty-plus minutes of elephant improv, there's also some non-instrumental elephant field recordings, several tracks of humans and elephants playing together, and even a few traditional Thai songs played by humans, about elephants.
Sure there's a bit of simple amusement to be found here just from the concept alone, but in actual fact the music these elephants make is, to our ears at least, quite beautiful. We could go on and philosophize about how this project speaks to the relationship between man and animals in this world, but we'll leave those thoughts for you to explore if you chose to check out this album, which we highly recommend! Amazing and wonderful.
MPEG Stream: "Jojo"
MPEG Stream: "Duo For Renats"
MPEG Stream: "Harmonica Music"
MPEG Stream: "Heavy Logs"

THANK YOU Golden Worry (Thrill Jockey) cd 14.98
Expectations are set pretty high when your band is compared to This Heat, Swell Maps and The Ex, but for Baltimore math rockers Thank You, the comparison is pretty apt.
Over the course of six songs and about 30 minutes, the band unfurl some seriously intricate and dense sonic workouts, forgoing traditional song structure, and instead trafficking in tension and release, repetition and texture, whipping up super repetitive cyclical jams, the guitars alternately jangly and crunchy, the vocals yelped and anthemic, the record opener sounding like a post punk no-wave take on Animal Collective, with long stretches of frantic drumming and swirling droned out guitar.
The rest of the record spreads out, dipping into blissed out tribal psychedelia, motorik minimal krautrock, angular jagged punkish crunch and manic super intense mathiness. Chiming guitars swell and soar over avalanche like rhythms, laced with playful flurries of tinkling melodies, occasionally getting super abstract and dubbed out, just as often slipping into something more gnarled and chaotic, but when the vocals come in, all high and harmonious, the transform whatever is going on into some unlikely psychedelic pop.
Crunchy indie rock explodes into something much more frenetic and frenzied, before slipping into a slithery buzz drenched bit of woozy swirl, only launch into some organ driven psychedelia, noisy and loose, and again the vocals grounding the sound, while the organs and drums do the best to drag everything heavenward, and finally, the record closes with maybe the poppiest of the bunch, the guitars and drums locked in a rollicking tumble beneath the soaring vox, again the Animal Collective comparisons are unavoidable, but those vocals coupled with a sound more angular and jagged and noisy, make this a sort of avant post punk psych pop, that should appeal to modern pop kids, as well as folks who lean more toward sounds with prefixes like post and kraut...
MPEG Stream: "1-2-3 Bad"
MPEG Stream: "Birth Reunion"
MPEG Stream: "Can't / Can"

THANK YOU Golden Worry (Thrill Jockey) lp 14.98
Expectations are set pretty high when your band is compared to This Heat, Swell Maps and The Ex, but for Baltimore math rockers Thank You, the comparison is pretty apt.
Over the course of six songs and about 30 minutes, the band unfurl some seriously intricate and dense sonic workouts, forgoing traditional song structure, and instead trafficking in tension and release, repetition and texture, whipping up super repetitive cyclical jams, the guitars alternately jangly and crunchy, the vocals yelped and anthemic, the record opener sounding like a post punk no-wave take on Animal Collective, with long stretches of frantic drumming and swirling droned out guitar.
The rest of the record spreads out, dipping into blissed out tribal psychedelia, motorik minimal krautrock, angular jagged punkish crunch and manic super intense mathiness. Chiming guitars swell and soar over avalanche like rhythms, laced with playful flurries of tinkling melodies, occasionally getting super abstract and dubbed out, just as often slipping into something more gnarled and chaotic, but when the vocals come in, all high and harmonious, the transform whatever is going on into some unlikely psychedelic pop.
Crunchy indie rock explodes into something much more frenetic and frenzied, before slipping into a slithery buzz drenched bit of woozy swirl, only launch into some organ driven psychedelia, noisy and loose, and again the vocals grounding the sound, while the organs and drums do the best to drag everything heavenward, and finally, the record closes with maybe the poppiest of the bunch, the guitars and drums locked in a rollicking tumble beneath the soaring vox, again the Animal Collective comparisons are unavoidable, but those vocals coupled with a sound more angular and jagged and noisy, make this a sort of avant post punk psych pop, that should appeal to modern pop kids, as well as folks who lean more toward sounds with prefixes like post and kraut...
MPEG Stream: "1-2-3 Bad"
MPEG Stream: "Birth Reunion"
MPEG Stream: "Can't / Can"

THE RITA Thousands Of Dead Gods (Pacrec) cd 8.98
We first heard from Canadian harsh noiseniks The Rita, when they teamed up with local primitive lo-fi black metallers Bone Awl on a cassette a few months ago. Not so much a split as a weird collaboration, the two bands switching back and forth, Bone Awl's black buzz perfectly complimenting The Rita's brutal noise squall crunch, so much so that it was kind of tough sometimes to tell who was who. No such problem here, Thousands Of Dead Gods is nothing but The Rita and their huge caustic cloud of churning, roiling psychedelic white hot white noise!
This is definitely one for noise freaks only. One hour long track of relentlessly brutal N.O.I.S.E. Nothing subtle, no buried melodies, no shimmery atmospherics. Just a grinding, grit drenched, buzzy, prickly, poisonous Merzbowian blast of pure noise. The coolest part is that all of the sounds are sourced from a Great White Shark diving cage, recorded underwater and from the deck of the boat. Hence the dead shark on the cover. But there is a turbulent underwater feel to this noise, like dunking your head in super violent rapids, or the churning wake of a boat, or in the ocean amidst wildly thrashing sharks going in for the kill. Brutal.
MPEG Stream: "Thousands Of Dead Gods (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Thousands Of Dead Gods (excerpt 2)"

THE SKULL DEFEKTS & THE SONS OF GOD Received In Studio Dental, Gothenburg (Utech) cd 14.98
We like Skull Defekts, but this collab isn't the one to start with.

THEE OPEN SEX (Is Not A Cult) (Auris Apothecary / Magnetic South) cassette 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's like Christmas around here (we know, it is ACTUALLY like Christmas around here right now), whenever we get a new batch of tapes from Auris Apothecary, not only is it bound to sonically all over the map, without fail the packaging is totally stellar, often high (or low) concept, meticulously hand assembled, often involving organic matter, or broken glass, or sponges, or scrolls, or who knows what else. Needless to say, every AA release is special, and is often as much a work of sonic art, as it is a piece of music.
Thee Open Sex is apparently, according to the label, "a psychedelic supergroup of mammoth proportions" from the label's hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. We sense a bit of tongue in cheekiness there, but this is most definitely a primo slab of droned out mysterious psychedelia, with long tones layered into thick undulating drones, buzzing synths, plenty of buzz and hum, some bowed metal, a slow ominous build, buried melodies drifting in viscous swells of rumble and whir, laced with saxophone blurts, and eventually driven by pounding tribal percussion, the sound super druggy and gauzy and abstract, but with a strange internal propulsion, that adds tension and intensity, this is the sort of stuff that would most definitely appeal to fans of Avarus and No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, the same sort of abstract sonic ritualism, totally mesmerizing, and per the above description, the sort of thing most aQ-ers, especially the psych-kraut-space-drone inclined, will flip over. Includes members of aQ faves Dylan Ettinger, Circuit De Yeux along with a bunch of other Indiana psych rockers.
LIMITED TO 150 HAND STAMPED COPIES. The tapes are housed in anti-static ziplock bags stamped on the front with some strange pink symbol, and stickered on the back, inside a thick printed cardstock insert, the tapes featuring hand-printed paper labels, each stickered bag numbered/stamped in red.

THEOLOGIAN The Chasms Of My Heart (Crucial Blast) cd 13.98
The second of two releases this year from black ambient alchemist Theologian, the other, Finding Comfort In Overwhelming Negativity, released on Handmade Birds and reviewed here recently, and now this one, The Chasms Of My Heart, released on Crucial Blast. Like Finding Comfort (and The Further I Get before that), Chasms is another stunning collection of grim, industrial wastescapes, all bleak drones and industrial percussive crunch, although Chasms does start out on a remarkably 'musical' note, opener "Abandon All Hope" weds actual singing to tense layered keening tones, and churning machinelike rhythms, the vocals mantra like, wreathed in static and crackle, drift atop a dense droned out thrum, driven by that relentless rhythm, eventually the vocals and drums drop out, leaving some seriously serene sonic shimmer and softly sweeping cinematic ambience.
The second track makes up for the melody in the first, unleashing a heaving onslaught of power electronics and blacknoise skree, which eventually blurs, and is melted down into a thick morass of crumbling low end that gradually becomes a hushed blackened drift.
But it does seem that melody will be a recurring theme on Chasms, as "My Body Is Made Of Ash, I Live As Ash" begins as a series of thick thick distorted synth swells, which rapidly blossom into something much more melodic, soaring and cinematic, like M83 via the Swans, but even slower and meaner, and then the beats come in, and you can add Muslimgauze to the mix. Weird combo, but it works, hypnotic and tranced out, until the hammer falls, and the song explodes into full on face melting noise, but if you listen close, within that caustic cloud of noise, the rhythm continues to churn, vocals wail, and melodies drift and shimmer, it's the sort of hard noise, that softens a bit the more you listen, and seems to transform before your ears into something weirdly, and impossibly catchy. The rest of the record reveals more of Theologian's bleeding black sonic heart, the stuttering, almost 'danceable' "We Can't All Be Victims", the processed vocal driven blackened power electronics skitter of "I Don't Exist", the blown out noisebliss of "Bed Of Maggots, the almost house music-y pulsating noisescape title track, and finally, the sprawling 13 minute, haunting, grinding cinematic ambient noisescape closer.
Comes packaged in a super striking, full color, oversized dvd style, six panel digipak.
MPEG Stream: "Abandon All Hope"
MPEG Stream: "Starvation Is A Legitimate Weapon Of War"
MPEG Stream: "My Body Is Made Of Ash... I Live As Ash"
MPEG Stream: "The Chasms Of My Heart"

THEOLOGIAN The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face (Crucial Blast) cd 13.98
We had never actually heard much from NYC power electronics / black ambient / dark industrial / synthdrone outfit Navicon Torture Technologies, but we were definitely intrigued by this latest installment of blackened sound from NTT mainman Leech, under the name Theologian. Even before hearing it. It's on Crucial Blast, and if anyone knows their way around grim, bleak, black heaviness, it's CB. Then there's the gorgeous oversized cover, a long haired figure holding her head, underneath a strange sigil and surrounded by a decahedron and a field of pure black, and then the record title, The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face, and the accompanying song titles: "In Times Of Need, We All Go Against Our Natures", "The Fragility Of The Male Ego", "Bearing Bitter Fruit", and the packaging folding out to reveal more mysterious shapes and strange shadowy nudes, a pretty compelling chunk of art, even before we get to the sounds within.
And if anything, the sounds inside more than live up to that promise, the opening track "Zero" begins the proceedings, and we expectantly wait for some serious harsh noise, or some grim black ambience, and while there is a little of both, it's molded into something much more, well, lovely for lack of a better word, 5 minutes of crumbling black beauty, gorgeous plaintive melodies buried in a thick morass of buzz and blur and swirling hiss and whir, like a way more ominous and blackened Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, gorgeous, and gorgeously harrowing.
"In Times Of Need, We All Go Against Our Natures" is 24 minutes long, the majority of which is spent drifting through some nightmarish landscape of hushed minimal rumbles and post industrial grit, again, far more 'pretty' than we might have expected, a smoldering chunk of subterranean blackness, a roiling murky surface than offers brief glimpses of melodies and voices below, unsettling but gloriously grim, and in case we find the proceedings too soothing, the last few minutes find those sounds expanding and exploding into thick crumbling swells of blown out synths and fractured black electronics, underpinning some seriously anguished super distorted vokills.
The record continues in a similar fashion, creating blackened shades of beauty out of elements harsh and hateful, abject and bleak, the sound almost shoegazey at times, hints of Nadja for sure abound, but a Nadja stripped to its essence, the tracks creep, and crawl, and drift, thrumming and pulsing softly, wreathed in sheets of grit and grime, but always glowing from within, the melodies like buried black secrets. Occasionally, like on "The Fragility Of The Male Ego", the sound becomes super blown out and corrosive, an ultradistorted blacknoise, that for all it's corrosive clamor, remains somehow, if not lovely, at least haunting and mysterious, while other tracks, like "It's All Gone", take unlikely elements, and again, weave them into something strangely beautiful, but still undeniably pitch black.
Dark and mysterious and troublingly lovely, some seriously intense power electronics flecked black ambience, most definitely recommended for fans of Lustmord, MZ412, Nordvargr, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Wicked King Wicker, Locrian, Wraiths, Wolf Eyes, etc...
Incredible packaging, 6 panel dvd sized digipak, black and spare on the outside, full color on the inside.
MPEG Stream: "Zero"
MPEG Stream: "Unfamiliar Skies"
MPEG Stream: "The Further I Get From Your Star, The Less Light I Feel On My Face"

THERE GOES NEUTRO! Organelle (self-released) cd-r 8.98
We've actually been sitting on these for a while now, another victim of the too many records to review and not enough time problem we seem to perpetually have.
There Goes Neutro! is the project of aQ customer John Ira Thomas, and the minute we first heard about his Organelle record, we knew we had to hear it. One of those discs that we liked based on the description alone, having yet to hear a single note. C'mon, here's what it's all about (from the liner notes): "Thomas cut the advance frame noise from an old filmstrip record about the life of Jesus Christ, cut it into about 400 pieces, and with the magic of computers made something new out of it." Exactly. Jesus, chopped up records, noise, we knew it had to be good, or at the very least, interesting, lucky for us, it's both.
Obvious references would be Jeck and Tetreault and Basinski, especially since the main component is record crackle, and damaged vinyl, and the arrangement is a looped assemblage of stuttering chopped up bits, like a rougher more raw Oval. But it's not just hiss and crackle, the first few seconds of music are also captured, sounding a bit circusy, even more so once they get looped up and tangled. Four long tracks, all movements in one epic and fractured soundscape.
Woozy, trippy, warped and warbly and definitely a bit psychedelic. Super cool!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

THERIOS II (Hollenden) cd-r 11.98
More one-man metal band madness. This time from Cleveland Ohio, and man is this stuff crazy. Instead of just playing all the instruments himself like a 'normal' one man band, he records the drums, the bass, the guitars, -and- the vocals, loads them into his computer and chops and shuffles, and distorts and chops some more and comes up with something that is sort of a metal record, but is so alien and completely bizarre that just calling it metal sort of sells it short. This is primitive-futuristic-lo-fi-black-grind-electronic-metal. Or something. I played it for my friend Josh in the car, and I think he mumbled something like 'Hmm, sounds kind of weird.' Or maybe he said 'bad'. But it -does- sound weird -and- bad and great and bizarre and completely amazing. Ultra lo-fi, fuzzed out blurry grinding metal, like Darkthrone mixed with Anal Cunt, thrown in a blender, and then played back through an AM radio. The guitar is so distorted, it sounds like a swarm of angry bees recorded on a dictaphone. The drums either sound like cardboard boxes run through a chain of distortion pedals or huge metal garbage cans thrown down a flight of stairs. But it's the vocals that blew us away, completely freaked out and so demented. Insanely inhuman and raw, sounding a bit like wild demons being beaten to death and a little bit like a drag race mic-ed and broadcast through a bullhorn, threatening to blow out the speakers with shards of distortion and hiss. When people talk about music being extreme, take into consideration the fact that they probably haven't heard Therios, 'cause next to this, no band seems all that extreme.
RealAudio clip: "Punctured"
RealAudio clip: "Trauma"

THERIOS s/t (Hollenden) cd-r 11.98
We listed Therios' amazing "II" disc last time, and the response was so good that we just brought in a few of this older self-titled Therios release. Like "II", this recording is a studio/computer-assembled one man band project. It's constructed from samples, but as the back cover specifies, "Therios does not sample the work of others" -- this guy plays all the instruments himself and then chops and splices everything into noisy, chaotic, metallic compositions. This disc is somewhat less "metal" than its successor, however, sounding a little bit like stuff the Boredoms were doing back in their "Soul Discharge" days. Over the top distorted insanity.
RealAudio clip: "Components Of Lucifer Refraction"
RealAudio clip: "Cortex Implant"

THIEVES LIKE US Bleed Bleed Bleed (Captured Tracks) cd 13.98
We've long been pretty into Thieves Like Us, whose M.O. had been a sort of eighties style electro pop, a vintage sounding new wave that fused the sounds of classic New Order to an icy futureworld beholden to sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, but then something strange happened on their last record, the band ditching vocals completely and transforming into something totally (okay, well, maybe not totally) different, conjuring up a sound much more cinematic and krautrocky, definitely shifting toward the current crop of Goblin worshipping John Carpenter wannabes, experimental, psychedelic, kosmische, so that's pretty much what we were expecting from this, their brand new full length, but it seems that brief bit of sonic dabbling, was indeed just that, and with Bleed Bleed Bleed, regardless of the very evocative album title, the band returns to that shimmery eighties synth pop sound, the opening title track, slow burning and sultry, with a percolating bassline underneath swirling synths, and icy dueling boy / girl vocals. "Stay Blue" sounds opens up with a brief bout of serious Kraftwerk worship, before blissing out into something much more swoonsome and ballady, sounding like some lost jam straight off eighties FM radio or classic era MTV, reminding us more of ABC or Thompson Twins or any of those bands, more than the krautrock forebears who the band also obviously count as influences. And so it goes, a hazy time machine trip back into vintage new wave electro pop, and while more modern moments reminds us of M83 at times, folks who flipped over the anomaly that was the band's krautrocky last record, Berlin Alex, might be a bit confused, and perhaps even disappointed, but for the rest of us, who were already digging their fuzzy retro sound, this definitely hits that same sweet spot.
MPEG Stream: "Bleed Bleed Bleed"
MPEG Stream: "Stay Blue"
MPEG Stream: "Still Life"

THIEVES LIKE US Bleed Bleed Bleed (Captured Tracks) lp 16.98
We've long been pretty into Thieves Like Us, whose M.O. had been a sort of eighties style electro pop, a vintage sounding new wave that fused the sounds of classic New Order to an icy futureworld beholden to sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, but then something strange happened on their last record, the band ditching vocals completely and transforming into something totally (okay, well, maybe not totally) different, conjuring up a sound much more cinematic and krautrocky, definitely shifting toward the current crop of Goblin worshipping John Carpenter wannabes, experimental, psychedelic, kosmische, so that's pretty much what we were expecting from this, their brand new full length, but it seems that brief bit of sonic dabbling, was indeed just that, and with Bleed Bleed Bleed, regardless of the very evocative album title, the band returns to that shimmery eighties synth pop sound, the opening title track, slow burning and sultry, with a percolating bassline underneath swirling synths, and icy dueling boy / girl vocals. "Stay Blue" sounds opens up with a brief bout of serious Kraftwerk worship, before blissing out into something much more swoonsome and ballady, sounding like some lost jam straight off eighties FM radio or classic era MTV, reminding us more of ABC or Thompson Twins or any of those bands, more than the krautrock forebears who the band also obviously count as influences. And so it goes, a hazy time machine trip back into vintage new wave electro pop, and while more modern moments reminds us of M83 at times, folks who flipped over the anomaly that was the band's krautrocky last record, Berlin Alex, might be a bit confused, and perhaps even disappointed, but for the rest of us, who were already digging their fuzzy retro sound, this definitely hits that same sweet spot.
MPEG Stream: "Bleed Bleed Blees"
MPEG Stream: "Stay Blue"
MPEG Stream: "Still Life"

THIGHPAULSANDRA I, Thighpaulsandra (Chalice / World Serpant) 2cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Thighpaulsandra has recorded with Coil, Julian Cope, and Spiritualized. At times all of those bands have done some pretty amazing things... this album, on the other hand, will hopefully be forgotten as a bad mistake. Highlights include a song called "Home Butt Club" and some destined-for-the-bargain-bin photoshop work as cover art. Don't bother.

THIGHPAULSANDRA Some Head (Eskaton / World Serpant) cd 14.98
Thighpaulsandra has made his career out of being weird and making noodly electronic music. After working with Julian Cope (perhaps his only collaboration that really made sense) and Spirtitualized, he's joined Coil fulltime. And considering Coil's new direction; all lunar drones and breathy occultist polemics, this isn't a bad match. Working with Coil's John Balance and Hans Jurgen Rausch on this short EP, Thighpaulsandra merges alot of hallucinatory electronics into a seemless collage dominated by the synth knob twiddle found on the recent Coil release "Queens of the Circulating Library." Interspersed between the analogue synthesisis some early 80s 'Some Bizarre' arppegiated industrial and some space-age bachelor pad jazziness (like Dick Hyman without the great name).

THING, THE (WITH JIM O'ROURKE) Shinjuku Growl (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 16.98

THING, THE (WITH OTOMO YOSHIHIDE) Shinjuku Crawl (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 16.98

THIRTEEN GHOSTS WITH THURSTON MOORE AND DEREK BAILEY Legend of the Blood Yeti (Infinite Chug) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
British improv electronics/reeds project, with Moore and Bailey guesting individually on different tracks. Features lovely color graphics and interesting liner notes telling of the Blood Yeti.

THIRTEEN GHOSTS WITH THURSTON MOORE AND DEREK BAILEY Legend of the Blood Yeti (Infinite Chug) lp 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
British improv electronics/reeds project, with Moore and Bailey guesting individually on different tracks. Features lovely color graphics and interesting liner notes telling of the Blood Yeti.

THIS HEAT Deceit (These Records) cd 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It would be nice to think that These Records have only been releasing the reissues of "Deceit" -- This Heat's second and final proper album -- every ten years after the original release of the album in 1981. The first CD pressings arrived on 1991, and this remastered version of the album holds a released date in 2001. Regardless of These Records' coy intentions, the return of "Deceit" to the Aquarius Records' catalogue is very welcome indeed!!!
Almost all of the histories of UK avant-garde music have claim allegiances to This Heat, as Punk, New Wave, Industrial, Prog Rock, Jim O'Rourke, and even Electronica place the seminal outfit somewhere at the beginnings of their respective etymologies. To a certain extent all of these histories may be true, but then again the broad aesthetic and ideological contexts between all of those different styles may cross-each other out, leaving This Heat as one of the few artistic forces that truly exists all by itself.
Just a trio comprised of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen, and Gareth Williams, This Heat manifested an incredibly explosive sound that hybridized all of the countercultural fury of Punk and Situationism, within a sonic context informed by technological advances of musique concrete techniques and electro-acoustic synthesis. Musically speaking, This Heat did not espouse the three chord structures or the snarling postures of Punk, instead injecting the complex pop agendas of Brian Eno (which were purposefully seeking to conflict the archetypes of rock into a new aesthetic language) with nervous tension building up to dramatic cathartic releases. "Deceit" is a record that was so ahead of its time that it has taken twenty years for artists like Fennesz and Radiohead to articulate ideas with such intensity and attention to the play between musical creation and technological advances. So highly recommended.

THIS HEAT Out Of Cold Storage (This Is / ReR) 6cd box 102.00
Trying to explain why this band is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious. Or why Bush is such a terrible president.
Or maybe it's kind of like writing an introduction for the new Pynchon novel. Or telling a few jokes before Richard Pryor comes on stage. Or throwing a couple quick passes before Joe Montana comes on the field. It's that daunting, that overwhelming, that impossible.
The trio of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams known collectively as This Heat were one of the few bands that literally changed people's lives. Changed the way folks thought about music. I (Andee) couldn't believe music like this actually existed. It was everything I wanted to listen to before I knew that THIS was exactly what I wanted to listen to. Hit It Or Quit It publisher / rock critic / indie scenestress Jessica Hopper once wrote that she literally pee'd her pants the first time she heard This Heat. And it's not hard to see why. Without This Heat, modern, alternative, avant-garde music as we know it would be a whole different beast. Post-rock, math-rock, avant rock are hugely indebted to the genre shattering experimentalism of This Heat. Tortoise, You Fantastic, Yona Kit, Brise Glace, Psychic Paramount, Laddio Bollocko, Radian, Village Of Savoonga, Larsen, Starfuckers, Circle, Salvatore, I Am Spoonbender -- none of those bands would even exist if it weren't for This Heat, or if they still did you can bet they would sound a whole lot different. And that's just off the top of our heads, AND that's -just- bands whose sound directly reflects the influence of This Heat. Imagine how many performers and artists were influenced by This Heat but who let that influence manifest itself in not so obvious ways.
We once described This Heat as "Krautrock-ish hyper rhythmic tape-looped prog." Which comes close to succinctly describing the magical musical alchemy of This Heat, but still only scratches the surface. The sound of This Heat is rhythm and texture and dynamics. The recording studio as instrument. Every sound and every song is based on rhythm and texture. There are hooks, and melodies, but they exist to serve the rhythm and are often born from the deft manipulation of sound and tempo. Even the most static and repetitive parts manage to sound -musical-. There are vocals, but they are minimal and otherworldly, weary and sing songy and completely mesmerizing. A droning musical accompaniment to the haunting whirs and clanging percussion in the background.
Their entire catalog has gone in and out of print over the years, mostly out, with all of these records pretty much completely unavailable for the last 7 or 8 years. Rumors of a complete box set began to circulate a few years back and it has finally surfaced and it's everything we could have hoped for and more. Every single release, remastered, repackaged in swank digipaks, including a bonus live disc, a huge booklet, amazing archival photos, extensive liner notes, all packed in a gorgeous box. It's a testament to the power this band holds over their fans that pretty much everyone who owns all of these records already will buy the box without a second thought. We're almost jealous of folks who have never even heard This Heat. The thought of entering into this box set completely blind, is almost frightening, as the world of This Heat is so singular, so powerful, it will be difficult to ever listen to music the same way again.
This Heat's self titled debut, originally released in 1978 (which is almost impossible to believe, that people were making music this progressive, this intense, this fucked up and forward thinking) is such a totally immersive and strangely lovely musical environment. From the machinelike krautrock of "Horizontal Hold" to the dreamy contemplative "Twilight Furniture" with its simple chiming guitars, muted tribal percussion and keening vocals, to the bizarre affected drum workout of "24 Track Loop", it's like wandering through some alien musical world. A sky full of greys and blues, smeary drones floating gently by, haunting quavering vocals drifting below, like tendrils of smoke, the barren landscape littered with all manner of rhythmic outcroppings, harsh jagged crashes and booms, as well as low rolling thumps and stutters, off in the distance simple spare melodies float and hover, each note a glowing spot on the horizon. Absolutely and utterly overwhelmingly brilliant.
The Health And Efficiency ep followed in early 1981 and took their sound in a strangely pop (for them at least) direction, sounding like some tweaked and twisted version of Wire, the title track all angular new wave guitars, monotone vocals, driving drums, strange convoluted arrangements and creepy background sound effects before the whole thing splinters into super abstract rhythmic experimentalism, looped grooves, played over and over, while sounds float and careen in the background, so incredibly hypnotic and repetitive. The second track on Health And Efficiency (which runs a brief twenty minutes) is "Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm)", a lengthy drone, a warm synth whir that surfaces within other This Heat tracks, recontextualized and often chopped up and reassembled, but here, it's a slow shifting slow motion single tone soundscape, with the tone occasionally being pitched up or down, very simple but quite haunting, and a cool glimpse at how This Heat managed to mix and match, use and reuse, without ever treading water.
Later that same year came Deceit, with the band continuing to expand and explore. Deceit consisted of shorter songs, but that didn't mean their process, or disdain for convention was altered. If anything, they managed to subvert pop music in a way never thought possible. Imagine Brian Eno circa Taking Tiger Mountain, but filter that through some avant industrialism, angular new wave and hyper rhythmic krautrock and you'll begin to get the picture. The songs on Deceit are impossibly catchy, especially when examined closely. Abstract, obtuse, angular, convoluted, tangled up but without ever losing that thread, that melodic sensibility that grounded the songs, kept them from falling apart completely, instead, the perilous arrangements only added tension and emotion. An incredibly explosive sound that somehow hybridized all of the countercultural fury of punk and situationism, within a sonic context informed by the technological advances of musique concrete and electro-acoustic experimentation. The sound was definitely punk in its own way, but certainly wasn't expressed through three chord song structures or snarling postures, instead This Heat injected their own complex pop agendas with a jittery nervous tension always building to a dramatic and cathartic release. Deceit was sadly the band's final release disbanding soon after.
In 1993, a disc of unearthed This Heat recordings was released and consisted of three lengthy tracks of tape loop experiments and random rhythmic explorations. Repeat has come to be This Heat's defining work even though it is essentially a record of outtakes and pieces meant to be incorporated into other songs. But it's hard to argue with the 20 minute title track, and endless, almost funky groove, punctuated by weird electronic swells, sprinkles of woodblock percussion and occasional handclaps but held together by one of the most amazing drum parts ever. A relentless pound and shuffle, drenched in effects, sound very dubby, but also very krautrock, a tripped out blissed out drone drenched rhythmic space jam never matched to this day. Every time this is played for a friend, musician or not, the listener is inevitably confused, perplexed and then quickly obsessed with hearing more. The second track, appropriately titled "Metal" is an abstract soundscape of, well, metal, clanging, clinking, like some ancient junkyard gamelan, almost like the previous piece transcribed for sheet metal, garbage can, metal pipe and dumpster. The metallic symphony shifts and sways, melodies surface, rhythms twist and turn, all very hypnotic and quite lovely. The final track revisits a song on Health and Efficiency, but slows it down a bit to become "Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm)", the same sort of slow, murky drone, just made even slower, so more tonal colors surface, and the subtle shit is much more noticeable, a gloriously dreamlike warm warbly whir.
In 1996, This Heat's 1977 Peel Sessions were finally released and demonstrated once again that This Heat were untouchable, effortlessly unfurling a sound equal parts avant pop, krautrock, progrock, musique concrete and a handful of parts that defied easy classification. Every track here a jaw dropping, mind blowing performance. Especially the new version of "Horizontal Hold", one of This Heat's finest moments already, played here with much more verve and vigor and with a sound quality so much clearer, a recording so incredibly hot, that the song is reborn and completely confounds and amazes. The whole session is rhythmically dense, rife with bastardized pop, incredibly complex arrangements all rendered again in such a way that they are emotional and moving, instead of just intellectual musical exercises. And the sound is so crystal clear, that you can hear a band at the top of their game, taking over the BBC studio and using it like they would a second guitar or another drummer. The Peel Sessions also include a handful of songs that never made it onto records proper. All as good as anything on their official releases.
The bonus disc included in the box is a compilation of live tracks recorded between 1980 and 1981 all over Europe and sequenced to resemble the set list the band used on tour in the eighties. Recorded using a single stereo mic, the sound is less that crystal clear, but captures the band in their element at the top of their game. The songs are amazing, it's awesome to hear the band recreate pieces that on record relied so heavily on the studio, more evidence as to the genius of This Heat.
Our only complaint about this box was that there is definitely more This Heat material out there, and anyone picking up this box, would have gladly paid a few bucks more for one or two more discs of lost rare material. But then we spied this in the liner notes of the live cd: "Further CD's from other stages in This Heat's music to follow, including collaborations, improvisations and site-specific work as well as other live cds."
We can hardly wait!
There are plenty of places on the web and in magazines to read more about the history of the band, the band members, various versions, releases and re-releases and past reissues, but none of that ultimately matters as much as the sound. And oh the glorious sound. Just take a listen to the sound samples and no words will be necessary.
MPEG Stream: "Horizontal Hold (Peel Session)"
MPEG Stream: "Repeat"
MPEG Stream: "Paper Hats"
MPEG Stream: "Health And Efficiency"

THISQUIETARMY & SCOTT CORTEZ Meridians (Three-Four) lp 21.00
Scott Cortez, he of shoegaze legends Lovesliescrushing, as well as the recently reviewed Astrobrite, teams up with Thisquietarmy, who we've heard from in the past via multiple collaborations with Nadja's Aidan Baker. Here these two create a gorgeous landscape of thick layered mesmeric guitardrone, playable at both 33rpm and 45rpm (of course we're always partial to the slower), the guitars rendered totally unguitarlike, more like sound generators, unfurling pulsing lush overlapping tones and chords, all blurred and smeared into bleary, druggy dreaminess. Hypnotic, with ever shifting overtones, subtle sonic colorations, abstract and ambient, but still dense and dreamily dark. Only got a few copies of this...

THOMAS, MATTHEW Remodulation (Dorobo) cd 18.98
While no information is present in the liner notes as to the origin of the strange clicks and whirls on this CD, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Matthew Thomas is reprocessing shortwave radio static and noises into tentative structures that every once in a while give hint at melodies. A very poetic album that falls between Stockhausen's "Hymnen" and the shortwave radio experiments of John Duncan.

THORAX WACH Die Euch Geht's Ja Noch Viel Zu Gut (Knack) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Had it not been for this LP re-issue, the obscure German project Thorax-Wach would have certainly disappeared forever, and been forever unknown to us. Thankfully, that didn't happen. That said, we still don't know about this group other than that we like 'em, and the basic biographical info that they were a Berlin-based duo who originally released "Die Euch Geht's Ja Noch Viel Zu Gut" as a cassette back in 1979. Everything else about the band is a mystery to us. Musically, they appeared to have been sympathetic with (if not comrades of) the Berlin punk community of 'destructive dilletantes' like Malaria!, Der Plan, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Sprung Aus Den Wolken, and especially Die Todliche Doris. Armed with two Korg synths and a chicken scratch guitar, Thorax-Wach build simple electronic arppegiations that alternate between abrasive Throbbing Gristle noise and sneering, synthetic noirish pop tunes matched with dueling German vocals about eating children, old people, the body, and German serial killers!! Much of the vocals play with pre-existing structures ("Happy Birthday" being of note) and take on much of Die Todliche Doris' dada / fluxist sense of the absurd. Definitely one for the retro-electro crowd. Vinyl only.
RealAudio clip: "Tango Fontanello"
RealAudio clip: "Sagblost2"

THOUGHT BROADCAST s/t (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 22.00
Quite the student of the obscure & forgotten histories of synth punk and industrial culture, Ravi Binning's Thought Broadcast firmly embraces the primitive technology and the vacated zeitgeist from 1979-1983. For Binning, the musical universe may have ceased to exist after SPK's major label dalliance on the unforgivably bad "Metal Dance," but he still carves out plenty of room to operate alongside The Units, Factrix, and Club Moral. As we heard last on the super limited Phaserprone 7" released earlier in 2012, Binning has at his disposal a collection of primitive monosynths and drum machines, possibly of vintage origin, possibly reverse engineered through modern technology, possibly new circuits designed to sound old. No matter what the means of production might be, his sound is decidedly primitive, with the simplest of minor-chord melodies, the most zombified of arpeggiations, and the tinniest of mechanical rhythms filtered from Conrad Schnitzler through TG and MB, all of it swamped with tape hiss and scabrous noise errors. How could Binning not record this on the shittiest of 4-tracks? Highly compressed, garbled vocals bark in distant monotone at erratic intervals, with crude tape-delay manipulation further obfuscating whatever apocalyptic, anti-social, damaged epithets Binning may be uttering. It's brilliant in its bleakness and its re-animatation of that peculiar hollowed-out industrial sound.
MPEG Stream: "Fortune Teller"

THOUGHT BROADCAST Up-Maker (Phaserprone) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Phaserprone returns with more of their bunker mentality for obscurant synth-punk noise and rhythms, here authored by Brooklyn's Thought Broadcast (although now living in SF), who had at least one release on the uber-hip Gel label. Phaserprone champions this release as a surefire trajectory out of the "rarified TB discography," which seems to be wholly enigmatic from what we can discern; not surprisingly, this is our first exposure to the project. Thought Broadcast offers up 4 short monosynth and rhythm box trax whose dark-minded minimalism splatter with the power-electronics vibe of the pre-Brighter Death Now project Lille Roger or some of Cabaret Voltaire's more zombified efforts circa 1978 and with a little bit of Dome thrown in for good measure through TB's effects scrambling vocals, blorping synth sequencing, and monotonous mechanoid plod exhumed from a tarpit of tape murk. Cut at 45, so you know we're also loving this at the wrong speed! Elegantly packaged with Phaserprone's heavily embossed letterpress artwork. Limited to just 175 copies!

THOUSAND FOOT WHALE CLAW Dope Moons Volume One (Monofonus) lp 16.98
Tripped out sci-fi groove-rockers from Austin, Thousand Foot Whale Claw make their vinyl debut, and it's even better than we hoped it would be! We sold through a bunch of their Holodeck tape, Lost In Those Dunes, which was typical of their tape releases, two long sides of heady space rock drift, explosive cosmic psych expansiveness and ambient nuance. But for their vinyl debut, they really take their sound to the next level in the rhythm section, adding more bass and drum groove into tracks that enter an almost psych-rave territory, as if Spacemen 3 and Fuck Buttons gave birth to a baby in the bleak vacuum of space. Like local hypno-rockers, Lumerians, TFWC take advantage of an arsenal of psychedelic styles that propel the momentum, but keep the energy fresh, exciting and interestingly unpredictable. A tremendous debut that comes highly recommended!

THOUSAND FOOT WHALE CLAW Dope Moons Volume One (Holodeck) cassette 7.50
NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas. Here's what we said about these Austin psych rockers when we first had this on vinyl:
Tripped out sci-fi groove-rockers from Austin, Thousand Foot Whale Claw make their debut, and it's even better than we hoped it would be! We sold through a bunch of their other releases, which were typical of their tape releases, long swaths of heady space rock drift, explosive cosmic psych expansiveness and ambient nuance. But for Dope Moons, they really take their sound to the next level in the rhythm section, adding more bass and drum groove into tracks that enter an almost psych-rave territory, as if Spacemen 3 and Fuck Buttons gave birth to a baby in the bleak vacuum of space. Like local hypno-rockers, Lumerians, TFWC take advantage of an arsenal of psychedelic styles that propel the momentum, but keep the energy fresh, exciting and interestingly unpredictable. A tremendous debut that comes highly recommended! Limited!

THOUSAND FOOT WHALE CLAW Time Brothers (Holodeck) cassette 7.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of five new tapes from the awesome Austin based experimental tape label, Holodeck. Largely documenting the growing and diverse Texas underground scene of synth conjurers, drone lords, psych meditators, and classical folk devotionalists, each tape conceived as a unique listening experience with beautifully designed minimalist packaging. We listed tapes by Lumens, Smokey Emery and Thousand Foot Whale Claw awhile back, and this time around we have another tape from Thousand Foot Whale Claw as well as tapes by Survive, Amasa Gana, M. Geddes Gengra, and Silent Land Time Machine.
Since we reviewed the last Thousand Foot Whale Claw tape, Lost In Those Dunes as well as their vinyl debut, Dope Moons Volume One, we've become huge fans of the group's long form exploratory psych excursions. Time Brothers is an artifact of the group's beginnings comprised of two 20+ minute tracks that are extended demo versions of songs from both the previous tape and the vinyl lp plus the shorter unreleased titular track from the Lost in Those Dunes sessions.These primodial demos showcase the more ambient side of this space-rock group. Employing psych waves of oceanic bliss that conjure up images of tranquil beaches on far-off planets, brewing acid guitars, synth washes and circular bass rhythms create elongated textures and build-ups that restrain themselves from full-on freak-outs and remain in an elongated holding pattern of raga-ish devotion. Limited to 100 copies!